Page 13 of Thorn Season
Garret exhaled. “So, Erik’s in the market for a bride.”
“In the market?”I shifted uncomfortably, hot-faced and agitated after an hour in the carriage. “I’m not a sack of grain. He’s not trying to buy me.”
“Isn’t he?”
I opened my mouth, then remembered the lemon cakes and sank back.
“Everyone saw how he looked at you,” Garret said. “They’ll be lobbying for your favor.”
“Is that why Briar sent you to the estate today? She wants me to endear her to the nobles?”
Garret lifted the curtain and looked onto the square, overflowing with music and dancers and syrup cakes, all glittering under the lantern-strung canopy. The light dappled his face in one long, moving streak. “That’s not why I was at your estate.”
I was about to probe when I saw him roll his wrist under the oath band, restless. As though he couldn’t elaborate without breaching whatever vow he’d made upon joining the Capewells’ service.
The vow he would have to cut off his hand to break.
We jostled onto a residential street, and his gaze tightened on the red smudge across Marge’s door—the last vestige of the Hunters’ Mark that Tari and I hadn’t managed to erase.
“I heard the last Hunting in Vereen was close to your estate,” he murmured. “I hadn’t realized how close.”
Too close.I fidgeted with my mother’s coin, my specter twitching to spin it again.
“She was young,” Garret continued. “Unmarried. She left nobody behind.”
“Nobody to miss her, you mean?”
He dropped the curtain, stone-faced. “If they suspect a Wielder community here, they might search this area for the rest.”
They.As if he didn’t classify himself among them.
He wedged a little finger under his oath band. Swallowed. Then: “You should join court for your eighteenth season. The palace could be the safest place for you right now.”
We rolled onto the paths of my estate, and I gathered my skirts.I didn’t know what range of distance the compass covered; my home might fall inside its boundary if the Hunters searched here again, and with Marge gone, I may well be the next Wielder in the vicinity.
But with the fresh memory of the king’s eyes grazing over me, Garret had chosen the wrong night for his appeal.
“If you believe any place so near the king could be consideredsafe,” I said, “then you don’t know the king.”
Not like I did.
I opened the door to a rush of air, and Garret captured my arm. He hesitated, eyes flicking between me and the house.
“What?” I bit out.
He frowned toward my white-knuckled hold on the door, then slowly withdrew his hand. “You don’t have to end up like her.”
My specter flared with my temper.
“She was my friend.” I tumbled onto the drive. “And her name wasMarge.”
I went to slam the door when Garret said softly, “I wasn’t talking about your friend.”
I froze, breath snagging. He hadn’t been alluding to the trace of paint on my nails but to the coin between my fingers.
My mother’s coin.
You don’t have to end up like her.
