Page 42 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

T he mourners were trickling out on a cloud of brandy fumes. I fled upstairs before the last of them could ambush me in the foyer.

Somehow, I ended up in Father’s study. Though laborers had worked here for days under Amarie’s instruction, I hadn’t yet seen the results.

The floors gleamed, sofas restitched along the seams. They’d rebuilt the balcony railing and fit a cleaner glass into the window frame. Even the old-parchment smell had given way to the bite of surface polish.

But nothing was worse than the sleek new desk sitting in place of its predecessor. It reminded me that this was my study now, as ruling lady of Vereen. The title didn’t sit right on my shoulders.

A seating ceremony would take place in the coming months, upon which the Verenian nobles would officially pledge their loyalties to me.

The day would spill out with parades and merriment, craftwork and good food, culminating in a rite that should have seen Father handing me the seat of his power, as Rupert had done for his son.

Now I’d have to endure the ceremony alone.

How could the rest of my life seem so small and so gaping all at once?

I ran my fingers over the desk’s shiny surface, on which Amarie had placed two unlit candles—one at each end, to be lit in supplication to the gods of passing.

Though she wouldn’t admit it, Amarie truly feared for Father’s place in the next realm.

She wanted me to fear for him, to pray for him, too.

To believe in the gods who would take pity on his spirit.

I flicked the candles down, one after the other. The gods hadn’t been here when Father had needed them. They had no right to claim this space now.

I turned to the liquor cabinet—another glossy replacement—and poured a measure of brandy. I drained it in one.

A pile of parchments sat in an open box on the floor. The survivors of my eruption. I grabbed a handful and smacked it onto the desk.

Most of the pages belonged to the books I’d ripped apart—texts about specters and the lost art of Spellmaking—but some bore Father’s sketches.

One sheet depicted the hilt of a sword—unfinished, I knew, because the pommel was still empty and the drawing stopped a little way down the blade. As though Father had halted suddenly.

I touched the smudges where his hand had grazed the charcoal. Was this the last thing he’d ever drawn? Prematurely abandoned, like the crack we’d only started to seal between us?

I didn’t know what to do with that fracture, still unhealed. How to repair it alone when my grief now oozed into the wound, putrefying it against any chance of closure.

But I knew I didn’t want to deal with it today.

I returned to the paper stack, flipping blindly.

The task of finding the mining tunnel records seemed so distant now, as foreign as this bare, polished room that Father had always kept in disarray.

He’d never taken care to hide anything of importance; it would’ve been easy for someone to locate those records.

Especially when Father kept letting the wrong people inside.

I poured more brandy, sloshing it over my fingers.

Footsteps shuffled behind me. The doors clicked shut.

I brought the glass to my lips and said to Amarie, without turning, “Why refill the bottle if you’re going to reprimand me for enjoying it?”

“Go ahead,” a deep voice answered. “This will be easier if you’re drunk.”

The air slowly hissed out of me, fogging the inside of the glass. I turned.

My attacker was an inflamed version of himself—smudged with watercolor bruises, breaths whistling between clenched teeth. Garret’s assault couldn’t have produced that volume of injury; it must have been a Wielder victim, flaring out in defense before they’d died.

The idea hardened my spine. “I thought you wouldn’t warn me again.”

“Who says this is a warning?” The man took a long, creaking step across the hardwood.

No silver-tipped boots today. “I was told to offer my condolences. Leave you a parting gift.” He drew a eurium knife from his right side—he’d replaced the one on his left—and angled his head.

“You never learned your lesson, did you, girl? To stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. ”

“Apparently not,” I said flatly.

He bared his teeth. “You got what was coming to you.”

I set my glass on the desk and met his stare. “So will you.”

My specter roared forward.

The man slammed into the wall; his head thwacked backward. He spluttered, blinking out the shock. His hand darted down, but I was faster. I whipped the dullroot canister from his belt and sent it skidding across the hardwood.

I’d avoided fighting him the first time, fearing exposure. I wasn’t worried anymore. This man had killed my father.

He wasn’t leaving this room alive.

My lips twitched up as I sent another wave toward him. But this time he was prepared. His arm heaved back—

And he lobbed the knife toward me.

My specter rushed aside with my sharp inhale, parting like a river fork to avoid the eurium. The air zipped past my head, and warmth bloomed at my ear. I turned to see the knife jammed in the wall behind me and realized too late that I shouldn’t have turned.

Because now the man barreled for me, swinging his second knife in wide, vicious arcs. I scrambled aside, heart pounding in my throat, my specter retreating from the blade.

Then his rough hand grabbed my neck. I heard the wheezing before I realized it came from me.

My arms flailed. I couldn’t take in a breath. Couldn’t gather my frantic specter, my sudden panic thinning it out.

His laughter blew across my face. “Stupid little—” I didn’t hear the rest.

My hand connected with something hard. I raised the brandy glass and smashed it against his head.

He roared as blood and crystal showered us. His grip slipped off my neck.

I wrenched back all the way, half sliding onto the desk. My foot swung out. He grunted as my pointed heel caught his thigh. A sloppy defense, but it gave me the time I needed to build a spectral wave—to build it up, up, up —

And launch it between his legs.

He collapsed, moaning. His knife clattered beside his knees. One last smack from my specter—and he sprawled across the floor.

I dropped from the desk, panting. I circled him on shaky legs. “This was how I found my father. An undignified way to die, isn’t it?” He reached for my ankle, but I secured his wrist with a throbbing tendril of power. “How should I leave you? Bleeding out the same way?”

“Wielder scum.” He sucked in ragged breaths, his face contorting. “Keep pushing and you’ll see what happens. You won’t win this fight.”

“This doesn’t feel much like a fight.” I wrung his wrist until he howled, and I lapped up the sound. I’d thought vengeance was an empty meal—but watching my father’s killer squirm beneath me, I knew I could devour this feeling until I choked on it.

“Who sent you here?” I demanded. “Where can I find them?”

He laughed wetly, his hand turning crimson. “What’s it worth?”

“Your life.”

He turned his head and spat. I cringed, not seeing the flash of the fallen knife until agony exploded through me.

My body convulsed. Fire ran along my specter—through my blood—into my bones, and I didn’t know if I was screaming or blacking out until my knees hit the hardwood and I knew I was doing both.

If regular metals cut through specters like blades on skin, eurium shattered them like shrapnel.

I was dangling on the edge of consciousness, trying to scrape up the pieces of myself, when the man’s body whacked against mine, stealing the last of my air. He crushed me to the floor.

Then he found my throat and squeezed.

I thrashed automatically, trying to shove him off, trying to breathe. But the pain through my specter was all-consuming, making me sob between my teeth. My legs writhed, tangled in velvet. I bucked my hips. Dug my nails into his wrists.

He tightened his hold.

My specter shuddered, fighting to convalesce. Fighting to live .

“Wielder scum,” the man growled again, eyes hovering close above me. “You are nothing to us. You are nothing.”

Nothing.

Creature.

Vermin.

Something inside me was screaming again—making acid of my blood, claws of my specter. And as the man’s neck swam out of focus, I knew—with painful clarity—I would not yet lie in the tomb beside my father.

I pulled my nails from his wrists, slick with blood, and scrabbled for the base of his throat. Then I burrowed my nails deep.

He bellowed, and his grip loosened. My specter heaved through me with my gasping breath. I thrust it forward—a rush of solid power.

The crack echoed through my bones.

A pause.

Then he slumped on top of me, arms collapsing around my head. My brooch bit into my breast under the weight.

For several muzzy seconds, I could only lie there, inhaling his hair, my vision crisscrossing on the ceiling’s painted beams. At last, I forced him off using both my arms and my quivering specter.

The dark spots blinked out, and air streamed into my burning lungs.

Warmth trickled down my neck from where his knife had clipped my ear.

My face felt tacky with blood, but I didn’t know if it was mine or his.

I labored up, grasping the knife he’d plunged through my specter. With a wisp of power, I drew the dullroot canister toward me, steel screeching across the floor.

The canister bit cold inside my clammy palm, slightly larger than Briar’s prototype yet much lighter than I’d expected. I was lucky he’d only brought one. He’d returned here to cut up a Wholeborn girl—to leave me with a “parting gift” after I’d dared to interfere with the copycats.

He would’ve been better prepared against a Wielder.

I staggered toward the knife in the wall, locked all his weapons inside the desk, and leaned against it. Then I took the brandy decanter by the neck and tipped back a swallow. My raw throat burned. I drank deeper.

A knock. A door whispering open.

“Alissa, everybody’s gone—”