Page 4 of A Promise of Peridot
She shook me off. “Just stop.You’reupset about Mother. You’re upset you couldn’t save her.” She swallowed, her eyes hard on mine. “You’re upset about what you are. And you’re taking it out on him.”
I bit my tongue against the sting of her words.
“I know you think he’scharming, Leigh. And you two have this odd little friendship, but he lied to me. He ruined my life.” Even as I said the words, they felt hollow. Devoid of emotion. As if I were saying,He lost my parasol. This pitch-black emptiness tunneling inside of me was so foreign I barely recognized myself. “You’re too young to understand.”
The look she gave me could have frozen the sun itself. “He’s barely making it through each day.”
“We’ve listened to him sing sea shanties in the captain’s quarters every night. Does he sound broken up to you?”
“He’s just trying to survive, like we all are.”
As if summoned, Kane climbed back out onto the deck, alonethis time, a bottle of whiskey in hand. Our gazes met instantly—I knew he could tell we had been talking about him. I folded my arms and let the ice in my veins reach my face. Kane’s brows knit inward slightly before he looked away.
I turned away from him, away from Leigh, and faced out toward the bottomless expanse of uneven, inky waves. There wasn’t enough room on this ship to get the hundred miles away from Kane that I needed. Leigh was right. I had been cruel. But he deserved it. Actually, he deserved far worse. He was a liar and a killer, the man who betrayed me, whousedme. Who took the first shreds of real joy I had ever felt in my life and turned them to ash. Who broke me down until all that was left was a shell. An empty casing where a human person once lived. Barely lived, but still.
This feeling I had for him—this rage—it was easy. The easiest thing in my life, at the moment.
I’d never be able to forgive him.
So instead, I hated him.
2
kane
I was in love with her. And it was a fucking nightmare.
The way I felt about Arwen—pulse racing every time she spoke, eager to play with her, flirt with her, to make her laugh, make her sigh, frustrate her to the point of seeing that little pinch between her brows, always needing to pick her brain, taste her lips—it was enough to kill a man. I didn’t know how anybody survived being in love. It was as crippling as I’d always feared it would be. And... terrifying. To never be able to get enough of her. To never be free of these feelings.
Even if somehow we both survived the battle that was brewing—which seemed nothing short of impossible—I would have to walk through the world, for the rest of my life, decade after decade, with this nagging, aching, festering love spooling around my heart and yanking it in her direction.
Worse yet, I had done the one thing I had set out to avoid doing at all costs: once again I had hurt the person who meant the most to me.
It was like a fucking curse.
The ship’s pitch over yet another gut-roiling swell shifted me down the rigid wood bench and sent the cabin lantern flickering, casting Amelia and Griffin across from me in ghoulish shadow.
They looked morose.
How had I let this happen? Found the Fae I had been searching years for and fallen stupidly, miserably in love with her? Now I’d have to destroy my father some other way. One that didn’t result in Arwen’s...
I bit down on oily nausea at the thought.
I hadn’t discovered an alternative in a century. And it would only be harder now that Lazarus knew who she was. He’d be looking everywhere for her. And he’d find her—inevitably he would. I could only pray to the Gods that by then we would be ready for him.
“Have you finally passed out?” Amelia waved a small, tanned hand in my face. Her voice was getting a little pitchy from all the spirits. The mortal princess rarely drank enough to keep up with Fae like Griffin and me, but tonight she and my commander were both half a bottle in.
And I was on my fourth.
I could only attribute her uncharacteristic thirst to guilt. She had lost everything in the battle of Siren’s Bay. Her soldiers, her citizens, her keep—the capital of the Peridot Provinces was utterly destroyed by my father and his men. While she put on a good show, I could see vivid sorrow in her eyes every time she took a sip.
The captain’s quarters, paneled in oak and spare besides a few thick flannel blankets and a rusted lantern, had become our crude tavern each night of this abysmal journey. We should have flown to Citrine like we always did—my scales icy against the storm thatprotected the kingdom, the static scent of lightning funneling through my nostrils—but there were too many aboard the ship to take them with us through the skies, and the few of us who had been to the capital before needed to show them how to enter the city. I slumped deeper into the creaking bench, its wooden slats digging into my shoulders.
“I said,” Amelia continued, “before we arrive in Citrine, you need to get word to Dagan. So he can train the girl. Where is he?”
“He stayed in Garnet Kingdom to chase down a lead on the Blade of the Sun,” I said. “I’ll send a raven.”
We had been there to retrieve Arwen’s family.
