Page 35 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

F ather’s face had just begun to sink with uncertainty when I crashed into him, wrapping my arms tight. He went rigid for a moment. Then he exhaled long and warm into the crook of my neck, his arms enveloping me.

Maybe I’d known how fast I would melt for my father. Maybe that was why I hadn’t tried to see him before leaving home—because I couldn’t hold on to my anger while I was holding on to him.

We pulled apart and he looked me over, eyes glassy.

“You look like a courtier,” he whispered. Regret tinged the words. With a weak sniff, he drifted to the window and stared across the gardens. An aura of sunlight bronzed his face.

“I promised your mother I’d bring her here one day.

” His words were fragile, as if he feared they might shatter upon release.

“She hated the luxury, but she longed for the views. The white palace spires. The famous gardens. She wanted to swing her legs over the highest balcony and watch the sunset. And all I ever wanted was to make her happy.”

It had always pained Father to speak of my birth mother. I didn’t know exactly how she’d died, or even how she’d lived; I only had her lucky coin, an inherited specter, and the empty space inside me where her story should have been.

Now I drifted beside Father, heart pattering, desperate for more but afraid to push.

He closed his eyes and sighed. The xerylites on his brooch glimmered, containing a thousand bursting stars.

“I was enchanted by your mother from the moment we met. She was charming and brazen and everything I wished I could be. And the way she looked at the world...” He opened his eyes, smiling.

“You’re like her in many ways, but I fear you’ve inherited my cynicism. ”

I laughed as the first tear tracked a warm path down my cheek. Already, I was committing these words to memory, to hoard inside me like jewels.

“She knew the truth about the Capewells from early on. When she discovered she was pregnant, she didn’t want you to have to hide your specter as she did. She... also struggled with confinement.”

I swallowed hard, throat burning. My mother had known the pain of self-restraint. Though we’d shared so little time together, we shared that pain.

“Even then,” Father continued, “Bormia didn’t accept refugees.

But she found someone who could forge Bormian citizenships.

We’d planned to sneak across the border through Orren—a long, dangerous journey that would have put us in the heart of Orrenish territory.

I didn’t sleep for weeks in preparation—burning all evidence of my connection to your mother so nobody could link our disappearances.

“Then my wife, Fiona, became ill again. The physicians said this bout would be her last.” Father dropped his gaze.

“Lady Fiona knew my heart belonged to another even before our arranged marriage, and she knew of my affair afterward. She was kind to me, though I didn’t deserve it.

I’d been ready to abandon my province, my title.

.. but I couldn’t abandon Fiona in her sickness. ”

Father looked up at me, eyes shining. “Then you were born,” he whispered. “And it was as if you’d brought my life into the world with you. As if there had been nothing before you, and all that mattered was everything after. Once Fiona passed, we would journey to Bormia as planned.”

His hand shook, scrubbing over his mouth. He turned back to the window. “But your mother was discovered. She knew the Capewells were tracking her, and she kept it from me.” His voice cracked. “She made sure you weren’t with her when they came.”

My cheeks were hot with tears, but I didn’t wipe them away. Father and I cried together—silent tears for a silent mourning.

“When I found out,” he said, “I wanted to take you and run. But I knew I couldn’t protect you on our journey through Orren as she would have.

And I”—he exhaled tightly—“I was too afraid to try. You must have sensed my anguish because you wouldn’t stop crying.

Fiona heard you from her deathbed. I told her then about the child I’d sired, and she requested to see you.

The moment she held you, she somehow knew what you were.

I told myself it was the delirium—she couldn’t have possibly known about your specter.

But I remember the awe in her eyes...

as if she were gazing into a light so radiant she couldn’t stand to look away.

” Father shook his head, lost to the memory.

“Fiona insisted I put her name on your birthing papers, so you would be my legitimate heir. She’d been out of society long enough that nobody would question a pregnancy. She signed the papers herself, her hand shaking.”

I pressed a palm to my chest, feeling an eighteen-year-old weight lift off me. I’d always carried a secret guilt for sewing Fiona’s name onto mine. But now I knew... she’d taken up the thread by choice—had lovingly rewoven her past to allow me a future.

I sent up a thought of gratitude to my mothers, one of birth and one of name, both of whom had protected me in their final acts.

Father unfolded a parchment from his jacket, and fresh tears filled my eyes. “I burned the others,” he said, “but I couldn’t part with this. I drew it the day you were born. It was the happiest I’d ever seen her.”

Looking into my mother’s face was like coming home.

Joy marked every brushstroke, from the laughing eyes to the crinkle at the bridge of her nose.

And her smile—wide and crescent-shaped, with dimples pinching each cheek.

.. that was my smile. Beneath the corkscrew curls of her hair, Father had written, Darcy Calloway, my only love.

My specter wound around the coin in my pocket.

As I set it rotating between us, Father’s face lit with a wonder I’d never known him to possess.

Slowly, his hand lifted to brush my specter.

My mother’s coin faltered and I reshaped the power, threading it through Father’s fingers like the flow of water around rocks in a lake.

“It feels like hers.” He smiled fondly. “It always has.”

The moment stretched between us, silent and shimmering.

Then Father cleared his throat and folded the drawing back into his pocket. “When Erik summoned me this morning, I’d feared it was for another reason.”

My smile wavered; the coin dropped to my palm.

Father’s expression turned pained. “Tell me you’re not entertaining him, my girl.”

I refrained from looking at the floor. I can’t let the Capewells reclaim the compass , I wanted to explain. Erik will punish them for their failure. And I can’t risk him punishing you alongside them.

So I’d formed a backup plan. I’d been toeing a precarious line these last weeks, making Erik believe I was interested enough to consider his proposal, yet challenging enough that he would do anything to possess me.

But clearly, my methods were working: having remembered my reluctance to leave home for my eighteenth season, Erik had gifted me with Father’s presence this afternoon.

Now I had to hope he would gift me with Father’s safety if I begged.

Of course, it would be that much harder to refuse him the next time he proposed. But that was a dilemma for another day—a dilemma far favorable to its alternative.

“Of course I’m not,” I lied. “Besides, his advisors are pushing for Lady Perla.”

Father looked unconvinced.

“Did Briar find out you released her prisoners?” I asked, swerving off topic.

Father winced. “Garret took sole blame. Briar gave him twenty lashes for insubordination. She came to the manor to taunt me about it.”

Twenty lashes. I recoiled at the mental image of Garret’s shredded back—and those rope burns, probably caused by sagging against restraints. Then I realized... Garret had fought my attacker with those wounds.

Father said, regretful again, “You care for the boy.”

I couldn’t deny it. I didn’t know what would become of the Capewells after Erik finished with them—if he would choose others to take their place, or force them into service again, broken and blue.

But I would use all my influence to liberate Father from the Hunters’ Mark tattooed over his heart.

To detach him permanently from Briar’s claws.

And I’d known, for some time now, that I would detach Garret, too.

I wasn’t sure what Father had read in my expression—whether he suspected more about my plans than he let on—but he grasped my hands then, his ink-stained fingers brushing my knuckles. “Your mother would be so very proud of you,” he said. “Just as I am.”

I sank into his grip. There were still so many lies to untangle, so much pain to process; trying to protect him had distracted me from the greater agony of trying to forgive him.

But... I was beginning to understand him in a way I never had.

I was prepared to sell myself to a king in the hopes that he would spare my father.

Would it be so different to sell the lives of others?

To damn them if it meant saving the person I loved most?

I didn’t yet know how to heal this fresh wound between us. I knew that one day, I would have to try.

But for this moment, I let my father fold his arms around me. And I breathed him in with the scent of home.