Page 165 of A Promise of Peridot
But it was Griffin’s hand on my shoulder as he turned me to face him, eyes harsh, expression grim, as he said, “We have to go.”
Ryder stepped out from behind the commander and took in my expression. I must have looked wrecked. Ravaged. Because he uttered a single, appalled“No.”
Griffin’s eyes shot from me to Ryder and back. “Now.”
“No, no, no—” Ryder pleaded. “This is all my fault. I did this. It’s my fault—”
“Ryder,” Griffin cautioned, his voice sharper than a knife’s edge.
But Ryder didn’t stop. “I told her. I knew the minute I did that I shouldn’t have. How could Amelia have done this? How could—”
“What did you do?” The words flew from me, the rage a brief and welcome respite from the pain. I hadn’t even realized I was moving. Hadn’t realized I had Ryder’s throat in my hand, hadn’trealized his face was turning a shade of ghastly, satisfying blue. I tightened my grip.
“Kane,” Griffin snapped, ripping at my arm. “Kane, control yourself. It was a mistake. He made a mistake—you’re going to kill him!”
Ryder choked and sputtered.
Good.I squeezed harder, feeling his airway close under my hand. “Why should you get to live?”
Ryder’s purple face strained back at me, sniveling and wide-eyed. Enduring the pain. Accepting it.
“Why?”I bellowed.
Griffin shook me. “This is not what Arwen would have wanted!”
I released Ryder. Bit my cheek until I tasted blood.
“No,” Ryder croaked, rubbing at his neck. “He should kill me. I told Amelia where you’d be. And she told Lazarus. Why would she do that?”
“She must have cut a deal.” Griffin’s voice was hollow.
“For what?” Ryder asked.
“Her people, I’m sure.”
Ryder shook his head. “When I couldn’t find her, I had a bad feeling, but I never thought...”
I couldn’t listen to him anymore. Couldn’t hear anything but my heart. Beating too slow. Barely beating at all. I knew I was moving toward the edge of the platform, but I couldn’t feel my legs. I would be with her. Had to—
“Kane, stop, they’re gone.”
I shoved around Griffin, his lumbering chest in my fuckingway, but he put himself in front of me again. Firm. Stern. “Kane,she’s gone.”
Sobs racked from my chest. I didn’t sound like myself. I didn’t sound like anything. I knew my face had crumpled, that tears were blurring my sight, and no matter how they purged from me, they wouldn’t soothe the emptiness, ease the unendurable agony—
I moved again for the edge of the platform. For that bottomless, depthless, blackened forest. For the peace I’d find at its base. But Griffin pulled me into him.
Awkward at first. Stiff.
Not as much an embrace as a steel grip to prevent me from my own—
I wrenched from him, from his resolute warmth, his support—but he held vehemently firm.
“I’m sorry, brother,” he said.
Resonant silence whirred in my head. The sun had fallen behind the lip of the isle’s mouth. It was cold now. Not frigid, but crisp enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck and my forearms limp at my sides. The smell of burning—perhaps a lantern or torch knocked aside in the widow’s destruction—crested the air in my nostrils. Voices wailed and the stomping of heavy boots sounded below us.
“We need to leave,” Griffin said. “There are men coming for you...”
