Page 35 of A Promise of Peridot
No, that couldn’t be possible.
It looked like a drawing.
A drawing ofme.
The sound of wet pummeling echoed through the room as I knelt to examine the paper clipping. Sure enough, the parchment in my hands readHave You Seen This Woman?and below that,Wanted for Treasonalongside a near-identical drawing of my face.
No, no, no—
A chill pumped into my veins.
“Fine, fine—” Crawford spit, heaving after another round of Kane’s blows. “I may know of the thing, but I don’t have it. I never did.”
“Who does?”
“If I knew, why would I tell you?”
Kane reared his fist back, thorns and shadow twining along his palm and up his forearm, before crashing it into Crawford’s jaw with force. Enough to break the bones, but not enough to knock him out. Or kill him.
Crawford bit back a groan. Coughing, he spit blood onto Kane’s other hand, still clenched around his neck.
Under my breath, and turning my face from Crawford’s bloodied, pulpy one, I whispered to Kane, “He has a wanted poster of me. It was framed on his wall.”
When Kane’s quicksilver eyes met mine, it wasn’t anger that simmered in them. It was fear. And that fear laced into his voice like poison as he turned back to Crawford and said, “Unfortunately, you’ve just become worth more to me dead than alive.”
Undiluted terror pooled in the man’s beady eyes. The realization that he would die this evening. That there would be no narrowly escaping with his life, no respite from the pain, the dread.
That it was over.
Crawford thrashed against Kane’s hold and his grim eyes cut to mine, pleading. I winced as Kane let his fist loose again, slamming into Crawford’s gut and then his kidney. He sputtered, unable to breathe, until he sucked in a lungful to moan in agony.
“Why?” he asked between breaths, bright red coating his teeth and lips. “Because ofher?”
He spat again, but Kane’s choke hold only tightened. Gasping, he tore at the hand around his throat.
Kane was going to kill him before we learned anything.
And all because he knew that I was—
Maybe... maybe that was it.
I moved toward them, skin tingling with fear and... anticipation. Some kind of grisly exhilaration. “You know who I am?”
“Arwen—”
I shot Kane a look in an effort to convey the new ruse we were playing. No longer subservient healer and dark king, but instead, powerful Fae outlaw and human brute.
Though he remained silent, there was an uncanny interest in Crawford’s beady eyes I had missed before. How could I have been so oblivious? He had looked at me just as Lieutenant Bert had. He had known I was Fae all along.
Kane tightened his grip.
“You knew all night.”
“Yes,” Crawford spat. “I have a dignitary friend in Garnet. He told me that you’re...different.”
“My king wasn’t lying. He’ll strangle you to death.”
“It’ll be easy,” Kane swore, “like juicing a lemon—”
