Page 59 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

He kissed my temple and murmured against my skin, “Candor is underrated.” Then, with his lips still hovering close, “Didn’t you wonder why I told my advisors I wished to find a bride this year? Couldn’t you guess whose eighteenth season I’d formed my plans around?”

I blinked, glancing up toward him. Inadvertently putting our faces at a more intimate angle. “But—I didn’t—I wasn’t going to join court initially.”

“Then I’d have waited.” His loose grip on my waist turned even gentler, fingers drifting along my ribs. “Only for you.” The words were a breath across my lips, but he didn’t close the distance. He shifted instead, peering toward the dais.

And I knew. He was going to make the speech. He was going to ask me now.

“Many apologies, Your Majesty.”

We turned toward a bowing servant whose hands quivered around a scroll.

“What is it?” Erik demanded.

The boy flicked nervous eyes to me. “A message came for you, my lady.”

“Deliver it to the lady’s chambers,” Erik said. “We’re occupied.”

“The messenger said it was urgent.”

“It’s all right.” I peeled from Erik and took the scroll. “It’s probably from Vereen.”

Amarie must have sent this message before Tari had arrived.

I shoved a fingernail under the wax and paused. I didn’t recognize the seal. Erik peeked over my shoulder, and I wrapped my hand around the emblem.

“I should tend to this privately. It won’t take long.”

Erik hesitated, eyes flicking to the scroll. Then he stroked a hand down my back. “Take as long as you need.” He offered me a soft, confiding smile. “I’ll wait.”

I surprised myself by rising to kiss his cheek—an oddly automatic gesture—before I hurried away.

My heart raced with every step through the corridors. I hadn’t expected them to draw me out like this, especially so early in the night. But it didn’t matter; my specter already teemed beneath my skin. I knew where to go. I knew what to do.

I was ready.

I made it to my chambers and tossed my head around, expecting to find them there. I even lashed my specter out—rustling the curtains, curving inside the bedchamber. Nothing.

I looked again to the seal on the scroll: a sun rising behind a diamond-shaped shield, crossed with two swords. I shakily broke the wax and unrolled the parchment.

My eyes darted over the page, trying to devour the words before comprehending them. Then I saw the swirling symbol and focused. It was the symbol from the underground prisons and those eurium weapons. The copycats’ symbol. And underneath, written in Keil’s flowing script, was its translation.

The writing slipped out of focus. My specter slackened.

This couldn’t be right.

But a deep-rooted instinct told me it wasn’t a mistake.

I threw the scroll aside and lurched back into the halls. My legs knew where they were taking me before my mind could catch up.

Hands closed over my shoulders and my specter rushed to the surface. I whirled, primed to run, when Garret hauled me into a parlor and slammed the door behind us. The air left me in a sharp gust.

“What was that?” he said.

“I don’t have time for this.” I staggered forward, but Garret blocked me.

“I saw you leave with that look on your face,” he pressed. “What happened?”

“I don’t answer to you,” I spat.

But my expression must have betrayed me, because Garret’s eyes widened with understanding.

“You know who took it,” he said. “Do you have it already?”

My ragged breaths filled the silence.

“Alissa, where is the compass ?” He reached for me again, but my specter knocked him aside. My hand was on the doorknob when he said gruffly, “Don’t make the same mistake as your father.”

I faltered, turning. “What are you talking about?”

“Briar visited him after she had me flogged. She saw something she shouldn’t have.

She returned later to search his study and found research— years’ worth of journals—documenting theories on how to destroy Spellmade objects.

He’d always believed the compass was too dangerous, and if we ever found it, he didn’t want it used against you. ”

My mind was working too slowly and too quickly all at once. The texts in Father’s study, the books about Spellmaking...

The last time I’d seen him, he’d emerged from my palace bedchamber. Waiting for me? Or searching , in case I’d already recovered the compass?

“Briar’s going to claim that Heron was the one who stole the compass,” Garret said.

“She’ll use his research as evidence that he was experimenting with it all these years.

She’ll say he harbored a long-standing family resentment toward the Capewells and had hoped to draw Erik’s wrath upon them.

She’ll claim that the compass passed to you after Heron’s death—that you’ve been directing these copycats ever since.

” His temper guttered, his eyebrow scar slanting low.

“Even if Erik doesn’t believe her... he will understand what Briar didn’t.

He will realize why your father wanted that compass destroyed. ”

I couldn’t think past the sudden pounding in my ears.

The gaping wound in Father’s chest. His vacant face. The pool of his blood.

She’d hoped you would be more pliable without your father’s influence.

His journals had disappeared that night.

“What did she do?” I breathed.

Garret swallowed. “Please. Give me the compass and let this end. I can’t protect you.”

“What. Did. She. Do.”

His eyes swam with regret, and my stomach plunged. A slow-splintering ache threatened to fracture me open. Because with excruciating clarity, I realized I’d killed the wrong person.

My father’s murderer was still breathing.

Garret backed away, hands raised. “Briar saw Heron’s research as a betrayal—as an affront to the Hunters’ Mark. By the time I knew what she’d planned—”

“You held me as I wept.” The words were a whisper. A denial.

Briar had cleaved through my father’s heart— his heart his heart his heart —

No.

Ice spilled into me—freezing my blood, sealing the fissures of my pain before I could rupture.

Briar had cleaved—out of spite—through my father’s tattoo .

“I don’t want you to share his fate.” Garret’s voice became a distant hum. “I didn’t know what she would do—”

My specter snapped around his throat.

He gasped, eyes flaring. He fumbled for his blazer.

I sent another wave rushing into him, and he slammed to the opposite wall. Pinned like a moth on a board.

“Alissa.” His body twitched under the rippling force of my specter. “I swear, I wouldn’t—”

“Wouldn’t what? Lie to me? Threaten my father?” I coiled my specter tighter, ignoring the strangled sound he made. “You’ve already proved what you are. You would hurt anyone to save yourself.”

“Not you,” he wheezed. “I would never hurt you like that.”

“Try.” I stalked forward. “You’re a Hunter, aren’t you? Fight me like you fought those Wielders. Kill me like you killed my father.”

My vision tunneled, stark red, my specter throbbing around me—but not like the night in the ballroom when it had spilled beyond my control.

This time I was pouring it out.

Garret kicked at the wall but didn’t try for his blazer again. He only begged with those dark, familiar eyes, his pulse raging under my hold.

“ Fight back! ” I shouted.

“Please, Alissa. Pl— ” He choked on the word.

I was killing him and I didn’t care. I didn’t care.

A clink sounded—too far away to matter. Then a slow, steady hiss.

Fog engulfed me before I knew what was happening. It crammed down my throat, clung to my skin, nipped like wasp stings at my specter until the power hurtled back into me.

Garret and I slammed to our knees in the same moment—both heaving and spluttering, clawing at our necks. His figure swam amid ash and smoke, and I instinctively reached for him—a beacon. An anchor.

Something pricked the back of my neck, and my body went loose. I didn’t feel the impact of hitting the marble.

Through the haze, I saw that Garret’s pleading eyes weren’t fixed on me anymore but on the space above me.

“This explains a great deal,” Briar said. “What a waste of Capewell blood.” Then her last words—chasing me into darkness, suffusing my failing body with fear: “The king will be so pleased.”