Page 14 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

“On the contrary,” he said at last, voice pitched low over the fire crackle. “Evils require balance. Hunt too much, and we arouse rebellion. Too little, and we no longer inspire fear.”

“You’re talking about murder.”

“I’m talking about business. Executing a handful for the good of all. You’ve benefited from that system, haven’t you? You should be gladder than anyone for the way things are.”

Guilt choked me, and I bolted to my feet.

“Why are you telling me this?” I spat. “To elicit my sincerest gratitude? Fine. Thank you for not driving a knife in my gut despite how much you clearly want to. Now retrieve that note from the hold. My father has suffered enough tonight because of your business .”

Garret’s cold laughter quickened my heart rate. “Has he?”

Then he stood and moved around the table. I lurched aside, banging my knee on its edge. He cast me a scathing look before kicking up the corner of the rug.

Acid scalded my throat. Dark blood encrusted the grooves of the white wooden floor—the ten-year-old evidence of Garret’s beating.

A beating he’d taken to keep Briar’s hands off me .

“Wray made me clean my own blood,” he said quietly, “as punishment for provoking Briar’s hand.

But I never could get this out.” His bare chest swelled with a sigh, his tattoo shifting.

“Do you remember that day? The booby traps along the halls. Our sprint through the escape tunnel. All to find the Hunters’ compass and protect you from exposure. ”

“We wanted to protect all Wielders,” I said.

The slightest hint of a smile. “Maybe you did.” He kicked the rug back down, the slap of air stirring my skirts. “We wouldn’t have found it lying around here, you know. Spellmade objects are coveted, and their owners are deemed keepers . It’s a sacred position.”

Because Spellmakers were once considered gods-touched individuals.

Neither Wielder nor Wholeborn, they were the only beings who could harvest the molted specter left after a Wielder’s death to forge objects like the compass.

And unlike Wielders, whose specters were connected to their being, Spellmakers had no allegiance to the power they molded.

So, to save themselves from persecution, Spellmakers had sold their services.

They’d become the pampered pets of monarchs, for they had tamed an inaccessible power. While Wielders were menaces, Spellmakers were silver knights. After all, power was only deemed dangerous when it couldn’t be commandeered by those in authority.

But Spellmaking was allegedly so taxing on the body that each generation had grown more riddled with sickness, scarcely making it to reproductive age.

And the rulers who had once revered them eventually ran them into extinction.

“Wray was the keeper of the compass then,” Garret continued, “and he kept it on him at all times.” He met my gaze, his left side aglow with firelight. “Wray’s death wasn’t a random murder in a Henthornian alley as everybody believed. He was killed for that compass. It hasn’t been recovered since.”

I startled. Garret’s adoptive father had died seven years ago. For seven years , the Capewells had been separated from their device to track Wielders.

It was all I’d wanted as a child—unbounded safety. So I said now, with all the venom I could manage, “Good . ”

“Is it?” Garret’s good eye tightened. “Briar didn’t tell King Erik about the theft at the time.

Even when he was a boy of fifteen, she feared him, and she dreaded what he would do to the Capewells if he found out.

Since Erik’s reign began, we’ve Hunted Wielders on information alone.

” He inhaled slowly—an archer pulling back the bowstring before the release.

Then: “Who do you think supplies that information?”

For a brief, blessed second, the words wouldn’t penetrate.

Then they pierced deep enough to hit bone.

Perhaps your father is not as innocent as you’d like to believe , Keil had said.

It had been years since the Capewells had propositioned Father to join their service. Because they’d accepted failure...

Or because they’d already succeeded?

“Your father’s position allows him to gather reports from the entire kingdom,” Garret said.

“He tells us where Wielding has been suspected, and we follow up accordingly.” He continued, unaffected, as though he wasn’t chipping away at me with every word, “He may not use a blade, but your father is as much a Hunter as the rest of us.”

I felt the fracture in my chest as a physical pain.

“You wanted to know why I’m telling you this?” Garret moved closer. “Why, after seven years, I’m telling you anything ? Because I finally can.”

My eyes dropped to his bare wrist. To the hand he should’ve had to cut off if he’d removed the oath band himself. Briar was away tonight; she couldn’t have unlocked it. Which meant she’d never had the key.

And Garret’s oath band—the emblem of his betrayal—had been locked by someone else.

“No.” The protest felt dry on my tongue. Landed empty in the silence.

Garret’s expression hardened. “I vowed to help him maintain your safety. I vowed to keep you out of this world—to never reveal the work he did or why he’d had to do it. I promised to say whatever it took to keep you away, and I regretted it the moment he locked the clasp.”

The floor seemed to tip, the cruel memory replaying. Put your dirty specter on me again, and I’ll cut through it, Wielder.

He’d said the words with so much hatred. But his hatred had been for my father.

Because my father had forced those words out of his mouth—had put that oath band around his wrist.

My father had stolen Garret out of my life.

“Tonight gave me an opportunity.” Garret spoke faster now, the dam broken. “I told your father I wouldn’t retrieve those prisoners until he unlocked the band.”

Oh, gods —the Wielders in that wagon... Had Father caused their imprisonment?

Had he caused Marge’s death?

“I was at your estate this morning,” Garret ploughed on, heedless of my unraveling, “because I was begging him to free me from my oath. To let me tell you everything before it was too late—”

“Enough.” I went to stride around him, but he blocked my path.

“Alissa, you have to hear this—”

My specter whipped out before I’d consciously released it.

Garret thwacked sideways into the bookcase, then hit the floor. A glass ornament shattered beside him. He was climbing to his knees when I stormed away.

“Don’t you want to know what happened to Marge?”

The words landed like a punch, and I spun. “I know what happened to her.” My voice hitched. “I know what Briar did.”

“Not Briar.” Garret’s open shirt flared in and out with his heavy breathing. He took a parchment from the shelf behind him and tossed it across the floor. “Check for yourself.”

One glance at the page, and my stomach dropped. This was the list Garret had mentioned. The list of confirmed Wielders in Daradon.

Each name had been penned in Father’s handwriting.

“Your father didn’t give us Marge’s name,” Garret said. “He wouldn’t have. He doesn’t want you to know the faces of the people he’s killed.”

The people he’s killed.

I forced the words aside, fists trembling. “Then, how—?”

“Your kidnappers wanted your father to empty the hold. To release the dozen or so Wielders we should’ve amassed over the last two months.

I wasn’t lying when I said we didn’t have them.

But I lied about why.” Garret grimaced and hoisted himself up, his palm pecked with bloody glass.

Terror seized me as he captured my stare and said, “Alissa... The person who stole the compass is using it. ”