Page 21 of A Promise of Peridot
Maybe they were right. Maybe this could help.
“Fine. Just dinner?”
Mari’s answering smile was almost enough to make my compliance worth it.
8
arwen
I bathed and dressed, trying hard to ignore the way my reflection in the brightly lit, pretty pearl-crusted mirror made me feel. The contrast was stark. My eyes had such deep, sorrowful bags that I looked like I had been pummeled. Many, many times. And my cheeks—washed-out, pallid, gaunt. By the time I found it within me to meet Mari on the palace steps, late afternoon had slipped into early evening.
The sailors in the harbor were anchoring their vessels and ambling into the city center for dinner alongside women dressed in dainty, festive finery. The people here were more beautiful than anyone I had seen in Amber or Onyx. Even Peridot. Unbothered. Relaxed, as if the sunshine and briny waves were enough to make each day worth living, and everything else that happened, good or bad, was simply garnish.
Mari and I strolled through the city at a leisurely pace. I hadn’t realized what a luxury it was to not be fighting for my life. Each vined corner we rounded led to a little plaza or a square doused insunset shades of blush and gold. Ceramic pottery, aromatic lemongrass and mint leaves, ruby-red grapefruit.
Each café and restaurant—most pressed up against walls of vivid, near-luminous bougainvillea—was accompanied by soft lute music and wafts of garlic, parsley, and thyme. Some narrow passages opened up on one end, giving a peek at the easy waves of the marina, like a slipped-off sleeve of a dress, offering a seductive glimpse to a wanting eye.
The carriages that passed us as we meandered through the streets were impossible to wrap my mind around. Not only because of their elaborate gold filigree and glittery detailing—each hinge and spoke adorned with more opalescent shine than most noblewomen’s necks—but because they weren’t drawn by any horses. Rather, they moved on their own, powered by the mermagic Kane had spoken of. A blue light—an energy of some kind—spinning the wheels like a witch’s spell.
There were more hints of those shimmering, blue rays throughout the town. Subtle, but now I was looking for them—streetlights that glimmered with that single blue flame, an aquamarine glow coming from a cart that seemed to push itself. For a city more vast, more advanced than any I’d seen before, there were no horses, no wells, no aqueducts. Clearly, the energy provided by the sea that insulated Citrine did more than just secure the kingdom.
Eventually, Mari liked the look of one little bustling seafood restaurant and pulled me inside, away from a stuffed, musty bookstore overflowing with pages begging to be read.
She must have been starving.
The owner, a frazzled gentleman with too many customers and not enough help, seated us at a table on a vine-covered patio facing the water with a picturesque view of the golden sun setting over thenow-still harbor. Our table was small with a single melting white candle in the center, and we quickly ordered enough food to nearly topple the thing. Squid-ink pasta, chargrilled oysters, roasted heirloom tomatoes—in colors I had never seen, like gold and lime green and rose—and an extraordinary whole grilled fish with the eyeballs still intact served on a plate crafted from a giant clamshell.
Then, emboldened by wine, we ordered more. Milky white cheeses and ruby-red beets, and bread that left my fingers oily and salty each time I ripped a piece off to soak up the watercolor of sauces on my plate.
I had never felt so full in my life.
“If only my papa could see me now,” Mari said, stuffing one last piece of sourdough into her mouth.
I raised a brow. “Eating your weight in fish and bread?”
Mari smiled and pawed at her amulet. “No, with this. He always said I’d be as good a witch as my mother. Since she never got to teach me, and he knew so little about her lineage, I didn’t have the chance to prove him right. But Briar’s the greatest witch to ever live, so maybe her amulet is even better than using my own ancestry. It still makes me feel close to my mother, and I know how strange that sounds.”
“No, not strange at all,” I said, sipping my orange wine. It was fizzy on my tongue, and the soft focus of my mind from a handful of drinks made the conversation I had been avoiding slightly less daunting. I knew how it felt to have the truth withheld by those you thought closest to you. Especially when they had every opportunity to be honest.
I should have told her. Now would have been as good a time as any. But she was so...happy. And things were finally,finallynot completely awful. At least, not for her. Why strip her of herconfidence? She’d likely figure it out herself soon enough. She was so bright...
I stored away the new guilt deep in the recesses of my heart, and said only, “Just be careful.”
Mari shook her head and stuffed her mouth with a forkful of flaky white fish. “Careful of what? It’s a blessing, not a curse. I was never able to access a coven growing up. Now I can.”
“How is that possible?”
“Lighte draws from the elements, right? From the very earth and atmosphere and forces it out of your fingers. But magic isn’t like that. It’s not a resource or a tangible plasma or an elixir that can be drained and stolen. Magic is a talent, influenced by a witch’s genetics. The more powerful the witches in your lineage, the more magic you can do. That’s why covens are so strong: they are constantly drawing from one another.”
I tried to soak in what she was saying, but the wine was clouding my mind a bit. As if she could read my puzzled expression, she sighed and leaned closer.
“Think of it like this: Your lighte is like a bowl collecting rain. There can be too much during a heavy storm, or barely a drop in a dry climate. That difference depends on your energy, emotions, and state of mind. The rain can be taken from the bowl and bottled or stored, traded or drunk, and on and on. It’s a resource, a reserve, and it lives within you. And after you’ve used the rain you’ve collected, you have to wait for more rain to replenish that bowl. My magic is like playing the lute. It’s a skill. I can get tired, sure, but it never depletes. I’m likely to be a strong lute player if my mother, and her mother, and her mother before her was, too. And when I pull from other witches and their lineage, I’m not just one lute player, I’m an orchestra.”
I shook my head. “How do you know all this?”
Mari only scoffed. “You really are drunk.”
Right. Surely she had spent every free moment since I told her of the Fae three weeks ago studying and discussing with anyone who would give her the time of day.
