Page 65 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

I t was madness. I knew it was. Yet my aching legs plunged me quickly down the hallways, driven by a new spike of energy.

I knew the palace intimately now—where the maids congregated, where the guards were stationed. So although I was a mess of cold sweat and nerves as I reached the first staircase, I reached it unnoticed.

Then came the climb.

I labored up each step, desperately hoping nobody would catch me halfway. I paused at the top, teetering, then pressed onward.

This was the journey I’d started after I’d read Keil’s note. It felt strange to finish it from the opposite direction, an exhausted husk of the girl I’d been. But sheer willpower kept me moving until only a few turns remained.

Voices echoed ahead and I faltered, skidding on the marble. I waited. The voices didn’t retreat. So, I scrambled backward, catching my breath in a nearby corridor.

The voices droned on, and I mentally counted the seconds. Two minutes passed. Three. Four.

My thighs trembled. How long had I taken to climb the stairs? How long would it take to climb down?

Was I already out of time?

I peeked around the corner, but the speakers were beyond view, somewhere in an adjacent hallway. Maybe if I continued, they wouldn’t notice me.

I began to step out when someone clasped my shoulder. Panic flooded me as I turned, knees buckling—

Carmen took my weight against her.

“Alissa?” She held on until I regained my balance, her face stark white with shock. “What happened to you?”

I leaned back against the wall, blood rushing in my ears. This was too much. I needed to forget the compass. I needed to leave now .

But Carmen was studying me, a picture of uncertainty. “Erik said you were ill. Is that the same dress—?”

“No.” I stepped past her. Maybe I could still reach Backplace in time.

Carmen grabbed my elbow, frowning. “You’re clearly not well. I’ll bring a physician, and—” She paused as those voices drew nearer. Her eyes sparked with recognition, and I knew she’d heard him the moment I did.

Erik.

“Come, darling.” Carmen tugged my elbow. “Erik will know what to do.”

“ Don’t ,” I said, and Carmen went rigid.

She lowered her gaze to the knife I held, its blade pinching into her saffron bodice. “Alissa?” Her voice quivered. “What are you doing?”

“Turn around and walk.”

“Walk—but—? Where? Alissa, please—” She was stalling, waiting for Erik to appear.

He couldn’t be much farther. I could almost make out his words.

Carmen sucked in a breath—

“Don’t call for him,” I said, hissing. “Walk to your suite. Now.” I pushed the knife until she lurched ahead.

I kept the blade on her spine all the way to the royals’ halls. She unlocked her suite, and I pushed her inside. Then I snatched her key, locked the door, and sagged against the wood.

My body vibrated with the remains of terror.

Erik had finished his meeting with the Capewells. How long until he visited the dungeons and realized I was missing?

“What’s the time?” I asked. Carmen whimpered, her arms wrapped around herself. “The time!” I shouted, and she jerked into movement, fumbling around the lounge until she found a pocket watch.

“Midnight,” she said. “Please, Alissa. I don’t know what you’re doing, but—”

I didn’t hear the rest.

I’d squandered Perla’s kindness. There would be no coach waiting for me in the city. No transport into Bormia. I would be stuck in this kingdom forever and Erik would find me—of course he would find me—and I might as well have stayed in that cell—

“Alissa?” Carmen’s voice yanked me from my spiral. She trembled in the sea of pink-on-brown that was her lounge. I’d broken into these chambers so often that the mismatched style was familiar now. I looked across the room, those occasions drifting back to me...

“It’s been twelve days,” I breathed. “The ship hasn’t left.”

I staggered for Carmen’s bedchamber and blew around like a storm—rummaging through the vanity, upturning garments.

I hadn’t dragged myself through Rose Season to collapse now. I would finish what I came here to do; I would stop Erik’s copycats from hurting anyone else.

I just needed another escape route.

“I know you’re helping the Ansorans transport Wielders out of Daradon,” I called. “The shipping documents were in your dresser, but you moved them. Where are they?”

Carmen shuffled inside, her teary eyes accusatory. “Keil wouldn’t tell me who he’d caught sneaking around my chambers. But I knew it was you.”

“Yes, very good. Now, where are the documents?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“I’m the one with the knife.”

“And I’m the princess of Daradon.” She raised her chin. “To threaten me is a prison sentence.”

I couldn’t contain my burst of laughter. “Look at me.” I gestured from my tangled hair to the filthy hem of my gown. “Where do you think I’ve been?”

Her red lips flattened.

I laughed again, returning to my search. “You’re fooling yourself if you think you know everything that goes on in this palace.”

She murmured, “I know what you are.”

My fingers stilled inside the dresser. I glanced around.

“I didn’t want to believe it at first,” she said. “You and your father always seemed different from the others. But then you arrived at court and latched onto Erik like a parasite. And when I found the coordinates to those prisons”—she shuddered—“I knew for sure: You Capewells are all the same.”

Capewells.

She thought I was a Hunter .

In my shock, her other words had almost slipped past me. Then they pierced with a twist of understanding.

“ You intercepted Junius’s note.”

Carmen swallowed. “I saw it under your door when I delivered your gown for Budding Ball. I didn’t know who’d sent it, but I knew it had to be important.

I checked the coordinates against a map, and the location was barren.

Then the tall girl—your friend—came to us in the gardens, saying you had a delivery from Vereen.

I thought it could be from the Capewells. ..”

“So, you broke into my chambers to see it?”

“You broke into mine first,” she snapped, then glanced at the knife and winced. “When I saw the map of the xerylite mines, I put the pieces together.”

“And you told the Ansorans to check the location,” I finished, shaking my head.

While I’d suspected Carmen and her mother of building those prisons, she’d suspected me . Did Erik realize he’d been playing us against each other, keeping either of us from looking his way?

I didn’t know. But I knew what he hadn’t planned for: Carmen’s secret alliance with Ansora.

The alliance that could still provide my own ticket to freedom.

“I need to know when that ship departs,” I said.

“So you can slaughter those Wielders like you tried to slaughter sympathizers with your initiative? If Sabira hadn’t called off her mercenaries—”

“Enough, Carmen!” I slammed the drawer and staggered forward. Carmen backed away, eyes fixed on the knife. “Stop pretending to care about the sympathizers and the Wielders and everyone else. I know you’re only helping them to further your own agenda.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I? You told me you would always remember Erik’s mercy toward your mother. Do you think he’ll extend you the same mercy once he learns you want his crown?”

Carmen suddenly flushed—but not with fear. With anger. “You mean Erik’s mercy when he forced my mother from her home? His mercy when he turned her friends against her? All to punish her for a crime she committed only because he didn’t possess enough mercy to spare her from my father’s hand?”

I jolted, almost dropping the knife. Some people are simply cruel. Fathering a child doesn’t erase that cruelty.

Carmen hadn’t been talking about Perla’s father at all.

“My mother killed him before he could turn his violence on me,” she said.

“Erik destroyed her for it. So yes, I want his crown. And yes, I would do almost anything to get it...” She inhaled deeply, the burst of color draining from her face.

“But not this. I swore to protect the Wielders on that ship, and I will die before I let a Hunter go near them.”

In the resounding silence, I grappled for any threat with which I could bend her enough to break. But as Carmen folded her hands in resignation, my knife drooped.

For so long, I’d inhaled the stench of Wholeborn cowardice and let it convince me of their collective blame.

But hadn’t sixty-three Parrians recently died trying to help Wielders?

Hadn’t the Jacombs risked their lives to bury their Wielder employees while Perla had risked herself for me ?

And Tari and Amarie and my dear tormented father who’d loved my mother more than anything and had drowned in his guilt for years so I wouldn’t share her fate?

Under the perpetual heat of his temperament, Erik had forged true sympathizers in Daradon. He’d even increased the Huntings—unafraid of risking rebellion—because, like me, he hadn’t realized the truth:

That although the kingdom hadn’t always been fighting in a way we’d recognized... it had been fighting.

Now this was Carmen’s time for battle—she who’d suffered under the king’s tyranny more intimately than perhaps anyone else.

But as this mismatched suite suggested, she’d inherited more from Nelle than people realized.

She would defend the vulnerable just as her mother had defended her. She would not help a Hunter.

But astonishingly... she would help a Wielder.

With shaking fingers, I transferred the blade to my left hand and extended the latticed handle.

“I’m the one who told Sabira to call off the mercenaries,” I said quietly. “The initiative was a ruse. I would never hurt my people.”

Carmen eyed the knife suspiciously. I stepped closer.

“You were right about my father. He wasn’t like the Hunters, and they killed him for it.

Just like they—” I hesitated. I’d trusted Perla blindly in the dungeons, too dazed to consider my choices.

But it was with full consciousness that I ignored every instinct I’d honed for eighteen years and chose to trust the Wholeborn princess of Daradon.

“Just like they killed my mother,” I finished.

“Why would they—?” Carmen stopped. Blinked. She’d answered her own question.

Why did the Hunters kill anyone ?

“Because she wasn’t allowed to exist,” I said.

Carmen’s realization was drawn out—eyes widening, face slackening—as if she were waking from a dream.

I imagined the memories replaying in her mind: Erik flying across the ballroom, my horror when Keil had stepped between us.

Carmen had seen it all. But like everyone else, she hadn’t really understood.

“It’s not possible,” she whispered, slowly shaking her head. “Prove it.”

Through these agonizing minutes, I hadn’t checked on my specter.

With a jerk of surprise, I realized the dullroot felt less like a lead weight upon me and more like a burial of smaller stones—still heavy but capable of being shifted with the right movements.

I tried to wriggle past the poison, but the more I twisted, the more those stones avalanched onto me.

“I can’t,” I gasped, winded. “You’ll have to trust me.” Like I’m trusting you , I added silently.

Carmen’s gaze skewered me, trying to root out a lie. I held her stare, my knife spanning the gap between us.

Finally, she took the handle and sailed toward her canopy bed. She slashed the side of her mattress and reached into the stuffing-clogged wound.

The shipping documents flapped in her hand.

I exhaled, reaching out, but she flicked them away.

“Who built those prisons under Vereen?” she asked, still wary.

“Erik,” I said, unflinching.

Carmen’s eyes narrowed, and I felt a current pass between us—a silent promise of alliance against a mutual enemy.

I left her suite with the knife at my hip and the shipping documents tucked inside my bodice.