Page 110 of Thorn Season
We seemed to harden in the same moment, each resigned to our positions on the battleground—on opposite ends, as we had been all along.
“I’m sorry, Lady Alissa.” He drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “I cannot help you. And I do not believe your threats.”
It could’ve been the words or the severity of his tone, but I knew this was no longer the man who’d trailed his specter down my spine atop the balcony. Nor was this the ambassador who’d handled those dullroot glass shards with a feigned smile.
This was the soldier who’d fought in the Western War. The commander of the Wielders who’d attacked my estate.
This was the man who saw me as a Hunter’s daughter.
So I would give him a Hunter’s daughter.
“You’re not only gambling with your life now,” I said, dangerously soft. “What do you think Erik will do to Carmen when he discovers she’s trying to steal his crown?”
“You wouldn’t throw her to the wolves,” Keil said. He sounded uncertain.
“No?” I lifted my chin, my smile dripping poison.“Dare me.”
Keil swallowed, and I knew he saw the truth in my eyes. Saw that, for the first time, I wasn’t bluffing.
“Carmen is a good person,” he bit out.
I choked on a laugh. “You still don’t understand? There areno good people. Your Wielders aren’t good, and the princess isn’t good, and the sympathizers you watch in awe aren’t good. Shall I tell you how I know that? It’s because I watched them, too. I watched them drop their staffs and fall silent as one of their own was dragged forward. I watched as the king’s guards tied the man to a lantern pole and the king ordered them to—” I gasped, my specter surging.
After four years, that day at the Opal still had so much power over me.
“The sympathizers juststood there,” I said through my teeth. “The guards didn’t need to hold them back. Because nobody tried to stop it.”
Keil’s face had lost its color, stunned and bewildered. But he recovered quickly. “They were afraid,” he said.
“They werecowards. Erik tested them that day, and they failed.”
“And what of you?” Keil narrowed his eyes. “If your beloved husband-to-be delivered the same sentence to another, what would you do?”
“It doesn’t matter what I’d do. I don’t profess my beliefs and then back down when those beliefs are challenged.”
“How could you, when you have no beliefs to profess? You have faith in nothing but futility and hopelessness. I pity the way you must live.”
“Of course you do. Because despite your honor and your faith and your untested beliefs, you can always return to your empire. And it won’t matter how many Wielders you save along the way or how many battlefields you return from. You will always be free to Wield as easilyas you breathe.” A sneer curled my lips. “Look around you,” I said. “Everyone else is suffocating.”
My heart was slamming, fire rushing to my cheeks; my fists shook at my sides. Keil saw it all—my violent pain and resentment—and his own anger guttered, as if my unraveling had brought him back to himself.
His brows gathered, his gaze searching, searching, like I’d sparked something in his awareness, and he could almost see me clearly—
Dangerous.Too dangerous. I turned before his understanding took root.
“Alissa.” Keil’s hand closed around mine, and I ripped away.
“Don’t.”
Don’t speak my name with that familiarity. Don’t look at me with that wretched affection in your eyes.
Keil must have read the words in my expression because his face took on that pained look again.
“You have no right,” I snarled.
He retreated, his almost-discovery evaporating with the movement. “I’m sorry.”
Keil had only been half-right that night in the city. I always looked for the worst in people, but I hadn’t in him. I’d gotten swept away in the current of him, so quick and unexpected that even now, something deep within me panged at having extinguished the light in his eyes.
