Page 16 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

S tale air rushed past me as I barreled into Father’s study.

Amarie shot from the sofa with a cry of relief; Father staggered around his desk, his bloodshot eyes widening to take me in.

“My girl.” His voice broke; his mouth trembled. “Are you—?”

“Did you kill my mother?”

Father froze. The color drained from his face.

He was dressed in rumpled ballroom attire, his hair disheveled, sleepless shadows curving under his eyes. He’d waited all night for my return, surely fearing the worst.

And yet he suddenly looked more fearful now than I’d ever seen him.

“Please leave us, Amarie,” he said quietly.

A sniffling shuffle marked her exit. The door clicked shut.

He began, “How could you ask me tha—?”

I slapped Keil’s ransom note onto the floor, slicing through Father’s last word. Garret had salvaged the note from the hold before I’d left Capewell Manor, and the sight of it seemed to puncture a hole in my father, air rushing from his chest.

“You’ve killed so many others.” The acknowledgment blistered my throat. “It’s a fair question.”

With my kidnapping, Keil had rescued five Wielders from the Capewells’ hold. I didn’t know if Father had handed their names to Briar. But judging from his tortured expression, they wouldn’t have been the first.

Father wetted his parched lips. “I loved your mother,” he rasped. “I never hurt her.”

“Did she know what you are?”

“It—it wasn’t like that then. Alissa—” He started forward again.

I staggered back. “Don’t come near me.”

Father stopped. His face crumpled with devastation.

My father was the person I used to call for in my nightmares; the person whose arms I’d launched into after waking, whose chest I’d nuzzled against for shelter. Now here I was, lurching away from him. As though he were one of the monsters he used to shield me from.

I saw the moment it broke his heart.

He slumped onto his claw-foot desk, rattling an empty brandy glass.

Dawn was breaking beyond the one domed window, washing the mahogany study in bruised shades of yellow.

“When Briar told me the compass had been stolen, I felt only relief. For the first time, they couldn’t Hunt.

They wouldn’t discover your specter.” His hand quivered down his face.

“But months passed without a Hunting, and it drew King Erik’s notice.

Briar needed an informant. If I had refused, she would’ve chosen another. ”

“You should have let her.”

Father’s head snapped up. “You were a stubborn, reckless child, and became more reckless as you grew. You believe nobody notices when you trip people, or twirl coins, or unlock doors.” He gave a bark of pained laughter. “Or scrub away Hunters’ Marks at dawn.”

I flinched; Lidia must have told him I’d been to Marge’s house. He’d known, and he’d buried it with the rest of his fear.

“I could never influence you.” He gulped, then said stiffly, “At least this way... I could influence them .”

I curled my hands to stop them shaking. “Like you influenced Garret?”

Father swallowed again. “Garret was hand-selected as an infant during the Starling Rebellion. Briar believed nobody could make a better Hunter than a boy orphaned by Wielders, and she convinced Wray to take him in. Wray delayed Garret’s training, but after he died, Briar wanted to initiate the boy at last.” A long, wobbling breath.

“But Garret was not what he should have been. He never feared your specter. He was in awe of it—of you . I knew, as long as Briar trusted him, he could help keep you safe.”

“You made him keep your secret,” I whispered, disgusted. “You locked an oath band around his wrist. How did Briar never question it?”

“I told her I’d made him promise to stay away from you, and she approved. Your friendship was a distraction Garret couldn’t indulge in if he were to reach his full potential.”

My specter shuddered to the surface, rising faster than bile. “He was thirteen. And you let her turn him into—” My sentence fractured, branching out in horrific variations. A Hunter. A monster. A murderer.

Father hung his head. “She turns us all eventually.”

He pulled the neck of his shirt, and a deep horror seized me.

His skin was raw, aflame in its own rebellion, crisscrossed with welts from where he never stopped scratching.

Because inking the space above my father’s heart, like a stamp declaring ownership, was the Hunters’ Mark.

“I couldn’t bear for you to know.” His face webbed out with agony lines. “For you to look at me as you are looking at me now.” He whispered, with so much sorrow that I felt the words branding my memory, “I cannot lose you, too.”

My specter slackened, the pain weighing me down. After a lifetime of toe-dipping into the acid of my guilt, I finally felt myself tip fully into its depths.

I hadn’t survived this long because of the blind fortune of my lineage. I’d survived on the time stolen from other Wielders—on the minutes of their lives, trickling into mine.

Because every life Father had taken, he’d given to me.

I could never repay the debt he’d amassed in my name. But I could keep it from growing.

“I’m joining court for Rose Season,” I said. Father shot up but I continued, “I will retrieve the compass from these copycats—”

“Alissa—”

“—and I will finally be safe.”

The finality of my tone made Father flinch.

“It’s too dangerous.” He dared a step closer. “Please. I can’t protect you there.”

A vicious coldness crept over me as I met my father’s eyes. “You can’t protect me anywhere,” I said. “You couldn’t even protect her.”

The sun crested, and in the glittering morning light, roses arrived alongside a silver card. Boldly inscribed were the words:

We didn’t finish our conversation.

Soon.

—E

I bundled King Erik’s roses for disposal with last night’s gown. I touched the corseted waist, which Erik had gripped in his cold hand. The now-filthy hem, which had glided across the marble untrampled—because the other nobles hadn’t dared to encroach upon our privacy.

Garret was right; I’d always thrived at court.

But now the courtiers would pay me a new degree of respect.

Would gratify me, more than they even gratified my father.

Erik’s interest—however unwanted—had made me the perfect choice for Garret’s mission.

If a noble had stolen the Hunters’ compass, if they were at court this season.

.. nobody was better equipped to root them out than me.

Yet an anxious sweat broke over me at the thought. I’d been wary of joining court as one of the faceless horde of nobles. But to be actively mining for information about the compass while all eyes were already fixed upon me...

I’d spent eighteen years painfully concealing my specter. And now I would be putting myself in more danger of exposure than ever before.

But to protect Daradon’s Wielders—and truly protect my future—I had to find the compass before anyone else.

Including Garret.

So, as I’d done all my life, I smothered the hum of my fear. I forced my trembling fingers to steady as I burned the king’s note above a candle flame. What’s to stop Erik from punishing your father with the rest of us? Garret had asked.

I believed I knew the answer.

As my world fought desperately to fall apart, I held the pieces together. And two days later, I left Vereen without looking back.