Page 12 of Thorn Season
The room became too stifling, my skin too tight. I could still feel the king’s hands on me, and I was breathing fast, tasting roses on every breath—
Then Father’s arm banded around my shoulders, towing me through the crowd.
“The estate,” I gasped. “Amarie—”
“Not ours,” Father murmured. “The Jacombs’ estate.” He looked to where the Jacombs were extracting the news from a messenger, their faces carved with horror. “Their staff.”
My stomach turned. The Jacombs’ household had two dozen live-in staff members.
“How many?” I whispered.
Father’s neck tensed with a hard swallow. “All of them.”
Two dozen Wielders. Two dozen deaths.
The misery in Father’s eyes warred with relief—a relief that felt obscene in the wake of such slaughter.
I knew. Because I felt it too.
“I’ll take her home.” Garret appeared beside me, and my emotion kindled into rage.
“This doesn’t concern you,” I snapped.
But Father didn’t dismiss him; his gaze had darkened on Garret’s oath band.
“You worry too much, Heron.” Garret tugged his blazer sleeve, smiling blandly. “She’s perfectly safe with me.”
Father cast him a sharp look of warning. Then he kissed the top of my head and urged me forward. I would’ve tripped if Garret hadn’t grasped my elbow.
“I don’t need an escort—”
“Please, my girl.” Father’s voice warbled, cracking my resolve. “I need to be here. I’ll see you at home.”
As Garret steered me toward an arched exit, I caught a final glimpse of the ballroom.
The king’s eyes were searching the crowd.
4
I’d first met Garret one blustery morning when his adoptive father, Wray Capewell, had visited our estate. Father had told me to play outside, away from the Hunter; while splashing in rain puddles, I found Garret shivering in Wray’s lacquered carriage, forgotten. I invited him inside for cinnamon milk, and when Wray had scolded him for taking handouts like a street urchin, I “accidentally” tipped steaming milk down the man’s trousers. Father had withheld my desserts all week, but it had been worth it for the grateful smile twitching around Garret’s mouth. And when, months later, I told him about my specter, I hadn’t glimpsed a lick of judgment in his awed reaction.
He judged me now.
As I twirled my mother’s lucky coin over a tendril of my specter, Garret watched, tight-lipped and wary, as though it might shoot down his throat. My mother had been Hunted mere weeks after my birth, and this coin was all I possessed of her—lighter than real gold, with a chip on the circumference, as if a tiny person had taken a bite. Garret must have recognized it—or he simply didn’t want to risk touching mydirty specter—because he didn’t seize the coin like he probably should have.
Wielding an object was always dangerous; though I alone saw my specter, rippling like a heat wave around a fire, witnesses might see thecoin held invisibly aloft, and I would be exposed. But right now, sweating in a heap of satin, heart beating faster than the clattering wheels over the Verenian roads, I needed the sense of release only Wielding could offer.
For eighteen years, I’d managed my fear, balancing on the knife’s edge between guilt and gratitude. The Hunters’ compass couldn’t target Wielders beyond a certain distance, Father always assured me, and the Capewells had no reason to consult it in my presence. As long as I was careful, I was safe. But tonight had marked the eleventh Hunting in two months, with the largest body count yet.
And the background hum of my dread was quickly whirring into panic.
What had warranted this torrent of slaughter after two centuries of a drip-pace? Were the Capewells finally picking off the last of Daradon’s Wielders? I’d never wanted my father to experience the pain of outliving his child. But if the Huntings continued like this...
Did I truly have as much time left as I’d wanted to believe?
My mother’s coin spun faster, and Garret’s fists tightened in his lap. Even he couldn’t protect me if someone saw me now. More than that—I wasn’t sure he would want to.
So, as the street festivities grew louder, I released the coin and forcibly withdrew my specter.
