Page 79 of A Promise of Peridot
The agony this time was blinding. I recoiled from the iron but had nowhere to go, and couldn’t hold in the scream that erupted from my throat. I thrashed against my bindings, the burning pressure and searing pain ratcheting up my spine, down to the arches of my feet, through my lungs—
Focus, Arwen.Pull from the atmosphere.
“Tell me where it is and let this end for both of us!” Halden roared, withdrawing the sizzling brand from my stomach and tearing my shirt up to press it into the top of my breast.
I moaned in agony, the skin too sensitive, too thin. Blinding, endless pain, my toes curling, my head swimming with it, but—
But it was enough.
Enough to resurrect my power, and energy coursed through me, drawn in from the very air in his tent. The lighte sputtered outward from my hands, disintegrating the rope around my wrists into ash.
With free arms, I shoved the poker off my breast and punched Halden as hard as I could in the jaw.
“What the—”
Only momentarily stunned, he lunged for me, but sheer fury coursed through my heart, along my skin, and out of my palms. My lighte, an explosion of bright, white energy, spun out, engulfing Halden and the entire tent in ferocious golden flame.
I could feel my body lifting. The weightlessness, the heat, the wind—
More ropes of white fire sprayed from my fingers as I roared at Halden, who fell to the dirt floor, bellowing in agony. He screamed and screamed, and the scent of his burning flesh seared my nostrils.
Good,I thought.Burn.
I wasted no time watching him writhe around on the pallet in anguish, as flames licked the bed, the furs, the canvas of the tent. I bolted through the opening as smoke billowed out behind me, and I emerged to a cool jungle dusk and a camp that was, for the moment, unaware of my escape. I ran for the crude wooden barriers.
The makeshift fence was tall, but I could make it. I jumped up and latched on to the beams, just as I heard voices spot the fire and then call for my capture.
My nails dug so deeply into the wood that splinters crammed underneath the nail bed. But the pain in my stomach, my chest, the burns being stretched as I climbed up, up, up—that pain was beyond anything...
My lungs were raw from screaming by the time I toppled over and down the other side.
There was no time for triumph—the voices were rising to a pitch and making their way to the fence behind me. They’d never stop coming after me. I’d have to run all night. As if the sky were a mirror to my mood, my fury, my urgency, a clap of thunder snapped through the trees above, bathing the rain forest in its namesake.
I sloshed through mud in the sudden downpour, pressing my palm to the burns under my blouse. The lighte I had left sputtered and fizzled against my skin. Not enough to heal the blistered flesh. I wouldn’t have anything left to repair myself for some time.
The thunder was a roar in my ears, rain dripping into my eyes and over my lips. I was so tired, so flooded with aching and exhaustion. The endless downpour trickled through the palm fronds and over my body until I collapsed and coiled in a heap. I couldn’t tell the droplets from my own tears, but I knew that I was crying.
And shivering, though it wasn’t cold.
The sounds of sloshing footsteps in the mud behind me should have spurred me up,upand off the ground. Into another sprint. But I had nothing left. I folded even farther in on myself and braced to be dragged back to the encampment and tortured again.
“Arwen!” Kane’s voice cut through my despair like a single ray of resplendent sunlight.
I opened my eyes and took in his soaking form, his raven-dark hair swept back with rain, and his face.
His murderous, livid face. Inconsolable, incomprehensible,bewildered rage. I had never seen such fury glow in his eyes in all the time I’d known him. It rippled off him in waves.
How could he possibly— Did he know what had been done to me?
He knelt to my tangled form and scooped me up and into his arms.
I winced as my burns folded in on themselves. “How are you here?” My voice sounded like I had come back from the dead. I wasn’t even sure what I was asking.
“I never should have left you.” He held my head against his own.
“It hurts,” I admitted, grasping at my stomach.
“I know,” he said, voice like gravel. “But you’re safe now.”
