Page 15 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

“ I t started in Parrey ten months ago,” Garret said.

“A name your father hadn’t provided. A Hunting Briar hadn’t approved.

” He picked the glass out of his skin, shards falling at his feet.

“Then another, in Avanford. Two more in Henthorn. Again and again, we found our mark painted on houses we hadn’t targeted, each mysteriously filled with dullroot ash.

We’re equipped to burn dullroot inside our wagons,” he explained, “but not inside our targets’ houses.

“At a Creakish site, we discovered the trick.” He extracted a small steel canister from his pocket, blood trickling down his wrist. “Their devices produce a concentration of burnt dullroot to incapacitate Wielders without even touching them.”

Horror held me still. It was how Marge’s lounge was coated in ash, and how Tari had still smelled its bitter burn a week later. It was why Marge hadn’t been able to fight back.

“Briar’s been reproducing the devices,” he said. “This is one of her more successful prototypes.”

My specter writhed as he returned the canister to his pocket. He could have deployed it at any time. Could have stopped me from striking him. Instead, he was bleeding into his sleeves.

“We reduced our own Huntings to keep the pattern unchanged,” he continued. “A Hunting every month or so. We didn’t want the king, or the citizens, to notice anything amiss. And that worked...”

“Until two months ago,” I finished quietly. When the Huntings had increased inexplicably. “Why?”

“We suspect they’re Wholeborn purists. Extremists who wish to eradicate Wielders entirely.

” Garret drew a handkerchief from his other pocket and wrapped it around his palm.

He winced, and I almost felt guilty. “When their activity became impossible to hide, King Erik grew suspicious. Fearing his wrath, Briar confessed everything. The theft of the compass seven years ago. The new activity of these copycats.” His voice dropped meaningfully.

“Your father’s involvement in hiding the truth. ”

My arms skittered with greater stirrings of dread.

“Erik ordered us to reclaim the compass before this new keeper—whoever they are—incites chaos. So, Briar dispatched Capewells around the kingdom to track the copycats, hoping they’ll lead us to its whereabouts.

” He procured a length of silver from the bookcase, then paused, inhaling deeply. “I want to strike at the source.”

He tossed the silver something toward me. I jumped as a key clattered at my feet.

“That was found near Wray’s body,” Garret said. “Briar disregarded it back then, too enraged at her brother’s death and the loss of the compass. Recognize it?”

I toed the key toward the fire glow. Its head gleamed with an emblem that churned my stomach. A rose.

“It’s from the palace,” I said. Roses were engraved on the keys of the highest ranking nobles. My father had one just like it. Every ruling noble did.

“In the days before his murder, Wray had been acting furtive. He didn’t divulge his comings and goings.

He burned his journals. The night he was killed—the night of Erik’s coronation ball—he traveled into Henthorn for reasons unknown.

I think he was meeting someone he wasn’t supposed to.

Someone who ambushed him, stole the compass”—Garret nodded toward my feet—“and accidentally left that key behind.”

“These keys unlock private chambers at the palace,” I said. “They’re only given to ruling nobles.”

His scarred eyebrow arched.

I blinked. “You think a noble murdered Wray?”

“It wouldn’t be the court’s first hidden scandal, or the most shocking.” Garret tilted his head, bruises reddening in the light. “But you know that, don’t you? You’re one of them.”

I inhaled a shaky breath.

You’ve always thrived here , Garret had said at the ball. It’s your craft.

This was why he’d been pushing me to join court for my eighteenth season. He believed I could find the compass’s keeper among the nobles.

And return the compass to where it belonged.

“ No ,” I said.

“You’ll have free rein of the palace for your eighteenth season.

You can find out who that key belonged to, and whether they were meeting Wray the night he died.

If they didn’t kill him, they may have information about the person who did.

” He looked me over, eyes bright and fervent.

“You alone possess the advantage of Erik’s favor.

The nobles have already noticed. Apply enough pressure, and they’ll give you anything you want. ”

“Anything you want,” I corrected. “Why would I return the compass to the Hunters who killed my mother?”

“Because that’s where Erik wants it. We don’t know why this keeper is imitating us, but as long as they possess the compass, they risk destabilizing the equilibrium we’ve created.

Over the last two months, the activity of Wielder sympathizers has risen across the provinces. Even the Ansorans have taken notice.”

I pulled up short, my indignation guttering. “That’s why they requested an invitation for Rose Season.”

Garret nodded. “Their branches of surveillance extend to our continent. They claim to want to improve international relations, but Briar suspects they know more than they’re letting on. If they investigate these Huntings, they could discover the compass is missing.”

“Why would they care?”

“The compass was forged by Ansoran Spellmakers and belonged to their empire long before it landed here. The Ansorans might consider this the perfect time to repossess what they believe is rightfully theirs. And the compass will become one more item which the empress of Ansora can either barter away or exploit for her own gain.”

It explained Briar’s restlessness at the ball; she’d believed the ambassador would interfere with her search. And I shared her unease.

All of Daradon knew the tale of the empress of Ansora, the most politically powerful Wielder this side of the world.

Born into the lower echelons of nobility, she’d won the former emperor’s favor and had been named heir—superseding the emperor’s own sons.

When those overlooked sons had tried rising against her, she’d slaughtered them.

.. and had imprisoned their innocent children to barter away in marriage alliances.

I didn’t know what the empress might do with the only device that could separate Wielders from Wholeborns.

Whether she would indeed keep it or sell it off to a Wielder-hating nation, not caring about Wielders outside her own empire.

But I knew that such a coveted, powerful object should never belong to someone so ruthless.

“Erik only agreed to host them,” Garret said, drawing me back, “because they would’ve construed his denial as fear—as weakness .

And the king refuses to look weak.” He massaged the back of his neck, his shirt shifting with the movement.

Baring the fine sweat of anxiety now glistening over his tattoo.

“Erik exercised mercy after Briar’s confession.

But if we continue to fail him—” Garret cut himself off as though fearing he’d said too much, then inhaled through his teeth. “He won’t spare us again.”

At his odd air of caginess, I narrowed my gaze. “You think I care what he does to any of you?”

A twitch—almost a flinch—at the corner of his swollen eye. Then he said, with cool intent, “I’m sure you care what he’ll do to your father.”

My chest twinged, bruised from what I’d learned about Father. But I said tightly, “My father is the ruling lord of Vereen.”

“And in aiding Briar’s deception for seven years, the lord of Vereen committed treason. If we don’t recover the compass and fix the mess we’ve made, what’s to stop Erik from punishing your father with the rest of us? You saw what happened at the Opal.”

My specter jerked as the four-year-old memory slammed into me, stealing my breath: the beating sun and the baking cobblestones, roses shedding into the blood.

“You know nothing about the Opal,” I said weakly, struggling to bury the image.

“I know Erik’s guards tortured a sympathizer to death in the city streets,” Garret said, with enough harsh certainty that I recoiled.

“I know you stayed in your chambers for months and made yourself ill from not eating. I know you still won’t let them plant roses at your estate.

Now imagine,” he pressed, “if Erik got his hands on your father. Can you be sure his title will save him?”

The scene shifted in my mind’s eye: my father’s face superimposed onto that man’s bleeding body. Shrinking from Erik’s cruel laughter. Shrieking under the blade.

My vision narrowed, the throb-throb-throb of my heart slamming between my breasts.

In finally agreeing to do business with the Hunters, had Father signed his own death warrant?

“These copycats aren’t like us,” Garret said, more gently.

He approached cautiously, glass crunching beneath him.

“With them, there is no balance. They leave behind blood. Fingernails. Teeth. ” I squeezed my eyes shut against the bloodied memory of Marge’s tooth.

“They take pleasure from their kills,” Garret continued.

“And I don’t think they’ll stop until they find every last Wielder in Daradon. ”

I opened glassy eyes to find Garret standing before me, his brows drawn. “You’ve been safe for a long time,” he said. “You’re not safe anymore. You won’t be safe until we take the compass out of their hands.”

“And put it in Briar’s ?” I whispered.

Garret shook his head. “Wray was the last keeper. As his heir, I’m meant to be the next. If I find it, I’ll keep it.” He swallowed, then said quietly, “I’ll keep it safe.”

I heard the unspoken promise beneath his words: I’ll keep you safe.

Garret slipped one hand into his pocket. With the slowness of a huntsman trying not to spook a rabbit, he stretched his other hand toward mine. “I meant what I said,” he murmured. Our fingers met, our bandages grazing. “You don’t have to end up like her.”

Carefully, he withdrew my mother’s coin and set it in my palm.

A hot tear slid down my cheek.

I’d left the coin in the parlor tonight, not wanting to bring it with me to death. But already, I sensed my time spilling like sand between my fingers. I felt myself hurtling toward the bottom of my own hourglass to join the mother I’d never met.

Because my safety had been an illusion, my greatest enemies no longer composed of the people I’d known from birth—the Hunters whose negligence had first turned their eyes away from me, and whose trust in Garret had apparently kept their eyes away.

With these copycats targeting Wielders indiscriminately, picking us off at a faster rate than ever... my days were truly running out.

My specter curled itself tight as I acknowledged, for the second time tonight, the truth I hadn’t wanted to admit:

That I wasn’t ready to die.

And if I found the compass... maybe I didn’t have to.

I looked to Garret’s hand—still holding mine, his thumb stamping a blood-print onto my bandage.

In this very room, he’d leaped upon Briar to stop her from hitting me.

At thirteen, he’d shackled himself to the task of ensuring she never touched me again.

The burden had calcified him into someone hard and unfamiliar; I’d lost that boy long ago.

But perhaps he hadn’t completely lost himself.

So, it was to that boy I spoke now, slow and even, ignoring the ache in my chest. “You won’t tell Briar we’re working together. We’ll find the compass before she does.” I hesitated, then added, because it was for the best, “And then you’ll stay away from me. Forever.”

Pain flashed across Garret’s face, but I refused to interpret it. I slammed familiar walls against him and held his stare with cool contempt.

He released my hand, stepped back, and said, “You have my word.”