Page 97 of A Promise of Peridot
“Willowridge.” Kane crossed his arms.
Onyx. Back to Onyx. “Your palace?”
Kane shook his head. “We can’t risk it. It’s not as insulated as Shadowhold. Lazarus could be waiting for us.”
“Where, then?”I asked, rage coating my voice. Mari’s hand felt too small wrapped in my own.
“Briar’s.” Griffin’s voice was barely a whisper.
“We haven’t seen her in fifteen years,” Kane warned. “I don’t—”
Griffin said in a voice so raw it sent my stomach guttering with dread, “Now, Kane.”
28
arwen
It was still the dead of night when we arrived in the Onyx capital of Willowridge.
Mari never so much as stirred the entire ride. Griffin and I had watched her without a single blink between the two of us. Fedrik sat beside me all the while, patiently and wordlessly. If she hadn’t been breathing, I would have thought—
But shewasbreathing. Shewasn’tdead. She was going to be fine. Briar would know what to do.
She had to.
Otherwise I’d never forgive myself.
We landed on a roof of tiled terra-cotta, and in the dark I could just barely make out a hilled city beneath us, streetlamps illuminating the clean, cobbled roads in buttery light. I could have licked the air itself in gratitude—it was finally, mercifullychilly.
I had missed Onyx air more than I knew how to articulate. The familiar smell of lilac and gardenia hung in the dry breeze thatkissed my face. Now we were only two hours by carriage from home, and no longer in a kingdom where I was wanted for treason.
I fished out my fur cloak from one of our hastily thrown-together sacks and dismounted. Kane’s significant wingspan retracted, those sleek, smooth, snakeskin-like wings tucking into his spine before polished obsidian claws and horns became neat fingernails and stacked silver rings. He led us down a steep set of stairs, Griffin carrying Mari behind me. The wood creaked under our feet.
I surveyed the city, the fears I used to harbor of Willowridge feeling more and more like someone else’s memories. From what I could see, which wasn’t much due to the hour and the mist, Willowridge was filled with elongated homes topped by terra-cotta or slate roofs and solid unused chimneys. I could only imagine what the city was like in the wintertime, though, when wispy smoke must have drifted from each one against the faint evening snow, dancing along to the sound of bundled carolers.
These homes were different from the whitewashed villas of Azurine or the farmhouses and cottages of Abbington. Sturdier, with their rich brick or limestone, and more gothic as all things in Onyx seemed to be—tinged with something dark and haunting and a little sorrowful. Like the romantic wrought-iron gates or the lanterns on each home that gilded front steps and doorknobs or the hand-painted signs in that bold, swooping print that marked the street corners.
Kane walked through the night, leading us down a narrow, elm-lined street. At its end, a wide, expansive iron gate stood, bathed in a pool of gentle light from a streetlamp. Through the twisted metal I could see a vast and sprawling manor, grander than the townhomes two streets over, with delicate roof tiles and greatwindowpanes just outlined by moonlight. Griffin held Mari beside me, squinting into the dark stretch of land before us, as Kane approached the gates.
“Briar!” he called into the night, his voice accompanied only by the music of a lone busker and his accordion and the percussive clack of horses’ hooves on cobblestone somewhere deeper in the city center, away from the homes.
I waited, trying not to fidget, until the chill had seeped through my fur and into my bones.
Finally, the gates rattled open on their own—no guards or soldiers to pull them apart—and Kane gave us a shallow nod.
“A good sign?” I asked Griffin.
“We’ll find out.”
We marched onto a rolling lawn. The moon was high in the sky, and rows and rows of lavender filled either side of the brick path beneath us, which led to the stately manor’s porch, lit by more lanterns beckoning us inside. A single white-painted bench hung from dark wooden beams above.
Kane grasped the weighty door knocker and its clang rang out too loudly into the night. When Briar opened the front door, her beauty nearly stole the wind from my lungs.
Almost as tall as Kane, and just as arresting, her long, dark hair was piled into a crown of braids atop her head. Her skin was white as snow and clear as the sky after a good rain, so smooth it was like porcelain, and carved with as much care. Strong jutting cheekbones, full lips like rose petals, and a slight, pert nose. Her eyes weren’t severe like Amelia’s—who knew why that comparison was on the tip of my tongue—but rather warm and open. Bright violet eyes like I had never seen, as if she was actually a mythical creature disguising herself as a young woman.
I wasn’t so far off—she didn’t look a day over thirty-five, but of course, she was.
She looked from me to Kane—both of us still unkempt and wet from rain and soaked in blood and dirt—to Griffin, holding an unconscious girl, to Fedrik, leaning on the column of her porch to support his weak leg, and bared her flawless teeth at us. “Kane, you shouldn’t have. All this fun, for me?”
