Page 61 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

T he first thing I noticed was the wrongness inside me. The second was the ice-hard surface under my ribs. My hair hung loose, grazing a sore spot at my nape. I couldn’t remember taking out the hairpins.

I opened my eyes, and the darkness stole my breath. My chambers were never this dark. It took several attempts to push into a sitting position. As my shoes skimmed the surface beneath me, I realized the pointed heels had been snapped off. I reached to inspect them, and my bracelets jangled.

I paused. These were too heavy to be my bracelets.

I grasped my wrist and found the weighted iron of manacles. I tugged, and the chains rattled again—not running between my wrists but connecting to a shadowy place behind me. I blinked frantically, willing my vision to adjust.

What had happened?

I’d been killing Garret. Had I killed him? Raw panic surged within me at the thought, but—

No. He’d collapsed, coughing, as the room had dissolved. Because Briar had been reproducing the copycats’ canisters. As I inhaled the bitter stench of dullroot clinging in my hair, I remembered why I hadn’t cared about killing Garret. Why I still shouldn’t care.

Briar had killed my father. And Garret had known.

My fury rekindled, and I yanked on my specter to wrench away the manacles.

And the wrongness finally made sense.

That dullroot fog had been a mere echo, like the scent of wine before the first heady sip. Because now, the poison was in my blood —throbbing like mercury, sticky and heavy and sickening. My specter bounded around my body, unable to break the skin.

It was trapped. I was trapped.

“This isn’t the birthday gift I was expecting.”

Torch flames burst to life, drenching my surroundings in a sinister orange glow.

I was on a cell floor, confined by three solid black walls and one of thick iron bars.

For a moment, with the bars’ shadows cutting across the harsh planes of his face, it seemed as though Erik were the one imprisoned.

But from the way he looked down at me—with bleak, imperious eyes—there was no mistaking which of us was the captive.

“I want you to do something for me,” he said, voice chilling in its softness.

“I want you to imagine that scene in the ballroom. My anticipation in awaiting your return. The speech prepared. Celebrations arranged. Imagine Briar Capewell approaching to summon me away.” The torch sputtered in its holder, light dancing in his eyes.

“Now imagine how I must have felt walking into that parlor and seeing you —the woman I’d planned to marry—lying in that filthy ash. ”

I was hardly breathing. To hold Erik’s gaze went against every survival instinct; his gaze was one that dominated, that demanded submission from its subjects. I resisted the urge to cower against the back wall, where the trail of my chains began.

“She told me you revealed yourself when you attacked the Capewell boy. Why?”

It was less a query than a demand, and I had to swallow to unstick my words. “They killed my father.”

“Hmm, I guessed as much. Yet the boy is still alive. Your father, still dead. So I ask: Was it worth it?”

The first hints of rage glimmered beneath his composure. Still, I held his stare, hands fisted to hide their tremors.

“Briar spouted a fascinating tale.” Erik turned to pace before the bars.

“She told me that the Hunters’ compass—the tracker of Wielders, the object I demanded they reclaim from this copycat group—had been stolen by the late Lord Heron Paine.

In part, to draw my wrath upon the Capewells he loathed.

But mostly to protect his Wielder daughter. ”

The back of my neck bristled. It was exactly what Garret had warned me about. Having failed to exploit my influence with the king, Briar had decided to frame my father—and me , by extension.

But it wasn’t until I’d revealed my specter that she’d realized what a fitting scapegoat I would make.

“Briar brought me ample evidence: Lord Heron’s journals, detailing the most remarkable research on Spellmade objects.

I doubt Briar understood half of it, but I certainly did.

Your father was more brilliant than they realized.

” Erik stopped pacing, fixing me with his full attention.

His jacket still glittered with those fealty pins, my xerylite centered right above his heart.

“Briar told me not to fear, for the compass wasn’t lost. Lady Alissa had merely stashed it away.

Briar was eager to take you to her hold and wring its whereabouts from you. Can you guess what I told her?”

When I didn’t reply, Erik chuckled, making me flinch. “Come, now. This is an easy one.” His voice dropped. “I told her I wouldn’t have anyone touch you but me.”

Slowly, he lifted a key and turned it through the lock.

My heartbeat kicked up, my specter shriveling at his approach. His cape pooled as he joined me on the floor, less than an arm’s length away. But he didn’t reach for me. He just looked me over, disappointed, and sighed.

“You have been so very foolish. What do you have to say for yourself?”

I glared at him—this man I’d nearly married, whose nature I’d tried to sweeten, whose power I’d tried to claim for myself. My face heated with fury and mortification. Leaning as close as the chains allowed, I whispered, “ I see you. ”

The torch flames crackled over a hair-raising silence.

Then Erik’s face split with a knowing smile—a smile best saved for people who shared a secret. “I told you. You’re the only one who ever could.”

He reached into his pocket, and my breathing quickened.

I hadn’t understood how the attacker in my chambers had acquired the silver-toed boots of the palace guards.

I hadn’t questioned how the copycats had obtained their eurium when Erik had purchased most of the ores at the beginning of his reign.

At my darkest point over the last weeks, I’d pulled away from everyone in my life. Maybe this is what the keeper wants , Tari had said. For you to be alone.

Yet throughout it all, there had been one constant. One person who had never balked at my pain or anger but had instead fed ravenously from both.

Now a deep dread plunged to my gut as Erik drew his hand from his pocket.

The language wasn’t as dead as I’d thought , Keil’s note had read. Someone recognized the symbol after all. And there he’d drawn the copycats’ emblem, followed by the stomach-churning translation:

Gods cannot stand alone.

My specter puddled inside me as Erik slowly opened his palm.

And revealed the bronze case of the compass shining within.

I met his eyes, tears streaking my vision. I now knew why those prison tunnels hadn’t seemed suitable to host humans.

Because from the beginning, Erik had called us creatures .

“Didn’t I say I wanted more than my predecessors?

” He spoke slowly, his bright gaze steady on mine.

“Didn’t I say I couldn’t stand alone to achieve such greatness?

Our world is on the precipice of an immense change—a new era of conquest, in which every nation shall blaze with the colors of Daradon.

.. and this compass will lead us there. ”

With rising horror, I looked again to the compass’s case—ornate yet unassuming, about the diameter of a tealight.

“How?” The whisper dropped off my tongue, and I instantly regretted speaking. Because, as if in answer, Erik unclasped the lid.

Blood rushed to my limbs, my specter coiling again as the compass’s glassy face reflected the flames. Though Erik had been the keeper all along, he must have never thought to consult the compass around me until this moment.

And now I had nowhere to hide.

The needle stirred anxiously at first, flicking in every direction—and for a moment, I thought my specter had curled itself tight enough that I wouldn’t be targeted. That I was safe, that he had no proof, and I needed only to hold out a little while longer—

Then the needle rallied into a swift, all-consuming spin.

And stopped directly on me.

I gasped as my specter gushed toward the needle, rocking me forward. The dullroot dug its claws deeper in response. I swallowed against the ache, panting as everything inside me felt primed to burst.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Erik murmured, revoltingly calm. “The Ansoran Spellmakers forged this compass from the raw power of molted specters. Do you think such a mighty instrument was created for the mere purpose of Hunting?”

“You Hunted those Wielders,” I rasped, fighting the strain.

He laughed under his breath—a sound that made me want to shield my face from his inevitable temper-snap.

“Can’t you feel it?” he whispered, almost reverent. He ran his thumb over the domed glass. “This compass doesn’t point to Wielders. It points to specters .” His voice darkened. “Wielders just get in the way.”

A primal terror seized me. I couldn’t comprehend his distinction. But as my specter leaned all its weight against me, building in pressure with an ear-humming force, I somehow sensed exactly where it ended and I began.

And the power that had always been mine—that should’ve been me —suddenly felt as foreign as somebody else’s arm attached at my shoulder.

“Now you understand why I had to take it from the Capewells,” Erik said, though I understood nothing except the sudden urge to cling tighter to my specter than ever before.

“How could they be trusted with such an object? They descend from mercenaries— pests —always scavenging for power, showing no loyalty or dedication.” He smiled dryly. “And yet even pests can be leashed.”

My eyes widened, pained tears glassing them over. I’d understood Erik’s poetic punishment of the Capewells—picking them off individually, as they’d always picked off Wielders. But I hadn’t understood the dark extent of those similarities.

Erik was methodically subduing the Capewells, just as the Crown had once subdued the Wielders of Daradon. Making them forget their strength in numbers—even eliciting a perverse gratitude in those left behind.

Because fear leashed people far better than chains.

“The rise in Huntings finally scared Briar into a confession,” Erik continued. “And I ordered them to reclaim the compass I knew they could never find. They were so intent on avoiding my wrath that they never suspected I’d committed the very murder they’d tried to conceal.”

A chill gripped me. Seeing my expression, Erik laughed again.

“Yes, I killed Wray Capewell myself. I was fifteen, newly crowned, and he was my first. The poor man was so stunned that he didn’t even try to fight me.

” Erik’s expression turned wistful, caught in happy memory.

“It’s a power like no other, to hold a life in your hands. To snuff it out like a flame.”

The pressure inside me built without release, my taut skin throbbing. Even the compass’s needle began to shudder, as though struggling to maintain its vicious hold on my power.

“So get it over with,” I said through rattling teeth. Because now that Erik knew what I was, a quick death was all I could hope for.

A little smile inched around his mouth.

Then he snapped the compass lid shut and severed the strain on my specter. I went limp, almost tipping onto him—lowering in an involuntary bow. One hot teardrop spilled over my lashes, splatt ing onto his lap.

As he repocketed the compass, my specter buried itself in the depths of my body, quivering from the violation. I wanted to wrap my arms around myself—around it —in protection from the torment to come.

A quick death had been too much to hope for. I’d already seen at the Opal that Erik liked to savor every morsel of human suffering. And after the way I’d toyed with him these past weeks... my suffering would be the sweetest he’d ever tasted.

I was breathing wetly, too tattered to resist as he tipped me up by my chin—just as he had during the fealty ceremony—and forced me to meet his eyes.

“What did I tell you?” His voice was soft, lashes low as he took me in. “Queens do not bow.”

I froze. Because the way he looked at me now, with a wry smile and a growing air of mischief...

That image from the Opal hurtled back to me—flames licking around the man’s red throat, concealing the evidence of my Wielding.

Then another scene, in the ballroom, with Erik’s grip around my elbow. Leave it , he’d said, saving me from touching the dullroot on those glass shards.

Again— always —saving me from exposure.

Now Erik’s thumb grazed my mouth and stilled against my bottom lip. He said, with a note of teasing, “You really needn’t have worn those gloves.”

And I jerked back, air choking up my throat as my specter thrashed inside me.

Because for all these weeks, the king of Daradon had known exactly what I was.