Page 160 of A Promise of Peridot
“Who needs arms? Justdo it.”
“Stones help me,” she muttered, and brought the shining blade down swiftly on the lilium chains with acrack.
Thank the Gods.
I twisted my wrists around and rubbed at the singed flesh. Just a scratch.
No time for basking in the comfort of mobility or the lighte returning to my body. We had to get out of here. “Come on.”
Arwen and I barreled past the curtain and down the crookedstairs toward the heart of the suspended city. We hurtled through bridges and shops, the crowds that had cheered so callously for Arwen’s death long gone, hiding from the monster she’d freed. We raced until we reached the roof we had first arrived on, the one closest to the eastern edge of the island.
Below us stretched the endless pit of rotting, sunless trees that grew from the bottom of the island. Above us, the open mouth of the volcano-like island, and the sky.
I readied myself to shift, widening my stance, making sure I was far enough away from Arwen.
But nothing happened.
“What’s wrong?” I hated the fear in her voice.
I tried again. Nothing. And the voices were getting louder.
“Kane?”
“I can’t shift.”
“Why not?”
I fought the urge to roar until the entire island shook. “I’m too drained. From the lilium. I need—Fuck. I just need time.”
“Fine,” Arwen allowed, wrapping her hand around my shoulder. “We’ll climb down and hide until—” Her voice drifted off into a gasp.
“Until what?” I turned to face her. But my eyes landed on the same blood-chilling sight that stole the words from her lips.
A wretched gray wyvern, circling below us, and the blurry form of a soldier with hair as white as snow saddled on its back.
Lazarus, in his dragon form. And Halden. Alive. And kneeling at the base of my father’s neck, a speck in his mighty wingspan, head tilted to search the forest below.
For us.
Arwen’s words were barely audible. “How did they know we would be here?”
Dread ripped through me. “Griffin was the only one who knew. And he would never—”
“Of course not.”
A silent wind swept her chestnut hair around her face. More shouts and roars from the trees below. More bridges swaying and crunching with the stomping of boots. A few errant shrieks from the western edge. The widow, I was sure.
I dragged us under a swath of large pines, and we crouched beneath a gnarled tree root. The wind pounded us both, and before Arwen could tuck her wayward strands behind her ear as she so often did when deep in thought, her eyes shot to mine, guilt flooding them like the swell before a wave crashes onto the shore.
“What is it?” I bit out.
“Ryder,” she whispered. Barely audible. “I told him where we were going. I never thought he would—”
“I’m sure he didn’t.”
Arwen looked over at the gray-scaled wyvern circling around through the trees and soaring up over the edge of the cliffs. Searching. Then her eyes found the blade in her hand, the sun dripping off its steely face in glossy rays.
Horror blurred my vision. “Do not even think about it.”
