Page 49 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

A n impatient tap-tap-tap awaited me in the lounge. I glanced at the mirror on my way in. My lips were swollen and raw with color, my hair a tangled mess. Only my eyes remained vacant, empty of all the passion that had blazed in Erik’s.

At last, I turned to Tari. “That wasn’t what it looked like.”

She paused her foot-tapping. “So, it was a trick of the light? If I’d looked from another angle, I wouldn’t have seen you kissing Erik’s face off?

” She crossed her arms. “You only pursued him to secure protection for your father. But now...” She trailed off, too kind even in her temper to finish the sentence.

“Now my father’s gone,” I said. “I know.”

“Then what were you doing with him?”

“What I had to!” I pushed a hand through my hair, wincing as I snagged in the knots. “Even if I find the compass before Briar, and Erik kills every Capewell in Daradon, he’ll assign others to take their place. As long as he rules, Wielders will be slaughtered. But if I ruled at his side...”

Tari dropped her arms, eyes whitening with horror. “You’re serious,” she breathed. “You really think your kisses can save a kingdom.”

My hackles rose. “I could have swayed him tonight—about the Capewells. I can sway him again when it matters.”

“To abolish the Execution Decree? To reverse two hundred years of prejudice against Wielders?”

“Daradon’s rot began with the monarchy,” I said firmly. “That’s where it has to end. It won’t happen overnight, but as long as Erik wants me—”

“He doesn’t want you!” Tari shouted. “He wants the Wholeborn girl he thinks you are! Gracious gods, do you hear yourself? What happens when Erik wants an heir, and a Wielder baby pops out of you? How long do you expect a child to contain their specter?”

“I’ve controlled mine for eighteen years without instruction.”

“Have you?” Her face hardened. “Then what happened in those tunnels, Alissa? You couldn’t control your specter, and it nearly got us killed.”

I smothered my guilt as soon as it rose. I had no place left inside me to hold it.

“The keeper won’t target you again if they don’t see you as a threat,” Tari continued. “Go back to Vereen and lie low, and let that be enough.”

My fists trembled. “So, I get to live, but only if I’m a good girl and keep my specter hidden?

I get to breathe, but only by sucking the air from other Wielders’ mouths to sustain myself?

How is that fair? How is that enough ?” My words cracked around the mental image of Father.

To spare him from the pain of my death, it had been enough.

But not anymore. “They stole my rights and choose what I can buy back with a thank-you. They didn’t create me.

I shouldn’t have to thank them for letting me exist.”

My specter was lashing inside me again, and I turned to hide my pained expression. I breathed deeply, winding the power down thread by thread.

Tari’s steps clicked toward me. Her voice gentled. “You’re right. It’ll never be fair. But right now you’re angry and hurting. You can’t see any other way out. And maybe...”

“Maybe what?” I whirled, and she hesitated. “Say it.”

“Maybe this is what the keeper wants. For you to be alone. Without allies.”

I spoke through my teeth. “Which allies did you have in mind?”

“You’ve put so much focus on Nelle and Carmen, but what if you’re wrong about them?

Why would they have built a prison in those tunnels only to reveal them to the Ansorans?

Why kill Wielders like Marge only to help others find refuge?

If they intended to stage a rescue in front of the Ansorans, then those prisons would’ve been full.

” She sighed. “I don’t know Nelle. But I don’t think Carmen had anything to do with your father’s death. ”

“And why not?”

“Because,” Tari said, her voice full of resolve, “I monitored her after you found the Bolting Box, remember? I saw her treating the staff with respect and generosity. I saw her kindness to Lord Junius while the gentry shunned him. And I saw her crying at your father’s funeral.

It didn’t look like guilt. It looked like grief. ”

“Carmen is the daughter of the Mantis,” I said, seething.

“You spend a few weeks at court, and you think you understand it? You think tears can’t be manipulated as easily as words?

” Then, because I realized this went deeper than a fleeting infatuation, because I knew it would hurt her, I said, “Carmen has you fooled without even trying. Imagine the damage she could do if she knew you existed.”

Tari flinched; my blade had found its target. It wasn’t even a little bit satisfying.

“I know where my loyalties lie,” she said, face flushed.

“Then you should know that Carmen will do anything to get the crown.”

Tari looked me over with an expression I’d never seen on her—an expression of giving up. “She’s not the only one,” she said sadly, and I knew I deserved it when she left me standing there, alone.

I couldn’t sleep. Each time I drifted off, I would see myself in an ivory gown, vowing to bind my life to Erik’s.

I imagined the horror of waking up beside him, bathed in dusty morning sunlight.

His pale lashes tickling my cheek as he blinked the sleep from his eyes.

My name on his lips, his lips on my skin. ..

My specter surged out, rippling the bedsheets. I righted them with clammy hands.

Tari had been right about one thing: My control was slipping.

It had always ached to confine my specter, but never like this—with the intense sensation of choking over my own breath. I could barely focus from the need to expel the power inside me. To let it ravage the world as wholly as it had ravaged my father’s study.

It was almost laughable: In Erik’s loathing of Wielders, he was missing out on the most vicious side of me—the side he would most enjoy. Though he seemed to enjoy the rest of me well enough.

You would be my finest conquest. I would make you a queen.

The sheets shot off the bed this time. I didn’t bother retrieving them.

I squeezed my eyes shut, willing my skin to cool.

I’d lost Father and Garret; I’d distanced myself from Amarie; I’d made an enemy of Keil.

Now even Tari was retreating. But tonight, I needed only to forget the taste of Erik’s rose-sweet tongue in my mouth.

I drew a shuddering breath; let it out. Then another.

But the musty air of that hidden room still clung in my hair, taunting me with each inhale. I ground my teeth against the smell—earthy and familiar, akin to moth-eaten fabrics. Yet it strangely evoked memories of Keil’s fresh soap-and-linen scent, and something sweeter, like cake frosting, like—

Carmen’s vanilla.

As if on the stale air itself, Erik’s words drifted to me: How do you think the previous monarchs hid their affairs?

My eyes flew open.

I tumbled off the bed, slipping in the sheets, then grabbed my robe and hurtled from my chambers.

The halls blurred past, drizzled with moonlight and tinkling with music from the downstairs entertainment. I knocked at Carmen’s suite several times, then let myself in.

I headed straight for the closet in which Keil and I had hidden weeks ago; it was the first time I’d smelled that musty-clothes odor, mixed then with Keil’s scent and Carmen’s perfume. I opened the doors and Carmen’s vanilla washed over me again, mingling with that same stuffy smell.

Nelle’s chamber key had been found at the scene of Wray Capewell’s murder, his body left atop a drainage gutter nearby.

I’d linked the key to Nelle’s presence that night, and had attributed Wray’s furtive behavior to their potential affair.

But what if I’d been viewing it from the wrong angle all along?

What if I never should have put so much importance on these chambers—or on Nelle—at all?

Because Nelle’s key had always led beyond this suite.

I climbed into the closet and slid the gowns aside, exposing the back panel of wood. I ran a finger along the edges. There —a disruption in the seam. I hooked my finger behind the latch and pulled. The back of the closet gave way and with it went the last of my doubt.

Pulse thrumming, I stepped into the darkness.