Page 38 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

B y the time I returned to my chambers, cheeks ablaze, I’d mentally run through thirty different scenarios that would have ended with my lips on Keil’s.

Perhaps Father had been right to keep me from other Wielders. Perhaps I was too easily entranced, too likely to let my guard down, because of what Keil was.

But... it didn’t seem that way. There had certainly been a thrill in exploring his specter, but once the specter had receded, I’d wanted to explore him —his conflicting softness and solidity, his unwavering faith in the world.

I’d wanted to explore the full sweep of his mouth.

And that kind of exploration had nothing to do with Wielding.

A knock pounded my door, and I shook myself. This was a dangerous slope of thought. But not as dangerous as the dayglass in my pocket. I shoved the shard under my mattress, hiding the evidence of my evening.

I was still a little flushed opening the door.

Junius’s dispassionate gaze doused me in cold clarity. “Finally.” He swept inside, his white-stud earring—bonestone, I now realized—peeking above a stiff collar. “Do you know how many times I’ve come knocking?”

I shut the door, sighing. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“You didn’t answer my note.”

“You didn’t send a note.”

He huffed with vindication, like my five-word response confirmed every ugly thought he held of me. “I thought to make the exchange in person since you’re clearly too busy to respond, but I see you’re just as immature as I’d—”

“You have the information?” I stopped short.

Scowling, Junius handed me a folded note from his jacket.

As a member of Dawning’s ruling family, Junius could access the records of the Dawni bladesmith who’d forged my attacker’s knife. The bladesmith who I suspected was now working for the copycats.

“His address?” I asked.

“No.”

My eyes snapped up. “I asked for his address.”

“And it would’ve gotten you nowhere.” He released a long-suffering sigh that implied I was the most incompetent person in the kingdom, then he unfolded the note to reveal written coordinates.

“Kevi Banday was due to make a weapons delivery to this location. The client had refused to give their name, and since the blades were of a rare, expensive metal, Kevi had been wary of the transaction. He sent the coordinates to his wife as a precaution. She said he never returned home.”

I read the coordinates. Read them again. “This is in Vereen.”

Junius nodded. “Kevi’s wife traveled there after he didn’t show, and found nothing but ‘a slat of grassland.’ It seems Kevi should have trusted his instincts regarding this client.”

My heart sank. Kevi must have possessed useful information after all—information that could have led to the copycats. Because rather than commission him for more weapons... they’d silenced him.

And my final lead ended at a slat of damned grassland.

“This is more than I asked for,” I mumbled, deflated. “Thank you.”

Junius’s eyes widened, like my thanks had shocked him. “You asked me to find Kevi,” he said slowly. “I wanted to ensure you’d fulfill your end. Speaking of which...”

I nodded, shuffling to my bedchamber. Garret had sent the information late last night.

Junius’s attention was pinned on the parchment when I returned, but I didn’t relinquish it.

“Who did you send to question the wife?”

“Loyal acquaintances,” he said absently.

“They obtained this information humanely?”

His gaze flicked up, alert once more. “She received three purses of gold for her trouble. I am not a monster.”

“No.” I handed him the parchment. “I don’t believe you are.”

Junius’s eyes misted as he scanned the coordinates of a Dawni forest.

Despite the Jacombs’ growing alienation, Junius hadn’t wanted to know who’d accused their staff of Wielding.

I could almost understand. I’d forever known that the Hunters had executed my mother, yet it hadn’t brought her back.

Even knowing which of them had dealt the killing blow wouldn’t mitigate the loss.

Vengeance was an empty meal. What the Jacombs really wanted was the chance to say goodbye.

“The graves are unmarked,” I said softly. “You’ll have to search a while.”

“We will be honored to serve them now as they served us all our lives.” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “How did you get this information?”

“I take care of my friends.”

Satisfied with my answer, he tucked away the parchment with great care. “Thank you,” he said sincerely, and turned.

“Can I ask...?” I started, uncertain. Junius paused. “You would—would do all this”—I wrung my hands—“for Wielders ?”

Junius faced me fully, and I braced for his scathing reply. Instead, the corner of his mouth turned up with a sad smile. “You are young,” he said gently. “One day, you might find that there is no difference.”

He shut the door softly behind him.

As the silence took on the weight of his words, I realized the gentry had been right. The Jacombs had known they were housing Wielders... and they hadn’t cared. Now, they would dig through a Dawni forest to exhume the bodies of their staff. To offer them the funeral they deserved.

That kernel of hope glimmered inside me again, almost within reach. It was a foolish hope. A desperate hope. But as the memory of Keil’s specter rose, free and warm and rippling with unchained strength, I wondered if it was a hope worth nursing.

Finding the compass and stopping the copycats would offer me safety, but never happiness... because I would still have to confine my specter.

And I didn’t want to die before I’d gotten the chance to breathe.

Slowly, with a tentative, searching touch, I reached within myself.

My specter resided dormant and shapeless inside me, vaguely uncomfortable as ever, producing the straining background ache I’d learned to live with.

But upon deeper inspection, I realized that its regular thrum had taken on a slight squirming quality—a manifestation of my worry and frustration since Junius’s information about Kevi.

I drove further into the power, and it was like peeling back a tulip petal to reach the dense, pollen-rich center. There seemed to be folds here. All constantly feeding off my energy and emotion, gently pulsating with my heartbeat... all ineffably, undeniably, me.

I swallowed and withdrew my touch, somehow afraid to keep unfurling. Caught instead with the urge to wind an internal rope around those petal layers to hold them together.

Had my mother died with restraints around her own power, not realizing that her daughter would suffer the same fear of exposure? Was she buried in another forest, her grave unmarked? I might’ve walked over it during my autumn strolls, unaware of the atrocities under my feet—

The air rushed into me. As a Dawni woman, Kevi’s wife might not have known about the xerylite mines under Vereen, whose locations were supposedly lost. So, she’d looked in the wrong place: above the earth.

She should have looked beneath.

I grabbed my cloak and ran for the stables; the night was ripening but I couldn’t delay. Father held all those mining records, including how to enter the tunnels.

Happiness would have to wait.

My search wasn’t over yet.

The midnight journey to Vereen blurred with frenzied thoughts and thunderous wheels over cobblestones. Then I was tumbling from the carriage, telling the coachman to return to Henthorn without me.

The sight of home was a balm to my agitation. I ran up the front steps and burst through the doors. The hinges squealed, and a chill seized me.

I squinted into darkness. Amarie usually left the protection candles burning in the foyer all night.

I hung up my cloak. “Father?” My voice bounced off the polished walls. “Amarie?”

Silence. Emptiness.

I drifted through the lower level, the thump-thump-thump of my heartbeat rising for no tangible reason. Everything was in its place... and yet the air skittered with dread.

Something wasn’t right.

A squeaking sound halted me outside a linen closet. I rattled the doorknob, my specter winding between my fingers. The squeaking intensified.

No—not squeaking. Whimpering.

I plunged my specter through the keyhole and yanked the door open.

Amarie shook under the linens, arms shielding her bruised head. I dropped and grabbed her wrists. She tugged against me; a sob tore up her throat.

“Amarie, it’s me!”

She looked up, eyes bloodshot. “Alissa?” Her voice croaked with another sob.

“What happened?”

“Y–your father.”

“Where is he? Amarie, where is he ?”

I didn’t wait for her reply.

I bolted for the staircase, taking the steps two at a time. I tripped on the third floor, but scrambled up and kept climbing.

He wouldn’t be there. Somehow I knew it—I couldn’t feel his presence.

Someone had taken my father.

His study doors were open. I stumbled in, grasping the doorframe.

I saw the blood first. I’d almost anticipated it, but I hadn’t expected its volume. And I hadn’t expected the inky halo of hair spilling around my father’s vacant face.

The wound in his chest gaped like the mouth of a beast.

Then screaming. In my head, in my bones. Screaming and screaming and screaming and —

The room blurred, and I fell to my knees.

I hadn’t been here to protect him.

A hand closed around my arm. I didn’t care who it belonged to. I didn’t care if they plunged a knife into me right now.

I was already hemorrhaging. Emptying out, waves choking over themselves—hot and thick and rippling. Layers upon layers I hadn’t known existed, hazing like steam in the air. Convulsing in their own shriek of agony.

Glasses rattled in the liquor cabinet. Books ripped from their bindings. Wood groaned and splintered.

Screaming and screaming and screaming.

Someone was shaking me. Stop, Alissa, stop!

Their touch receded. The doors slammed shut.

The dam inside me fractured and exploded in a shower of glass and wood and blood.

The world was ending, and I was grateful.