Page 146 of Thorn Season
“You were playing with me.”
“I was offering you a gift. After your father’s death, didn’t you yearn for a way to ease your pain? Didn’t I give it to you?”
Nausea doubled me over.A parting gift, that man had said, not realizing the king had all but wrapped him up for slaughter.
I braced my palms on the cold floor, eyes burning again. I’d believed I could direct Erik like a blade in my hands. ButI’dbeen the blade and he’d been the compass’s needle, pointing my way—firing my wrath like the arrow he’d almost launched at Perla on the fields.There’s still time to learn, he’d said that day, disturbingly tender. Because he’d meant it in relation to my bloodlust. My willingness to loose the arrow toward another human being.
All along, he’d been leading me like a puppet toward violence. Towardmurder.
And I’d let him.
“Don’t despair, my love.” He clicked his tongue in sympathy. “That man may not have killed your father, but he’d harmed many others.”
“At your instruction!” I whipped my head up, dizzy and shivering. “I saw those tunnels. I know you made them suffer. What could you have gained from their pain?”
I imagined Marge as I’d last seen her, overflowing with laughter. How could anyone want to take that joy apart and splatter it inside a prison?
My voice cracked as I asked, “Do you truly hate us that much?”
Erik’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t mean to compare yourself to them?”
“They’re my people.”
Those words must have rankled him; he clenched his jaw, cheek fluttering. “Are they?” he asked darkly. “What have they ever done for you?”
My voice fizzled out. I had no answer.
“Exactly,” he said. “Do you thinktheywould attempt to saveyouin reversed circumstances? I assume that was the intent behind your initiative—to scour Vereen for more prisons. A wasted effort. The Wielders of Daradon are like rats with blades strapped to their backs. Inept. Lethargic. Overwhelmed by having to drag around their own power. If you’d seenyour peopleas they were—crawling in filth, weak by their own design—you would realize that you are far above them. That you and I are above everything.”
The loathing in his voice spilled over—inflaming his skin, curling his lip. It was a loathing beyond reason. Beyond remedy.
“You and I,” I said coldly, “are nothing alike.”
Erik’s hand shot around the back of my head.
I startled, jolting back—but his fingers fisted through my hair, tugging until I gasped. I’d seen enough of his cruelty that it shouldn’t have shocked me. And yet it did.
“Some describe specters as just another limb,” Erik said, his face close to mine. “So tell me: Does dullroot produce the sensation of having your hands tied behind your back? Or does it feel more akin to suffocation?”
I craned away, eyes pricking as the hair pulled against my scalp. My hands scrambled uselessly against him; the manacle-chains were too short to shove him off.
“Let go,” I said, chest heaving.
“Make me. Strike me away. Thrust your power past the surface.”
I slammed my specter to the underside of my skin, twisting against the dullroot until it hurt. But it was like trying to separate water from salt without the heat to boil it off. I couldn’t tear through the poison as I’d torn through Goren’s specter. I could do nothing but whimper and then curse myself for making the sound.
“You can’t do it, can you?” Erik chuckled—a mocking gust thatstirred the hair from my face. “And how does that make you feel? Sick to your very marrow, I suspect.” He leaned toward my ear, his nose grazing my temple—the exact spot he’d kissed mere hours ago. “Do you see now how we are the same? It’s because we are both repulsed by weakness.”
“No,” I snarled, straining away. “I am repulsed byyou.”
“You think so?” He yanked me close again, making me hiss. “Then you’re still lying to yourself. How many other Wielders do you suppose were at the Opal that day? How many watched while the sympathizer who’d been campaigning fortheirrights was peeled raw?”
I stilled. I’d always blamed the Wholeborns—the so-called sympathizers—for what had transpired at the Opal. Even after Garret had revealed the great number of Wielders in Daradon, I hadn’t imagined how many must have witnessed that man’s torture.
Or how many could have ended his agony.
“Through their inaction,” Erik said, his mouth moving hot against my ear, “every Wielder in that crowd handed the burden of mercy to a fourteen-year-old girl. And in doing so, they planted within you the first seed of resentment toward your kind. A seed which, under proper nourishment, I knew could flourish with a destructive force.”
