Page 69 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

I t was long past midnight, and no coach waited for me at Backplace.

Though I didn’t want to stop before leaving the capital, my left arm throbbed and my bloodied hands kept slipping from the reins. So, I dismounted behind a tavern, where textured-glass windows diffused enough murky light to see by. Then I assessed my arm.

I told myself it could’ve been worse; the arrow had skimmed me rather than piercing through. Still, my eyes watered at the sight—the open skin flaps, the gruesome slash of red. The more I looked, the less I believed that this was my arm, my wound.

But the pain was hammering now, tethering me to reality, so I rummaged through the saddlebag for something to stop the bleeding.

Perla had supplied me well, with a waterskin, a food parcel, and several items of fresh clothing. I’d learned enough from Tari to know that the wound would fester without a proper cleaning.

A mediocre cleaning would have to suffice.

Biting a mouthful of my cloak, I poured water over the gash. The pain doubled me over. I groaned around the fabric, eyes rolling back. Water ribboned down my arm and splattered my boots. Hot breaths sawed through me for several long seconds.

Once the nausea subsided, I tore a strip from a clean blouse and wrapped it around my arm, using my teeth to secure the knot.

Then I rinsed my hands, unbuckled the sheath belt, and peeled off the gown I’d been wearing for twelve days.

I transferred everything to the saddlebag—the rings, the shipping documents, my mother’s coin, the compass—and I was buttoning a new blouse when a tavern window cracked open.

I froze at the shock of light. Laughter streamed out with the fatty smell of cooking meat, figures drifting behind the glass. But none turned their heads toward me.

After five heart-racing seconds, I left my blood-soaked gown deflated over a bush. Then I rode on.

If I’d been more alert, I might have worried at the sudden influx of guards sweeping the streets—pulling over coaches and searching citizens at random, their whispers catching on the wind. An intruder. An attack at the palace.

But I was wilting in the saddle, bleary-eyed and aching.

And maybe that was precisely why the guards didn’t spare me a second glance as I rode right past them beyond the city border.

Sunset boat rides along Emberly River were a staple of Verenian summers.

Father and I had boarded a streamlined vessel every evening last year, carrying ripe apricots and olive loaves and a palette for his watercolor paints.

He’d painted the pink-and-amber sky, losing himself in his art, and I’d secretly wished for a craft worth losing myself in too.

The vessel I was currently trying to board in the dead of night was more beast than ship, and the open sea behind it was a far cry from the crystalline river that weaved around my province. The roaring water muffled the sharp hiss of my words, the misted air plastering my furrowed forehead.

I’d thought, after besting the king of Daradon and escaping the leader of his Hunters, that I’d overcome the last obstacles stopping me from reaching the ship secretly bound for Ansora. The ship that would carry me—and the compass—out of this stifling kingdom for good.

As it turned out, my last obstacle was an overseer named Ed.

And Ed was proving difficult to defeat.

“Your name’s not on the list,” he said, stroking his black goatee. “No name, no entry.”

“I was a last addition,” I insisted for the third time, flapping the shipping documents in his face. “Here. I have all the right papers.”

“You could’ve stolen those from anyone.”

A young man started elbowing ahead of me. At my glare, he retreated.

Ed snapped shut his book of names. “Listen, girl—”

“No, you listen. See that alley over there? Yes, the one behind the fishmongers, where they throw out the guts? I’ve spent two nights camped in that alley so I wouldn’t miss this ship.

” Truth. “I had to sell my steed to avoid attention”—also truth—“and I wasted half my coins on a physician who wouldn’t know how to stitch a flesh wound if it opened its mouth and gave him the instructions.

” Another miserable truth. “So you ”—I slapped the documents against his broad chest—“can either let me aboard or I will let myself aboard.”

A lie.

The only time I’d used my specter over the last two days was to reach for an apple. No longer confined to my internal grip, the power had gracelessly blasted the apple into the alley wall with a force that could’ve dismembered a full-grown man.

I wasn’t about to Wield that power against an actual man, no matter how irritating he was.

So, I maintained the arrogant sneer I’d perfected at court, and eventually he sighed.

“What was the name?”

“Dinah Summers,” I lied again.

“Proof?”

“I don’t have identity papers.”

“Not proof of identity,” he said, impatient.

Then I understood. So I took a tight breath—he really was pushing his luck—and aimed one hard blow toward his book of names.

The book shot fiercely out of his hand. Skidded across the dock. Would’ve fallen into the water if another power—probably his own—hadn’t kept it from slipping over the edge.

Ed rolled his eyes, seeming neither surprised nor impressed. “On you go, then. You’re holding up the line.”

I hurried aboard, wobbly with relief, and followed a deckhand’s instructions toward the hatch.

Dust spun through the beige-washed cabin—so vast it must have once been a cargo hold.

Sleeping mats scattered the wooden panels, and a dozen people already sat atop them, wringing their hands and whispering nervously.

The smart ones would stay vigilant until we departed, to make sure this voyage wasn’t a trick—a trap .

I was too exhausted to be smart. So I chose a mat, propped my saddlebag under my head, and collapsed into sleep.

I didn’t open my eyes until my stomach growled loud enough to wake me.

For a moment, I was disoriented. My tongue felt fuzzed with a sawdust taste, and a rumbling filled my ears. Then I remembered where I was, and I jolted upright.

The ship was moving. We’d left Daradon.

“The overseer handed those out while you slept,” someone said. A young curly-haired woman on the mat beside me pointed toward a brown-paper bundle. Inside I found corned beef, bread crammed with seeds and raisins, and a warm bottle of ale.

I was halfway through the food when I had to stop and blink at my surroundings.

With so much talking and moving, it was impossible to keep count. But I reached over a hundred before I lost my place.

Over a hundred Wielders that Carmen had helped liberate from Daradon.

I wish I’d asked her how she’d found them all—the people I’d waited eighteen years to meet. A few months ago, this sight alone would have sent me careening out of my body.

It might still have, if a slow throb wasn’t radiating down my arm, dampening every other feeling.

My wound had been a gory mess by the time I’d reached the Avanish harbor, and I’d had to visit a back-alley physician who may well have been a butcher for all the bloodstains on his overalls.

He’d handed me a bottle of white spirit and told me to drink while he stitched.

Then he’d given me a tonic to stave off infection—though I suspected it was mostly water—and I’d staggered from his workroom to empty my stomach in the canal.

Now I shimmied up my sleeve and peeled away the bandage. The tender skin pulled, and I hissed. Even in my drink-muddled state, I’d known that stitches shouldn’t look like this—bumpy and ugly and flaking dried blood.

“Need help?” the curly-haired woman asked.

“No.” I cleared my throat and added, “Thank you. I’m fine.”

The physician had been a necessity. I didn’t want anyone else’s hands on me for a while.

As I rewrapped the bandage, the woman glanced at my wrists—at the bruises and chafe-marks distinctly produced by manacles. I shouldered my saddlebag and labored above deck to escape the pity in her eyes.

I wasn’t the only one who’d needed escape. More people— Wielders —crowded the deck in groups, their voices lost over the rushing sea. Salt-fresh air blustered against me as I approached the rail, sunlight glaring across the water.

The coastline of Daradon was a smudge on the horizon.

I should have felt victorious. But I mostly felt tired.

I was leaving so much behind: Tari and Amarie, my province, my people.

.. and Garret. Garret , who’d chosen me over Briar when it had mattered most. She would kill him for it, if she hadn’t already.

His death would be another weight on my conscience.

But right now, no weight seemed heavier than the weight in my pocket.

Slowly, I brought out the compass.

I’d seen no signs of mourning during my days in Avanford. No black pearls strung across the windows.

Erik had survived.

I will find you, Little Thorn , he’d whispered as he’d bled. It will be in my hands again.

The words had chilled me because I’d felt the truth in them. As long as I remained keeper of the compass, Erik would search the world for me. I was tempted to throw the accursed thing into the sea, just to be rid of it.

But... I couldn’t.

This compass didn’t simply identify Wielders, as the Capewells had believed.

It possessed a greater purpose—a greater power .

And though I was still assembling theories regarding that power, I knew one fact for certain: My father had believed that its power could be destroyed.

Not lost. Not hidden away. Truly destroyed.

His conviction had gotten him killed—which convinced me, more than anything, that he’d been close to finding answers. That the only way to stop Erik—to stop anyone who shared Erik’s goals—was to finish what my father had started.

But I couldn’t do that without first understanding the true nature of the device in my hands.

I ran my thumb over the bronze case. Then I unlatched the clasp.

I hadn’t viewed the open compass since the first afternoon of my campout in Avanford. And now, just like then, the flash of light glanced up my blouse, across my vision, as I eased back the lid.

It’s as strong as diamond , Keil had once told me, with that dayglass shard in his hand. Under sunlight, it glows as if a rainbow has been captured within.

He was right. Beneath this open wash of sunshine, the glossy dome of the compass shone in vibrant hues.

Because, as I’d realized on that sunlit afternoon in Avanford... it was formed from dayglass.

The color shifted with every angle, radiating a dazzling light above its surface—the soft shimmer reminding me of a spectral ripple in the air. It was so entrancing that Keil had worried about Erik seeing a specimen of the material—not realizing that the king had possessed this one all along.

And now, under its translucent watercolor-swirl, the compass’s needle was beginning to stir.

I shut the case, snuffing out the haze of rainbow light. Stilling the needle before it could spin.

Ansoran Spellmakers had forged this compass from a material native to their lands.

Erik had rendered his emblem in ancient Ansoran—had emblazoned it across his weapons and his Wielder prison.

At first, I couldn’t fathom the reason. But for the last two days, the words on Keil’s note had bounced around my head: The language wasn’t as dead as I’d thought.

Someone recognized the symbol after all.

Recognized , he’d said. Not translated . It seemed an important distinction.

And it was the only lead I had.

So, I tucked the compass into my pocket and turned, squinting across the opposite horizon. The secrets of the compass began in Ansora.

I would begin there, too.