Page 56 of A Promise of Peridot
“I’m sure,” he mused, eyes on the jungle behind me. “Much easier to make me the villain in a story missing so many pages.”
My blood stilled. It was true. Hadn’t it been easier to see him as only my savior or my enemy? Hadn’t that made all these wretched feelings that much more bearable?
“You’re right,” I said on a breath. “Now I barely understand the world, and even less so, my place in it. It’s harder to be optimistic having seen how complex and ambiguous things really are.” I chewed my cheek. “Even you used to appreciate my blindly positive outlook.”
“I did—I still do.” Kane ran a hand across his damp brow in frustration. “Don’t you know why I call you bird?”
“Because you locked me in a cage?”
His silver gaze simmered like hot smoke. “Because when I met you, for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt hope. And not just hope that I might beat my father, though of course, I can’t deny that.”
Acid roiled in my stomach, but those eyes held mine, and I found myself unable to look away.
“That’s what birds represent. Stranded sailors look to the sky to be led by them back to dry land. Birds soar through the dawn each morning, as sure as the sun rising in the east—the promise of something new, regardless of what came before.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Hope always has wings.”
I searched for a response and failed, but Kane tramped toward the cavern’s gaping mouth, soon swallowed whole by desolate darkness. I steeled myself and hurried after him.
The sound of my shoes slapping on the ground below echoed off the stone walls, cracked, jagged, and jutting, as my eyes adjusted to the hollow, dank space. My fingers were already tingling, adrenaline racing through my veins in the confinement of the tunnel.
I moved past Kane, Griffin, and Fedrik to catch up with Mari,still leading the procession, holding the parchment map out in front of her as she walked. Behind her a little bouncing ball of light dawdled along, painting a single glowing line on the dirty cavern floor. It didn’t look too dissimilar from my own lighte, though instead of resembling stark, blinding sunbeams, Mari’s magic was more like the fuzzy glow of a star.
“That looks promising.” I gestured to the iridescent orb dancing between her legs.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Mari smiled, her freckled nose lit by the quivering torchlight close behind us. “We’ll be able to see this from anywhere in the caves.”
“What spell is it?”
“It’s called luster. It can last for days.” She toyed with the shimmering, softened light as it flew up between her fingertips and coated them in a dripping glow before skittering along the ground beneath us. “Much better than breadcrumbs.”
“How deep does the map say we have to go?”
Mari’s nose scrunched up like it so often did when she was a little stumped but didn’t want to admit it. “It’s not very clear. The map was more helpful in finding the cave. Inside, there are so many turns, so many dead ends...”
I swallowed acid. “So you, the smartest person I know, aren’t sure how to get us out of here?”
“That’s what the luster is for,” she said, waving a glowing hand through the damp air. “Have a little faith.”
We forged ahead, heart in my throat, sharp stalactites like an inverted mountainscape hanging from the cave’s roof above us. I peered up at them—they were not made of mineral deposits and filament, but rather semiprecious gems like luminous aqua adamite and iridescent moonstone.
A holy, glowing cave.
My childhood teachers back in Amber would have wept at the sight.
We rounded a corner and made a left at a snake-tongued fork. Crystals lodged in the rocks behind us cast the passage in dim, violet shafts of light. We maneuvered around oddly shaped boulders and under dripping water that I didn’t wish to know the origin of until we passed a shimmering pool that lit the dark cavern an otherworldly blue. When I looked closer, it was a cluster of slow-moving, shining jellyfish that gave it that vivid glow. If I wasn’t so nervous about becoming trapped, or so cold—the temperature had dropped significantly upon trekking deeper into the cave—I might have been able to appreciate its beauty.
But I had sucked in one too many deep, awkward intakes of breath to calm my racing heart, and had made myself dizzy with too much air.
“Lore says you’ll go mad before you find your way out.”
At my sharp inhale, Fedrik appraised me. “Scared of cave monsters?”
“No.”Splendid response, Arwen.
“I’ve been to every kingdom in Evendell at least twice, scaled mountainsides and plunged off cliffs and crawled through mud. Trust me, these caves are child’s play.”
That was actually helpful. I needed the distraction. “Some kind of thrill seeker, are you?” I imagined Fedrik traipsing all over the continent, a beautiful sunbeam prince hunting for adventure.
“Just a bit. Does it interest you at all?”
