Page 2 of A Promise of Peridot
Now I fell asleep every night wondering who the woman even was.
Had she found me on the road one day?
Had someone forced her to raise me?
And if so, where in the world were my real parents? They were both full-blooded Fae, so most likely living in another realm. A melting one of parched earth and ash, governed by a tyrant—
“Feeling any better?”
My attention snapped to Mari, wandering over wrapped in a thick fur cloak. She’d raided the ship on our first night and somehow found the most fashionable pieces aboard. But even her elegant new pelt couldn’t hide the way her copper hair clung in wet ringlets to her face or the icy drops that showered her nose and near-blue lips.
At the sight of her, Ryder straightened and folded his hands confidently across his chest. “Right as this rain. Barely even sick.” He inclined his head toward the Peridot woman still heaving down the deck. “It’s all these other folk I feel sorry for.”
“He vomited the entire contents of his stomach out and then some,” I said to Mari.
Ryder glared at me, and Mari gave him a compassionate frown. “Sorry to hear it. This storm is unrelenting.”
“Yeah, well—” We sailed over another swell and Ryder turned pale, clutching at his stomach. “I... I am going to go talk tosomeone about that. Right now.” He dashed for the other end of the ship and out of eyesight.
Mari lifted a brow at me. “Talk to someone... about the storm?”
I shook my head. “He’s too proud.”
“I think it’s sweet that he’s embarrassed. Here.” She produced a small glass vial from her skirts. “Give him this. It’s Steel of the Stomach.”
“Isn’t that potion used for undertakers?” After I’d read the book on flower species I got from the Peridot library twice, I had started working through Mari’s grimoires out of sheer boredom. She didn’t have much use for them anymore anyway. Not now that she had the amulet.
I didn’t blame her. Mari never learned to wield her magic properly after her mother, the only living witch in her family, had died in childbirth. The necklace that we stole from Kane’s study, the one that belonged to Briar Creighton, the supposed most powerful witch of all time, allowed her to harness her power—and quite a bit of it. Now she did magic whenever and however she pleased. And the amulet never left her neck.
Mari shrugged, pawing absently at the violet charm as it hung below her collarbone. “I figured it might help him. It was easy to brew.”
The only issue was that she wasn’tactuallypulling any power from Briar or her lineage. I replayed the moment in which Kane told me the amulet was merely a trinket—that all the spells Mari cast with such ease these days were her own—and fished for guilt. I owed her the truth, but I only found a well of apathy where my ethics used to be. I didn’t want to lie to her, but—
But I just didn’t have the energy.
“Have you talked to Kane at all today?” she asked, gripping the slick bow as the ship pitched over another uneasy wave.
I sighed, a long and thorough noise. Another thing I couldn’t bring myself to do. “No.”
“What if there’s another way? Hadn’t he said as much?”
He had, the last time we spoke. After the battle. After my mother’s death. After my outburst of power and butchery. Kane had said he was willing to let the entire continent fall to Lazarus to save me from my death sentence. To help me live my life in peace.
But what kind of “peace” could I find knowing how many would suffer at Lazarus’s hands because I was holed away in some idyllic city, nameless and hiding from my fate?
“There’s nothing he can help me do but run.”
Mari pursed her lips. “Perhaps, but... He knows more about this prophecy than anyone. Can’t you try to have a little hope?”
“I just need off this boat,” I said, staring up into the heavy, rumbling storm clouds above.
“I know.” She sighed. “This journey has been miserable.”
But I wasn’t thinking of the rain or the cold or the vomiting. Only getting Leigh and Ryder safely to Citrine, and myself as far from Kane as possible. Somewhere I could be alone until I was needed. A sacrificial lamb, awaiting slaughter.
So I stayed silent as the rain battered my face, searching my heart for an ache, for hope, for even a trill of fear at the thought of my horrific future.
But I found nothing.
