Page 94 of A Promise of Peridot
But Fedrik only chuckled, almost brazen. “You have nobody to blame but yourself for ruining things with her.”
“Why don’t you ask Arwen exactly how that happened? It’s a funny story, actually.”
“Let me guess, you mistook murder for courtship?”
I couldn’t take this a minute more. Fedrik’s protection that I didn’t deserve. Kane’s jealousy, Mari’s searing truths—I seized a shuddering inhale. “He’s right,” I blurted. “They all are. I’ve been keeping something from you.”
Fedrik studied my face, allowing me to continue.
But I needed to get out of this damp, sticky, Stones-forsaken forest. I didn’t want to spend another minute here in Peridot.
I didn’t really want to spend another minute anywhere with myself.
“Can we talk? In private?”
Fedrik jerked his chin toward his tent.
The heat from the small hearth inside was stifling. The canvasglowed a rich, burnt orange from the flames, its low, slanted ceiling closer to the crown of my head than it had felt hours ago. I swallowed nothing, crossing my arms once before unfolding them again. Fedrik watched me warily.
“Kane and I stopped seeing each other because he never told me that I was the Fae. From the prophecy. The last—”
“Full-blooded Fae,” Fedrik supplied, his expression more cold understanding than wide-eyed shock.
I faltered. “I—”
“Lied,” he supplied again.
“No. I mean, yes. I did. Mari was right. I didn’t want to tell you because with you, I could ignore it. But that was selfish and... and I’m sorry.”
For a moment, no one said anything. The tent suffocated our breaths. Fedrik shifted on his feet.
“It felt good to be a version of myself that still had a future.”
“Sure. But... you didn’t even give me a chance to take on that suffering with you.”
“Nobody else needed to suffer.”
A few spare shafts of light fluttered around the tent from the deteriorating hearth. I grabbed one of Fedrik’s tunics to begin packing for him, only to see my palms streaked in splotches of red. Bandit blood.
Fedrik limped across the tent in one long stride until he was beside me and took the tunic from my hands, placing it back on the pallet beneath us. I cast my eyes to the floor, fixated on the dirt under my shoe, but he lifted my chin gently with his finger. “It’s a strange time to begin a relationship with anyone. There’s a lot we don’t yet know about each other. The very fabric of our world is inturmoil, grave danger awaits us all, et cetera. But... I enjoy spending time with you. And I’d like to give this a real chance, if you would. Prophecy and all.”
I wanted my heart to soar—
But it was still Kane’s face that rippled in my mind before any thought of being with Fedrik could crystalize.
“I can’t, Fedrik. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“Well, actually, I kissed you—”
“I still feel something for him.”
Fedrik brushed a thumb across my jaw, his devastating blue eyes more solemn than I’d ever seen them. “I know you do.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“You’re human. Broken hearts don’t heal overnight.”
I cringed, slipping from his grasp. “Well... I’m not really. Human, that is. That doesn’t bother you, either?”
