Page 36 of A Promise of Peridot
“Butwhat I’ll do to you will be far, far worse. Give us the location of the Blade of the Sun, and leave with your life.”
Crawford studied me, and despite my racing heart, I suppressed the urge to fidget. Then his eyes landed on Kane. “Tell your animal to release me.”
I motioned for him to do so, and Kane only hesitated a moment before dropping the criminal without pretense. Crawford fell to the floor like a deflated ball, face slamming into the moth-ravaged rug, sputtering and puckering for air.
Kane wiped his bloodied hands on his pants.
“A year ago I heard it was in Reaper’s Cavern,” Crawford saidwhen he had caught his breath. “Nobody was ever going to retrieve the thing without dying. So I said it was in my possession. People believed me. It was good for my image. That’s it.” He spat blood onto the floor and rubbed his jaw and throat.
Kane paced across the room to lean against the carved desk, and it creaked under his weight. “I thought Reaper’s Cavern was a myth.”
I prowled closer to Crawford’s hunched form. “If you’re trying to trick us—”
“No!” He cowered. “I’m not! It’s not.”
Playing with Kane had been one thing. The thrill, the hunger in it—but this was something I had never felt before. Crawford’s wide-eyed expression sent a wave of pleasurable sickness through my system.
Hefearedme.
Me.
He feared what I could do to him. I had never felt less like a victim in twenty years of being alive. No, I felt like a nightmare. A dangerous, tantalizingnightmare.
“The cave sits outside the town of Frog Eye, in the Peridot Provinces. I watched thirty of my men walk in there to recover the treasure. Not one made it back to Azurine.”
“I’m getting very bored, Crawford.” The raw dominance in Kane’s voice nearly bowedmeinto submission. “How do we get there?”
“How should I know? My men had the only map, and like I said, they all died.”
Kane pushed himself off the scarred desk, stalking over to us as he rolled his sleeves, and drove his foot into Crawford’s gut with enough force to send the man back into the wall. “Where do we find afuckingmap?”
Crawford doubled over, retching onto the ground below us,putrid ale and stomach acid seeping into dark threads. Kane seethed at him, disgusted.
“You’ll never know,” he croaked. “The Garnet dignitary I spoke of, the one who told me what you are... They’re onto you. Unnatural abomination... Even when I’m gone, they promised me a piece of the Fae girl would live on in my collection.” Crawford’s eyes pinned mine. Fury, fear, and... acceptance.
No, no, no—
“They promised me herheart.” His grin, pinned on Kane, split his face in dripping red and pearly white.
I wasn’t breathing. My eyes shot to Kane. “Wait, don’t—”
But Kane snarled as he unleashed the power that had been so fiercely fighting to escape all evening, a thin rope of smoke ripping from his wrist and looping around Crawford’s neck. He fought—limbs spasming in every direction, reaching for Kane, for me, gripping at the rug. But it was useless. Kane bared his teeth in feral pleasure as the wisp of pure, black night tightened and tightened andtightened—
Until Crawford slumped over, gray and cold, his coin leaking out of his pockets like a greedy pool of golden blood.
Palpable silence rippled through the room.
I wanted to look elsewhere.
Anywhere but those vulgar, blood-filled, vacant eyes.
But Kane’s expression was even worse. Crawford was vile, and surely deserved death. But it was Kane who looked...alive.Moreinvigoratedthan he had in weeks. All because he had snuffed the life out of someone. Exiled them into nothingness.
Something that had destroyed me, shredded and shattered my soul so intensely that I was now a walking shell, Kane did effortlessly and without remorse.
And then, he grinned.
A wild, heartless smile that crept into his jaw and lips as his lighte receded up his forearms and back into his body.
