A Promise of Peridot by Kate Golden

Author:Kate Golden [Golden, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

26

kane

Rain pelted my face as I finished pissing and pulled myself back into my pants.

The bottle of bourbon still dangling from my hand was mocking me. I had been determined to drink less, but today happened to be one of the more unpleasant of my life, and I needed something to take the edge off. Or several somethings, to take off several edges.

Grief was a curious thing. After so many tenuous years of it, I’d come to recognize what might induce greater pain than usual. I didn’t avoid those prompts—the mention of my mother’s or brother’s names, playing the lute. I had built up enough scar tissue that such heartache now only felt like a twinge. The dull scraping of a butter knife.

The true threat, I’d realized, was when I wasn’t prepared: when something wholly unexpected conjured them to the forefront of my mind. Then that butter knife became a battle axe.

Trying—and failing—to drink less produced one such unforeseen, agonizing ache.

My mother never drank. Not in celebration, not in misery. Not even for show. I didn’t know if she enjoyed spirit but abstained for some surely admirable reason, or if she loathed the stuff entirely. If I could have told her I was trying to kick the habit, and for a woman, no less, she might’ve doubled over in fits of laughter. Yale would’ve without a doubt.

Or she might’ve been hideously proud. Pulled me into a hug I knew I was too old for, but would have accepted nonetheless, and assured me I was capable of anything I set my mind to. I’d try to change the subject—move away from praise I didn’t deserve—but she’d proceed as if I hadn’t said a word. She’d ask me when I knew I was in love. When I’d introduce her.

But my mother would never get to see how being in love changed me, for better or worse.

She’d never get to meet Arwen.

And it was those thoughts that ripped at the wound in my heart, cleaving it open anew.

A sudden chill swept through the wide, flat leaves surrounding our camp and splattered me in sideways rain. I took another pull from the bottle.

My mother definitely would have encouraged me to lay off Citrine’s prince. Truth was, Fedrik was kind of a decent kid. He had tried to give his life for Griffin in Reaper’s Cavern. So what if he was a bonehead, completely unaware of how quickly a Fae like Griffin would have healed from his same wound? He was a decent bonehead.

He had pleaded with me to let Arwen rest after her ordeal, despite his shattered leg. Had been fairly tough through one of the more grisly injuries I’d seen.

By the time I found myself back at camp, the storm had thoroughly ousted our campfire and faint light only emanated from two of the three tents. Mari and Arwen were probably sleeping by now, Griffin likely sharpening his blades.

Time to be less of an asshole.

“Fed,” I said, ambling toward his tent, “I’ve got

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