Page 8 of Thorn Season (Thorn Season #1)

C rackling torches. Flickering heat.

I inhaled the scent of earth and rotting wood, mingled with the saccharine aftertaste of nightmilk threatening to drag me back under.

My eyes quivered open. Dark, rock-hewn walls curved around me, rippling with torchlight.

An earth-packed floor sprawled at eye level, strewn with loose rocks that should’ve nipped my bare arms. But a thick quilt separated me from the ground, my head angled so the hairpins wouldn’t bite into my scalp.

As the grogginess faded, guilt took its place. Heavy, smothering guilt that made me want to curl up and wait for the Hunters to finish the job.

What would I do without you, my girl?

My father would outlive his only child. He would come apart from the loss. Though he couldn’t bear to talk about my mother’s Hunting, I knew he’d only survived it because he’d had to be strong for me. But now...

My specter poured around me like the gauze of a death-veil—solemn, grieving—palpitating with the torch-flicker.

Then I jerked upright, blinking when my vision spun. Impossible, and yet... my specter flowed free, unhindered.

They hadn’t dosed me with dullroot while I’d been unconscious.

I braced myself to stand, newly alert, but leaned too hard on my right hand and winced. A bandage wrapped my palm.

I unraveled it, confused—then remembered too late that I’d cut myself on broken crystal. Salve glistened along a shallow slice in my palm, slightly numbing the area.

The Hunters had tended my wound?

I hauled myself up, and my shoe connected with something round—an apple, now rolling across the ground until it plonk ed against a wooden door.

Heart slamming, I peeked through the keyhole. A torchlit passage stretched outside. Judging from the earthen walls, I had to be underground.

I pulled the door handle. Locked. I loosed a curl of my specter—then stilled it.

Don’t show them , Garret had said. But hadn’t the Hunters’ compass already identified me as a Wielder? They wouldn’t have brought me here unless—

A chill stole over me, my specter thinning out in open air.

The Capewells must have been waiting for me to unlock this door. I’d made a mockery of their family dynasty, and now Briar wanted me to sign the confession.

She wanted me to nail my own coffin shut before she buried me.

I could remain and plead innocent, using my confinement as proof. But could I stop them from torturing an admission out of me? The vicious image flashed: Briar shattering my bones— enjoying it.

If I possessed any chance of returning to Father, I had to take it now.

My specter jittered through the keyhole, producing a click ; the door opened silently. I paused, listening for far-off movement. Then I bundled my skirts and staggered ahead.

The walls smeared past me, the torch heat drying my eyes. I counted the dead ends—three, four, five. Dirt burrowed into my velvet shoes, chafing my feet.

Six dead ends. Seven.

My breathing was growing frantic when voices trickled toward me.

I stumbled outside an earth-carved room, my shadow wavering. I pressed a trembling hand over my mouth and peered inside. The four Hunters sat around a rickety table, masked and hooded, their matte leather armor absorbing the torchlight.

“It was a mistake,” the largest one said. I flinched, recognizing his graveled voice. The battle-axe ran along his spine, its twin blades curving like wings. This was the Hunter who’d handed me the nightmilk. “We should’ve taken the boy, too.”

Another Hunter scraped back his hood and mussed his buttery-blond hair, the ends falling to his shoulders. “Keil only said the girl.”

“Keil also said she’d be alone.”

“You should be glad she wasn’t.” A husky female voice issued from the smallest figure—the one who’d punched Garret, then held a knife to his throat. “At least we had some fun before we left.” She clenched her fists, brown skin straining over bleeding knuckles.

My legs nearly folded. How badly had they beaten Garret for his insubordination?

For a white-hot moment, rage clouded my fear, and my specter swelled inside me—

“Goren’s just mad he got shoved that hard by someone half his size,” the blond Hunter said. “Bad for his reputation, you know?”

The largest Hunter— Goren —glowered at him, and my specter shrank again at the look. I couldn’t place his name in what I remembered of the Capewell family tree. “The boy could get in the way,” Goren said. “He could stop him.”

The woman chuckled. “Then we’ll start sending little pieces—”

“Great gods, Osana.” The blond Hunter’s eyes went wide. “You have a problem, you know that?”

“Oh, so you’d rather—?”

“Enough.” The last Hunter gave the woman a stony look. Lean and long-limbed, he was the one who’d raised his hand to me in the parlor. “You saw the boy when we took her,” he said quietly. “He won’t get in the way.”

“Dashiel’s right.” The blond Hunter stood and adjusted his bandolier—a sash spiked with black throwing knives. “You don’t fight that hard for someone you don’t care about.”

I swallowed thickly. I couldn’t interpret most of their conversation—couldn’t recognize any of their names. But I understood that Garret had fought for me until the end.

It was the second time he ever had. And the second time he’d lost.

“Where are you going?” Goren demanded.

The blond Hunter grabbed a waterskin from the table. “To check on our guest. Make sure the way you drove that carriage didn’t give her whiplash.”

I jumped back and darted around the corner.

My strides were aimless—each frantic breath a rasp of dirt—but I couldn’t stop when the Hunter was approaching my empty cell.

I understood now: They were toying with me before the true torment began. Goren would use his axe. The woman would delight in finer torture, cutting off pieces of me until my specter poured out, hot and thick as blood.

Vermin , Briar had said—because she’d made me a rat in these tunnels, scrambling for escape.

She would make sure I never saw my father again.

I was beginning to shake when I rounded a corner and smacked into something smooth and solid and distinctly human.

I skidded back—almost fell—when strong hands steadied me at the waist, gathering me against an armored chest. I gaped up into an unmasked face. Into brown eyes so light they were almost golden.

Those eyes dipped over me and widened. The man’s grip went loose.

I lurched off his chest, a scream rising in my throat. My heels caught the back of my skirts. I sucked a sharp breath; my world tipped.

And I felt it. An embrace of power molding behind me, cushioning my fall.

A specter .

It thrummed against my skin with a steady heartbeat, familiar and foreign all at once. I didn’t move—didn’t breathe —as the embrace scooped me upright and my feet found solid ground.

A last graze of pressure, and the specter broke like a wave around my shoulders. The man inhaled deeply, smiling as if it filled him up.

“You’re a Wielder,” I breathed. Tears burned my throat.

His laughter was low and melodic. “Don’t worry, my lady. We aren’t half as terrible as the rumors claim.” He winked. “Not all of us, at least.”

My specter trembled, hands twitching to reach for his honey-bright skin—to grab his broad shoulders and shake , just to prove he was real.

He leaned back, a charming smile still playing around his mouth. “I could’ve sworn I locked that door.”

The words doused me like cold water.

The absent dullroot, my captors’ rugged attire, their unfamiliar names. Don’t show them , Garret had said, because he’d known in the parlor what I hadn’t yet understood. That my greatest fear had been warping reality. These people didn’t know what I was...

Because they weren’t the Hunters.

The realization crashed into me, and for one mortifying second, I thought I would collapse from relief—

Then the man’s meaning sank in. If I hadn’t been Hunted, I’d been kidnapped—and I could easily guess why kidnappers would target a ruling lord’s daughter. This man—this Wielder —had brought me here as ransom. And he’d locked the door behind me.

A Wholeborn would not have gotten out.

I gulped, my mind racing as the silence stretched taut. “I picked the lock.”

The man lifted an eyebrow.

“With my hairpins,” I added, hoping the lie was half-credible.

He slanted his head, gold-brown hair almost tickling the curved ceiling. “I don’t know many nobles who can pick locks.”

My eyes narrowed. “I don’t know many Wielders who kidnap nobles.”

“Do you know many Wielders?”

“Do you ?”

His smile deepened. “A few.”

Before I could digest those words, footsteps pounded behind me. I whirled to find Goren storming through the passage, torch flames juddering in his wake. I staggered back toward the Wielder, my specter rising inside me.

Then Goren jerked to a stop. Another stride—and he pitched away again, as if an invisible wall stood before him.

My eyes widened, searching what seemed like empty space.

The Wielder must have erected his specter in front of Goren, obstructing his path.

But unlike with my own specter, I found no ripple-shimmer to betray its position.

I didn’t know how far this Wielder could stretch his power, or how he chose to mold it.

It could be anywhere at any time—harmless under the Wielder’s instruction, but so was a fist before it swung.

And, invisible to all but its own Wielder, a swing from a specter was one that nobody would see coming.

I hadn’t realized until now how unnerving that could be. How dangerous.

Goren rolled his neck. “We don’t know how she got out.”

“Apparently, our lovely friend can pick locks,” the Wielder answered smoothly.

Goren shot me a glare. I fumbled another step, wincing as I hit the Wielder’s armor.

The Wielder sighed, his chest grazing my back. “I’ll handle this, Goren.”

“She’s seen your face.”

My breath caught. I wasn’t supposed to escape that cell—to know my kidnappers’ faces. Now I was a liability.

“Yes, I noticed.” The Wielder shifted behind me. “An unfortunate complication.”