Page 6 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

I ’d first met Garret one blustery morning when his adoptive father, Wray Capewell, had visited our estate.

Father had told me to play outside, away from the Hunter; while splashing in rain puddles, I found Garret shivering in Wray’s lacquered carriage, forgotten.

I invited him inside for cinnamon milk, and when Wray had scolded him for taking handouts like a street urchin, I “accidentally” tipped steaming milk down the man’s trousers.

Father had withheld my desserts all week, but it had been worth it for the grateful smile twitching around Garret’s mouth.

And when, months later, I told him about my specter, I hadn’t glimpsed a lick of judgment in his awed reaction.

He judged me now.

As I twirled my mother’s lucky coin over a tendril of my specter, Garret watched, tight-lipped and wary, as though it might shoot down his throat.

My mother had been Hunted mere weeks after my birth, and this coin was all I possessed of her—lighter than real gold, with a chip on the circumference, as if a tiny person had taken a bite.

Garret must have recognized it—or he simply didn’t want to risk touching my dirty specter —because he didn’t seize the coin like he probably should have.

Wielding an object was always dangerous; though I alone saw my specter, rippling like a heat wave around a fire, witnesses might see the coin held invisibly aloft, and I would be exposed.

But right now, sweating in a heap of satin, heart beating faster than the clattering wheels over the Verenian roads, I needed the sense of release only Wielding could offer.

For eighteen years, I’d managed my fear, balancing on the knife’s edge between guilt and gratitude.

The Hunters’ compass couldn’t target Wielders beyond a certain distance, Father always assured me, and the Capewells had no reason to consult it in my presence.

As long as I was careful, I was safe. But tonight had marked the eleventh Hunting in two months, with the largest body count yet.

And the background hum of my dread was quickly whirring into panic.

What had warranted this torrent of slaughter after two centuries of a drip-pace? Were the Capewells finally picking off the last of Daradon’s Wielders? I’d never wanted my father to experience the pain of outliving his child. But if the Huntings continued like this...

Did I truly have as much time left as I’d wanted to believe?

My mother’s coin spun faster, and Garret’s fists tightened in his lap. Even he couldn’t protect me if someone saw me now. More than that—I wasn’t sure he would want to.

So, as the street festivities grew louder, I released the coin and forcibly withdrew my specter.

Garret exhaled. “So, Erik’s in the market for a bride.”

“In the market?” I shifted uncomfortably, hot-faced and agitated after an hour in the carriage. “I’m not a sack of grain. He’s not trying to buy me.”

“Isn’t he?”

I opened my mouth, then remembered the lemon cakes and sank back.

“Everyone saw how he looked at you,” Garret said. “They’ll be lobbying for your favor.”

“Is that why Briar sent you to the estate today? She wants me to endear her to the nobles?”

Garret lifted the curtain and looked onto the square, overflowing with music and dancers and syrup cakes, all glittering under the lantern-strung canopy. The light dappled his face in one long, moving streak. “That’s not why I was at your estate.”

I was about to probe when I saw him roll his wrist under the oath band, restless. As though he couldn’t elaborate without breaching whatever vow he’d made upon joining the Capewells’ service.

The vow he would have to cut off his hand to break.

We jostled onto a residential street, and his gaze tightened on the red smudge across Marge’s door—the last vestige of the Hunters’ Mark that Tari and I hadn’t managed to erase.

“I heard the last Hunting in Vereen was close to your estate,” he murmured. “I hadn’t realized how close.”

Too close. I fidgeted with my mother’s coin, my specter twitching to spin it again.

“She was young,” Garret continued. “Unmarried. She left nobody behind.”

“Nobody to miss her, you mean?”

He dropped the curtain, stone-faced. “If they suspect a Wielder community here, they might search this area for the rest.”

They. As if he didn’t classify himself among them.

He wedged a little finger under his oath band. Swallowed. Then: “You should join court for your eighteenth season. The palace could be the safest place for you right now.”

We rolled onto the paths of my estate, and I gathered my skirts. I didn’t know what range of distance the compass covered; my home might fall inside its boundary if the Hunters searched here again, and with Marge gone, I may well be the next Wielder in the vicinity.

But with the fresh memory of the king’s eyes grazing over me, Garret had chosen the wrong night for his appeal.

“If you believe any place so near the king could be considered safe ,” I said, “then you don’t know the king.”

Not like I did.

I opened the door to a rush of air, and Garret captured my arm. He hesitated, eyes flicking between me and the house.

“What?” I bit out.

He frowned toward my white-knuckled hold on the door, then slowly withdrew his hand. “You don’t have to end up like her.”

My specter flared with my temper.

“She was my friend.” I tumbled onto the drive. “And her name was Marge .”

I went to slam the door when Garret said softly, “I wasn’t talking about your friend.”

I froze, breath snagging. He hadn’t been alluding to the trace of paint on my nails but to the coin between my fingers.

My mother’s coin.

You don’t have to end up like her.

I glanced over my shoulder. With the nighttime flies whirring like rain-drizzle around him, Garret might have been that boy again, shivering and forgotten—if not for those guarded eyes, the grimly set mouth. A part of me would always mourn the loss of him. But tonight, that part was quiet.

“If you want to wait for my father,” I said, pocketing the coin, “you’re waiting here.”

In a cruel mirror-reversal of the day we’d met, I left him on the drive, staring after me.

Amarie was waiting at the door, warm light streaming around her shoulders. “Your father?”

“Still in Henthorn,” I said, heading for the kitchens. I was less hungry than restless, but that seemed a good enough reason to raid the pantry. “I fell sick from the roses, and he made me leave early.”

Amarie would learn about the Hunting soon enough, and I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. To acknowledge the feeling of the noose, slowly tightening around me.

Her steps clacked after me. “He sent you with that boy ?”

“Yes, because between the absent ambassador and the king’s proposal, I hadn’t suffered enough.”

Amarie grabbed my hand, halting me. Her wide eyes reflected the candlelight. “The king proposed?”

“Not outright.” I sighed, extricating my fingers. “But my sudden exit won’t go unnoticed.”

“Your father won’t like this.”

“You can’t tell him,” I said, already cursing myself.

Amarie had worked in this house since her teenage years—had grown up with my father—and she was too loyal to him to ever really serve as my secret-keeper.

“By the time I return to Henthorn, Erik will have forgotten about me.” Though my specter twisted in protest, I knew that even meeting the ambassador wasn’t worth joining court. Nothing was worth the king’s attention.

“Men like King Erik don’t forget, Alissa. The longer he cannot have you, the more he will want you.”

I went to object— the king is fickle, shallow —but true fear had deepened the groove between her brows. And suddenly all I could remember was the eagerness in Erik’s eyes when I’d started to refuse him.

Reality hit me. I’d refused the king of Daradon. And now I was his challenge, a prize deer in a royal hunt. He didn’t necessarily want me . He just wanted to mount my head on his wall. And if, while in pursuit, he discovered my secret...

Well, the head-mounting would take a more literal turn.

“Amarie,” I whispered, horror rising, “what do I—?”

A crash shook through the manor, startling the words off my tongue. Then shouting—voices I didn’t recognize. And among them—

Garret.

I didn’t think. I was already running toward the thumping and yelling and shattering glass. My specter pulsed around my body, pumping me faster through the halls. My blood thundered with one name, one purpose. Garret, Garret, Garret .

I rounded a corner and smacked against him. The relief almost knocked me over.

But Garret pushed me backward, his breath hot on my face. “Run, Alissa.” He looked to Amarie, who panted behind me. “Run .”

Time seemed to slow as I looked over Garret’s shoulder and saw the glint of a battle-axe. For a moment, nothing existed but those wicked double blades. Nothing but the man’s gloved fist, tightening around the handle. The roaring in my head.

Then Garret shoved me into the parlor, and time sped up once more. He slammed the door and pushed a desk across it, the screech singing in my teeth.

“Out the back!” He yanked me toward the opposite door.

And stopped short as three more figures stalked from that doorway. All were hooded and weapons-strapped, with black masks concealing everything but their eyes.

I began to tremble.

This was really happening. The Capewells had finally found me out.

They prowled closer, and my breaths sawed out hot and fast, the scene taking on a nightmare quality. I’d expected royally embellished uniforms, indicating their service to the Crown. I’d expected to recognize individuals among them, even masked.

I’d been wrong on both fronts. I must’ve never met these particular Hunters, because I couldn’t identify anyone amid this display of worn, armored leather and combat knives.

I would never know which of my family members had been sent to kill me.

Garret tugged me behind him. “Be calm, Alissa.” He would reason with them—tell them they’d made a mistake.