Page 24 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

C armen’s sweet vanilla scent poured over me, reminding me of her embrace. And despite the excited flutter of my victory, this suddenly felt wrong.

But this key had been found near Wray’s body the night the compass was stolen; I needed to know why. And I wouldn’t find answers on this side of the threshold.

So, I drew a wobbly breath, stepped inside, and shut the door behind me.

Carmen’s lounge succeeded in the impossible task of clashing with itself: deep-auburn furnishings and maroon walls buried under bright, blushing fabrics; vases of dried autumnal flowers filled with glossy bonbon-pearls.

Carmen layered over Nelle in a palimpsest of styles, as though she’d refused to erase her mother from the suite entirely.

The thought bolstered me. Seven years had passed since Wray’s murder and five years since Nelle had even occupied these rooms. But perhaps she’d left something behind—journals, records, anything that might link her to Wray.

I swept toward the bedchamber, my specter flurrying.

I examined the closet and foraged through the vanity drawers, their bottoms encrusted with spilled lotion. I found books and garters and even the fudge collection, stacked in multitiered tins.

Losing patience, I knelt before the black-lacquered dresser—another of Nelle’s acquisitions, no doubt—and unlocked the bottom drawer with a tendril of my specter. The shallow space overflowed with silks and loose jewelry. I went to relock it but halted.

The drawer looked bigger from outside.

Using thin spectral wisps, I eased up the bottom panel. The contents sloped to the back, and I smiled. There was something worth finding after all.

A thin stack of shipping documents sat beneath the false bottom. Though the destination wasn’t specified, the date puzzled me. The ship was set to sail two weeks after Rose Season— this year. How had Nelle possessed shipping documents so far in advance?

Flipping the page, I had my answer. I’d received enough birthday cards to recognize the handwriting in these margins.

These documents didn’t belong to Nelle. They belonged to Carmen.

“Let me guess. You picked the lock.”

I jumped, slamming the drawer shut. Keil was leaning against the wall behind me, arms crossed and eyebrows raised.

I shot to my feet. “What are you doing here?”

“Witnessing a robbery, apparently.”

“I’m not—” I stopped, checking myself. “I’m not explaining myself to you. Were you following me?”

“Why would I be following you? Perhaps the princess invited me to her chambers.” His lips spread with a slow smile. “Could you really blame her?”

A lock click sounded from the lounge. My stomach swooped.

I grabbed Keil, and he didn’t resist as I dragged him into the closet, tumbled in after him, and yanked the door shut.

Keil’s deep chuckle rumbled across the darkness. “If you wanted to put your hands all over me, you only had to ask.”

“Be quiet.” I backed up as far as the tight space allowed, cool satin gliding over my arms. I breathed so heavily that a musty-clothes smell tickled my throat, threatening a cough. “This wouldn’t be happening if you hadn’t sneaked up on me.”

“Ah, so you were engaged in illicit activities. Should I be concerned that you’ve made me an accessory to your crime?”

“There was no crime,” I hissed.

“Is that so?” Keil splayed a hand against the closet door. “Then, I suppose she won’t mind if we—”

I screwed my fists around his shirt, tugging so hard that he had to brace his hand on the wall above my head to keep from toppling over me.

“Trying to rip my clothes off now?” Another low roll of laughter blew across my flushed face, heat on heat. “Though you may be impatient, my lady, I suggest you start with the buttons.”

I tightened my grip, knuckles pressed against his chest. “Take one step into that chamber and I swear by all the gracious gods—”

Distant movement rustled and I inhaled sharply, a feather boa ruffling up my nose. I batted it off in a panic, mortified when my fingers caught between the buttons of Keil’s shirt.

“Almost,” he whispered, clearly entertained. He was still leaning over me, one bicep blocking my view of the door. “But next time”—he raised his free hand, latched a finger under his top button—“you actually have to unhook—”

“Your head from your shoulders?” I interrupted. “What a lovely thought.”

“I expect murdering me would be quite loud.”

“Not the way I would do it.”

“Oh?” His voice deepened, rich with teasing. “And how would you do it?”

Heeled shoes pattered on the marble and I jolted back, catching the white flash of Keil’s grin. I was considering smothering him with one of Carmen’s petticoats when I heard a clatter of drawers, then the tap of wood on wood.

My heart shot up into my throat. I’d left the dresser drawer unlocked. Had Carmen already opened it and discovered that someone had rummaged beneath the false bottom?

Holding my breath, I ducked under Keil’s bicep and peered through the gap between the closet doors. Carmen wasn’t near the dresser. If I eased my specter toward it—

Keil’s arms folded around me, pulling me flush against him. I jerked automatically, but those solid arms tightened, one hand cradling the back of my head.

“Wait,” he whispered.

A second later, darkness fell across that slice of light. A mirror stood beside the closet, I remembered. And Carmen had stopped before it. Three steps away.

One misplaced foot, one creak of wood, and she’d find us buried among her gowns.

I didn’t dare move from where Keil had tucked me against his chest, his soap-and-linen scent overwhelming Carmen’s vanilla and that odd musty-clothes smell.

His heartbeat raced beneath my ear, twin to my own.

And as Carmen’s train whispered over the marble, snaking closer, I squeezed my eyes shut.

Pressed nearer to Keil until my crystal bodice dug into my skin.

“Easy.” He whispered the reassurance into my hair, the warmth of his breath licking down my bare shoulder.

His hand slipped absently to the nape of my neck.

And then my heart was slamming for all the wrong reasons.

I was suddenly too aware of my hands, trapped between our crushing bodies.

Of the shared heat rushing off us, feeding itself on our heavy breaths.

My cheek pressed the ridges of those wicked shirt buttons, and now I couldn’t shatter the mental image of Keil teasing them open, revealing the muscled planes of honeyed skin beneath—

Carmen’s footsteps shifted, and we tensed against each other. Keil gathered me impossibly closer, as though he could shield me from view.

A rustle as Carmen adjusted her gown. An appreciative hum at her reflection. Then, after an unbearable eternity, her footsteps receded.

The thudding in my head quieted as the lounge door clicked shut.

“She’s gone,” Keil murmured, his voice rumbling through me.

His muscles shifted, and he slowly peeled back, one arm unfolding from around me, the other hand drifting from my nape to my spine as he eased away. Then he paused, his palm spread across the center of my back, as if unable to detach fully.

With a spike of horror, I realized my fingers were bunched in his shirt again.

He glanced toward my hands, his own tenseness melting with a slow curve of his mouth. “But we can stay a while longer, if you like.”

My cheeks blazed.

I swatted him away and crashed through the doors, stumbling around my skirts. Keil’s exit was far more composed. I turned to hide my blush—unreasonably angry at myself—and my eyes snagged on Carmen’s vanity.

The top drawer wasn’t shut all the way.

I bolted forward and slid it open, finding a new addition: a palm-size wooden box, engraved with a crisscross pattern. Before I could grab it, the box flew up past my head.

Keil plucked it from the air—from his specter —with smug satisfaction.

I stormed toward him, and he lifted the box above my reach. “Are you serious?” I snapped.

“I’ll make you another deal,” Keil said, mischief bubbling over. “Tell me what it is, and you can have it.”

I stared, agape. I’d have kicked him in the shins if it would lower his arm, but I knew he’d keep the box aloft to be contrary. So I said, evenly, “It’s a jewelry box.”

Laughter played around his mouth. “I don’t know what’s more impressive. The lie or the conviction with which you said it. But for the attempt—” He tossed me the box and I fumbled, catching it awkwardly against my chest.

Brassy numbers lined the opening—a combination lock, like those the Parrian military used to secure their armories.

I thumbed the first number just as Keil said, “I wouldn’t do that.

That’s a Bolting Box. Spies use them to organize meetings and avoid speaking among listening ears.

” He sauntered closer, and I craned my neck to hold his stare.

“The sender enters a time and location using the mechanism, they close the box, and it locks in place. Only those with the code can reopen it. Entering the wrong numbers will destroy the information inside.”

I squinted at the box, doubtful.

“Try your luck if you don’t believe me. I’m certainly curious as to why the princess has a Bolting Box in her possession.”

I was too. But from the way Keil quirked his head in challenge, he wanted me to attempt it. Either to watch me fail spectacularly or to land me in a greater heap of trouble.

I wouldn’t take the bait.

“Then ask her.” I smacked the box against his chest, forcing him back a step. “And while you’re at it, you can explain what you were doing in her chambers.” I went to let the box fall when Keil’s hand snapped over mine.

“Tumbling around in the closet with you?” His thumb grazed my knuckles. “I’d hate to make her jealous.”

The words curled in my core, molten, making me forget my retort. It took me a second to rip my hand away.

Keil caught the box and chuckled, all heat and honey. “Picking locks, rifling through the princess’s belongings...” He brushed around me, circling with slow, predatory steps. “I’m beginning to think you aren’t as clean-cut as I’d believed.”

I swung around, skirts twisting at the waist. “And I’m glad to confirm that you are precisely the man I thought you were.”

“Charming and indecently handsome?”

“Conceited and inappropriate.”

His eyes sparkled. “You have a lovely way of making compliments sound like insults.”

“Or perhaps, with your head so far up your own backside, you can no longer tell the difference.”

Keil’s eyebrows snapped up. Then he tipped his head to the ceiling and laughed so wholeheartedly that the sound must have traveled into the hall.

I crossed my arms. Tapped my foot as his laughter pattered out. “Have you finished?”

“With you?” he asked, lightly flushed from humor. “Certainly not, my lady.” He took a single step closer, golden eyes heavy. “I have a feeling we’re just beginning.”

Again, warmth crawled up my skin—and not just from anger. Keil must have known it, too, because his roguish smile was broad. A little dimple creased his left cheek, and my hand twitched with the desire to smack it off his face.

Still grinning, he returned the Bolting Box to the vanity and swept an arm toward the door. “After you.”

Just like that, suspicion turned me cold.

I’d thought Keil had been following me.

.. but maybe he was similarly searching Carmen’s suite.

I’d theorized that Keil’s sister had come to Daradon to investigate the Huntings, and what if I was right?

What if Keil already knew the compass was missing, had stationed himself at court to find it, and, like me, possessed evidence leading to these chambers?

Though I wouldn’t return the compass to the Capewells, I couldn’t let Keil reclaim it, either.

Before my kidnapping, I’d never imagined fellow Wielders as a threat to me in any capacity.

Now I knew better. As long as Wielders were being executed—in any part of the world—that compass could only be a weapon.

A weapon I couldn’t let anyone use against me.

But as Keil waited placidly, arm still outstretched, I glimpsed a shrewd flicker in his eyes. And I knew I couldn’t let him realize what I’d been doing in this room.

So, although my instincts rebelled at leaving the Bolting Box, I stormed out across the lounge. Then I tugged the doorknob and cursed.

Carmen had locked the door behind her.

Keil strolled to my side, glanced at the keyhole, and turned to me expectantly. Waiting for me to produce my imaginary lockpicks. “Stage fright?” he teased.

I opened my mouth, grasping for an excuse, when the lock clicked free on its own.

Keil winked. “You’re welcome.”

Scowling, I wrenched the door open and stomped away.