Page 143 of Thorn Season
It was trapped.Iwas trapped.
“This isn’t the birthday gift I was expecting.”
Torch flames burst to life, drenching my surroundings in a sinister orange glow. I was on a cell floor, confined by three solid black walls and one of thick iron bars. For a moment, with the bars’ shadows cutting across the harsh planes of his face, it seemed as though Erik were the one imprisoned. But from the way he looked down at me—with bleak, imperious eyes—there was no mistaking which of us was the captive.
“I want you to do something for me,” he said, voice chilling in its softness. “I want you to imagine that scene in the ballroom. My anticipation in awaiting your return. The speech prepared. Celebrations arranged. Imagine Briar Capewell approaching to summon me away.” The torch sputtered in its holder, light dancing in his eyes. “Now imagine how I must have felt walking into that parlor and seeingyou—the woman I’d planned to marry—lying in that filthy ash.”
I was hardly breathing. To hold Erik’s gaze went against every survival instinct; his gaze was one that dominated, that demanded submission from its subjects. I resisted the urge to cower against the back wall, where the trail of my chains began.
“She told me you revealed yourself when you attacked the Capewell boy. Why?”
It was less a query than a demand, and I had to swallow to unstick my words. “They killed my father.”
“Hmm, I guessed as much. Yet the boy is still alive. Your father, still dead. So I ask: Was it worth it?”
The first hints of rage glimmered beneath his composure. Still, I held his stare, hands fisted to hide their tremors.
“Briar spouted a fascinating tale.” Erik turned to pace before the bars. “She told me that the Hunters’ compass—the tracker of Wielders, the object I demanded they reclaim from this copycat group—had been stolen by the late Lord Heron Paine. In part, to draw my wrath upon the Capewells he loathed. But mostly to protect his Wielder daughter.”
The back of my neck bristled. It was exactly what Garret had warned me about. Having failed to exploit my influence with the king, Briar had decided to frame my father—andme, by extension.
But it wasn’t until I’d revealed my specter that she’d realized what a fitting scapegoat I would make.
“Briar brought me ample evidence: Lord Heron’s journals, detailing the most remarkable research on Spellmade objects. I doubt Briar understood half of it, but I certainly did. Your father was more brilliant than they realized.” Erik stopped pacing, fixing me with his full attention. His jacket still glittered with those fealty pins, my xerylite centered right above his heart. “Briar told me not to fear, for the compass wasn’t lost. Lady Alissa had merely stashed it away. Briar was eager to take you to her hold and wring its whereabouts from you. Can you guess what I told her?”
When I didn’t reply, Erik chuckled, making me flinch. “Come,now. This is an easy one.” His voice dropped. “I told her I wouldn’t have anyone touch you but me.”
Slowly, he lifted a key and turned it through the lock.
My heartbeat kicked up, my specter shriveling at his approach. His cape pooled as he joined me on the floor, less than an arm’s length away. But he didn’t reach for me. He just looked me over, disappointed, and sighed.
“You have been so very foolish. What do you have to say for yourself?”
I glared at him—this man I’d nearly married, whose nature I’d tried to sweeten, whose power I’d tried to claim for myself. My face heated with fury and mortification. Leaning as close as the chains allowed, I whispered, “I see you.”
The torch flames crackled over a hair-raising silence.
Then Erik’s face split with a knowing smile—a smile best saved for people who shared a secret. “I told you. You’re the only one who ever could.”
He reached into his pocket, and my breathing quickened.
I hadn’t understood how the attacker in my chambers had acquired the silver-toed boots of the palace guards.
I hadn’t questioned how the copycats had obtained their eurium when Erik had purchased most of the ores at the beginning of his reign.
At my darkest point over the last weeks, I’d pulled away from everyone in my life.Maybe this is what the keeper wants, Tari had said.For you to be alone.
Yet throughout it all, there had been one constant. One person who had never balked at my pain or anger but had instead fed ravenously from both.
Now a deep dread plunged to my gut as Erik drew his hand from his pocket.
The language wasn’t as dead as I’d thought, Keil’s note had read.Someone recognized the symbol after all.And there he’d drawn the copycats’ emblem, followed by the stomach-churning translation:
Gods cannot stand alone.
My specter puddled inside me as Erik slowly opened his palm.
And revealed the bronze case of the compass shining within.
