Page 19 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

M y ears were ringing.

Keil stood apart from the crowd, a gilded monument to contradiction—his strong shoulders set in an easy posture, the hard line of his jaw countered by a soft, full smile.

Dressed in tailored trousers and a simple white shirt with the sleeves rolled up around his forearms, he could’ve been just another courtier.

But he was the Ansoran ambassador. The Wielder who’d journeyed here to improve international relations.

And the man who had held me for ransom.

Carmen’s laughter cracked through my shock. “My goodness—rendered speechless! What an accomplishment, Ambassador. Our Alissa rarely gives so much away.” Her words tinkled with mischief, but she slightly tilted her head—a warning.

Because Erik’s gaze had narrowed on my throat. On the throb of my racing pulse.

I snapped my focus back to Keil and noticed the quiet appeal in his eyes. I pray that you can accept my apology , he’d said on the field, with a heaviness I hadn’t understood.

Suddenly Goren’s warning— she’s a noble —made sense. I was never meant to see Keil’s face because I was likely to encounter him again at court. And now my knowledge could ruin him.

Was that what I wanted?

I drew a deep breath and Keil tensed, preparing for the strike.

“You must excuse me, Ambassador.” My voice held steady. “I’d imagined someone rather different.”

Keil blinked. Then his chest sank with relief.

“Oh, we’d all expected a gnarled-looking fellow in robes!” Carmen said with a flourish. “Aren’t we lucky to have gotten him instead?”

“Very lucky,” Erik said dryly.

I straightened, regaining my composure. “Arcus, was it?”

“Keil Arcus, my lady.” He flashed a charming smile, the chandelier glow threading highlights through his gold-brown hair. “I must admit, you also differ from my imaginings.”

“Oh?”

His fingers brushed mine, and he raised my hand for a kiss. “You’re even lovelier than the whispers claim.”

The words were smooth, the performance flawless. He had nerve, I’d give him that.

“Careful, Ambassador,” Carmen teased while Keil was still lifting my hand. “My cousin loathes to share. But I’ll happily bear the burden of those compliments.”

Keil paused, gaze sliding to Erik. Though the two were similar in age and height, with Keil being slightly broader, a unique power steeled Erik’s spine—a power greater than any Wielder’s. The power of a king.

And the force of that power was currently directed toward my hand, cradled in Keil’s.

Whether from protectiveness or something more territorial, Erik offered the Wielder a bland smile. Almost daring him.

Keil’s mouth quirked up. “I see.” He lowered my hand without finishing the distance to his lips.

But he subtly angled my palm before he released it—to check the thin line of my cut, I realized.

Finding the wound almost healed, he stepped back, content.

“And which area do you preside over, Lady Alissa?”

“Alissa’s father is the ruling lord of Vereen,” Carmen answered.

“Ah, the gem of Daradon. The most affluent province in the kingdom, I’ve heard.” Keil slipped his hands into his pockets, grinning now. “Although I suspect the person who told me was biased.”

I cocked my head, giving him a pointed look. You want to play this game? I asked silently. Then we’ll play.

“Have you visited?” I asked.

“I can’t say I have.”

“No, I suppose you can’t. I’d invite you to tour my estate, but I’m afraid someone’s been taking an axe to it.”

Keil went rod-still. Erik and Carmen shifted in interest.

“Refurbishment,” I clarified, and the group relaxed.

“That’s unfortunate,” Keil said, more careful now.

“Indeed.” I gave a sharp smile. “I much preferred my parlor the way it was.”

His eyes tightened at the corners. With satisfaction fueling me, I made one last stab.

“Are the others in your party here?” I glanced around, brows high. “I’d love to make an official introduction.”

My words strung a rope around the group, drawing everyone up taut. Keil looked at me like I’d pulled a mace from under my skirts and thwacked it around his head.

“Ambassador Arcus made passage alone.” Erik’s voice held a low, questioning edge. “Those were our terms, were they not, Ambassador?”

“They were, Your Majesty.” Keil held my stare, waiting.

But I’d made my point.

“My mistake,” I said lightly. “I assumed a man of your standing would’ve traveled with an entourage.” I swept my eyes over Keil and winced, as if I’d found the span of him awkwardly lacking. “But I must have overestimated.”

The silence dragged.

Then Carmen laughed a little too loudly, breaking the spell. Erik glanced between me and Keil, a dark glimmer in his eyes. Keil looked like he needed a strong drink.

Fortunately, Erik then snapped his fingers to summon a young server. The girl’s tray held four faceted glasses, fizzling with champagne.

“Let us toast,” Erik said, his smile not quite reaching his narrowed gaze. “To new unions.”

“Well put, Cousin!” Carmen grabbed a flute and took a swallow, bubbles sputtering up her nose.

Keil and I reached for opposite glasses, our eyes catching above the tray. “New unions,” he repeated, and I faltered, my heartbeat skipping at the soft meaning in his voice.

So I saw the second his eyes widened. And his hand flinched violently from the glass.

His flute toppled, and the tray with it.

Erik thrust an arm in front of me, forcing me back a step before all three glasses shattered where my feet had been.

Carmen yelped, lifting her train as champagne effervesced against the marble.

Young, shaky hands reached for the shards, and I automatically dived to help the server.

“Leave it.” Erik gripped my elbow, and my stomach clenched. His voice rumbled with dark amusement. “A lady shouldn’t cut her fingers because of one ambassador’s clumsiness.”

I looked toward Keil, and a chill skittered down my back. Because gone was his easy charm, his glow of good humor. Now he looked exactly as he had at the ransom exchange—posture hard, fists tight, his gaze bearing down fiercely on the king.

Then Carmen gasped softly. She held her unbroken glass aloft, and sunlight shone through the facets. Illuminating the crown-and-anchor emblem—the Orrenish emblem—engraved on one side.

Erik had toasted using the glasses from Orren.

Glasses doused in dullroot.

My specter lurched, rocking me backward out of Erik’s grip. Had he heard my breath catching? Had he felt the goose bumps rising on my skin? All arrogance flooded out of me as the moment looped frantically in my mind.

I’d been inches away from being the first to touch those glasses—and Erik had unwittingly saved me seconds later when he’d held me back from the shards. One breath of difference, and I would’ve flinched as Keil had, exposing myself as vulnerable to the specter poison.

Exposing myself as a Wielder.

And Erik wouldn’t have smirked at me as he now smirked at Keil, with barbed satisfaction.

He would’ve made me tonight’s entertainment.

My specter heaved backward again, and my eyes pricked with the strain of keeping still—of fighting my own instinct to run. Father was right; court was too dangerous, the king too volatile.

My heart galloped as the pressure built between the two men, the nobles looking nervously toward us. But just as Erik’s smile grew full and sharp with victory, Keil released a long breath.

And he returned the king’s smile.

“Quite right, Your Majesty,” he said. I gaped, specter shuddering, as he fetched a handkerchief from his pocket and laid it across his palm. “Nobody should injure themselves on my account.”

Keil crouched and murmured a kind dismissal to the young server. Erik’s jaw tightened.

Then, using his handkerchief as a buffer, Keil gathered the shards of Orrenish glassware and set them on the tray. As if the poison didn’t bother him one bit.

As if Erik had been a fool for thinking it would.

It wasn’t until later, when Carmen left my side, that a spectral thread curled around my hand.

I twitched, still shaken from my close encounter with dullroot.

But the moment I recognized the contours of Keil’s power—the warm ripples, the steady thrum of strength—my specter flared, bright and tingling, aching to pour free.

I leashed it, wincing at the sudden effort. If the threat of dullroot buried my power, then skin contact with another specter—especially a familiar specter—seemed to rouse it dangerously to the surface.

I would have to be more careful.

I was still exhaling through the strain when Keil’s specter laced between my fingers. A silent, secret request.

I moved before I could second-guess myself.

The din of the ballroom faded as I drifted around marble bends and up staircases, not sure if I was following the tug of Keil’s specter or my own internal pull. As I landed inside an ivory-furnished drawing room, his power receded, leaving the barest tingle on my hand.

Birdsong filtered from an open balcony, gauzy curtains billowing with the rhythm of steady breathing. I waited for my heart to stop pattering, for my specter to stop flurrying from his touch. Then I glided between the curtains, an apple-blossom breeze tousling my hair.

Keil was leaning back against the stone railing, hands in his pockets, eyes gleaming with amusement.

Dipped in the light of a caramel sunset and dripping with casual power, he seemed the living embodiment of Ansora—the Sun Empire—where the days were long and lazy, and the summers said to be spun of gold.

I warmed as his gaze trailed over me—a similarly languid appraisal he couldn’t have gotten away with in the ballroom. All twinkling in crystals, I must have appeared different today, too. If he personified Ansora, then I was Vereen—the gem of Daradon.

I straightened, letting the knowledge reinforce me.

“That was quite the performance,” Keil said, smiling softly. “I was going to ask why you didn’t reveal me, but now I see you had a far more entertaining torment in mind.”