Page 152 of Thorn Season
Before she could unlock the manacle, I shoved her off and scrambled away. “Don’t,” I croaked.
“It’s all right.” Perla raised her palms. “Erik’s occupied. But he won’t be for long.” She leaned forward, her black cloak shifting.
I flattened myself against the wall and shook my head. “Stay away.” Fresh tears burned my throat.
Because of all Erik’s ploys, this was the cruelest yet. This taste of hope—offreedom—before he ripped it away again. And to deliver it throughPerla, the girl whose plans I’d torn apart. The girl who probably considered my fate well deserved...
“Just tell him it didn’t work,” I moaned, burying my head in my skirts. “Tell him I didn’t fall for it.”
The tears were streaming now, the dam ruptured from my last bout of crying. She would probably tell Erik how I’d sobbed as she’d dangled the keys before me.
Perla didn’t speak for several seconds. Then I heard her shuffle closer.
“This isn’t a trick, Alissa. I need you to trust me. Because if Erik finds me here, he’ll have both our heads.”
The voice didn’t belong to the Perla I remembered. This voiceresounded low and firm, without a trace of uncertainty.
Sniffling, I lifted my head.
Her face was a contradiction: the dark brows scrunched in pity, the pink mouth tight with impatience. But her large eyes were the strangest of all—cunning and kind and full of strength. I’d never seen that expression on anyone. I almost balked at its intensity.
“But you hate me,” I said numbly.
Her brows puckered further. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
This time I didn’t protest when she seized my wrist.
“We really must hurry,” she said. “I could only find the spare keys to the cells.”
She assessed the three locks in the manacle, then reached into the back of her hair. She pulled once, twice, thrice—dark wisps falling around her cheeks—and produced a strange set of jagged hairpins.
It wasn’t until she began tinkering with the first lock—producing the first loudclick—that I truly awoke to what was happening. And I had the sudden urge to capture this scene and somehow show it to Lye. Because these weren’t hairpins.
They were lockpicks.
“You’re freeing me,” I whispered.
Perla smiled wryly. “Still sharp as ever, I see.”
She plunged into another lock, pins twirling between deft fingers.
“You know what I am,” I said.
“You can sayWielder. I promise not to flee.”
“How long?”
“Since Erik’s coronation. I saw you swiveling a coin in the gardens and led my mother away so she wouldn’t see. You were never careful.” Perla’s eyes flicked up, hard but not unkind. “It seems you still aren’t.”
You think Erik won’t notice?she’d asked when she’d caught me afteran evening with Keil. She hadn’t thought we’d been spending time as lovers, I realized. But asWielders.
And it hadn’t been a threat.
“You were warning me,” I said over thescrape-and-clinkof lockpicks.
“Not very well, apparently. I suppose you thought tempting a Wholeborn king into taking a Wielder bride would be poetic.” She shook her head. “It’s a miracle you hid your specter from the Capewells. I don’t know how you expected to trick Erik.”
“Th-the Capewells?”
