Page 88 of A Promise of Peridot
Every single nerve in my body battled the urge to grab her by the shoulders and roar.Fine? Fine with this? I would be morefinewith a javelin through the gut. I would barely feel it compared to this. You’re mine. You will always be mine. Nobody else should be allowed to touch you. To look at you. To make you laugh. I want to take you from this jungle tonight—continent, blade, prophecy bedamned—and go somewhere nobody can find us. Somewhere I can keep you like buried treasure. Where I can feed you cloverbread, and read to you, and fuck you when I please, and worship you every day and every night for the rest of our lives.
“Sure,” I said, nearly grinding my teeth to dust. Fierce rain pounded at my skull, on my shoulders, along my neck. Palms and nut trees shook with the force of it, clawing up toward the night sky. “Sometimes you make a poor choice because it feels good. I get that better than anyone.”
I hadn’t meant it like an insult. I’d done the same a thousand times.
But Arwen folded her arms and bared her lovely teeth at me. “Every ‘poor choice’ I’ve made has been in an effort tohealfrom you.You lied to me, Kane. Worse, you made me think you had feelings that you didn’t so you couldsacrifice me.”
“That isnot—”
“Oh, right.” Arwen didn’t cower. In fact, she stepped forward, forcing me to crane my neck down to maintain eye contact. “You changed your mind when you decided you wanted to sleep with me. How noble.”
I opened my mouth but she cut me off. “What did you want me to say? That day on the ship, when I learned everything... What did you expect me to do?”
A hideous clap of thunder, like the roaring inside my head, shook the forest. Neither of us even blinked.
“I don’t know, forgive me? Use some of that token positivity of yours to see the horrific position I was in and how hard I had tried to save you? Choose to be with me despite the mistakes I’d made?”
She pursed her lips, as if forgiveness, or perhaps just being with me, was the most repulsive thing she could imagine.
“It’s true,” I conceded. “I made egregious faults in judgment. I’ll never deserve you. I never could have. But don’t kid yourself, Arwen. You’re not running from this because I lied. Or because you don’t care anymore. Or because of some prince. You think I treat emotion as a weakness? You’reterrifiedof letting yourself feel anything real. You’ve let the prophecy become a shield you can hide behind. Nothing matters if you’re going to die, right?”
“Fuck you,” she spat.
I nearly flinched. I had never heard the curse from her lips before. Her anger was coal tossed on the fire simmering in my veins. I pressed closer until her breath hitched. I felt the little noise in the base of my spine. “Right here?” I snarled. “Little needy bird. It’s a bit damp for my taste, but you must know I’d fuck you anywhere you asked.”
“You would, wouldn’t you? Rut like animals on the forest floor.”
I smirked. “Look, she listens for once.”
“I don’t think about you that way, Kane. Not anymore.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then you’re a fool.” Her voice was nearly breathless.
“No, you think about me constantly. As I do you. Every day, every night. Every single waking hour until it’s so all-consuming, I can hardly hear myself when I speak.”
Arwen shook her head. “You said you were going to leave me alone. Back on the beach in Azurine.”
“I guess we’re both liars, then.”
Movement rustled the trees behind us and we both spun, breathing hard.
Eight masked men emerged from the tree line. Wielding swords and bludgeons, trays and bark as shields—bandits.
My eyes fell to the forest floor. We were past Mari’s fucking boundary.
Arwen inhaled sharply.
There was no need to risk my lighte with Amber soldiers looking for us. Not with mortals such as these. I unsheathed a dagger from my boot, rotating my wrist and shaking out my shoulders, adrenaline pouring through me—molten hot and in search of blood.
Just the release I needed.
“Get back to camp. Get Griffin.”
Arwen did no such thing. “This man here,” she said, jerking her chin toward me, “is deadly. You will not survive him. Leave us now and save yourselves.”
The heftiest bandit, his face obscured by a leather mask, stepped forward, feet sloshing in wet sludge. “I’m no scholar, but I can count. You’re two and we’re at least triple that. Our band is even larger. Forty men strong and right behind us.” He stepped forward another inch and I placed myself in front of Arwen. “Not sure if you’ve seen, but things aren’t too pretty around here since Amber laid their claim. We need food. We need coin. You’ll just have to do. But I swear not to use your lady. We ain’t that way.”
