Page 157 of Thorn Season
“I didn’t want to believe it at first,” she said. “You and your father always seemed different from the others. But then you arrived at court and latched onto Erik like a parasite. And when I found the coordinates to those prisons”—she shuddered—“I knew for sure: You Capewells are all the same.”
Capewells.
She thought I was aHunter.
In my shock, her other words had almost slipped past me. Then they pierced with a twist of understanding.
“Youintercepted Junius’s note.”
Carmen swallowed. “I saw it under your door when I delivered your gown for Budding Ball. I didn’t know who’d sent it, but I knew it had to be important. I checked the coordinates against a map, and the location was barren. Then the tall girl—your friend—came to us in the gardens, saying you had a delivery from Vereen. I thought it could be from the Capewells...”
“So, you broke into my chambers to see it?”
“You broke into mine first,” she snapped, then glanced at the knife and winced. “When I saw the map of the xerylite mines, I put the pieces together.”
“And you told the Ansorans to check the location,” I finished, shaking my head.
While I’d suspected Carmen and her mother of building those prisons, she’d suspectedme. Did Erik realize he’d been playing us against each other, keeping either of us from looking his way?
I didn’t know. But I knew what he hadn’t planned for: Carmen’s secret alliance with Ansora.
The alliance that could still provide my own ticket to freedom.
“I need to know when that ship departs,” I said.
“So you can slaughter those Wielders like you tried to slaughter sympathizers with your initiative? If Sabira hadn’t called off her mercenaries—”
“Enough, Carmen!” I slammed the drawer and staggered forward. Carmen backed away, eyes fixed on the knife. “Stop pretending to care about the sympathizers and the Wielders and everyone else. I know you’re only helping them to further your own agenda.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I? You told me you would always remember Erik’s mercy toward your mother. Do you think he’ll extend you the same mercyonce he learns you want his crown?”
Carmen suddenly flushed—but not with fear. With anger. “You mean Erik’smercywhen he forced my mother from her home? Hismercywhen he turned her friends against her? All to punish her for a crime she committed only because he didn’t possess enoughmercyto spare her from my father’s hand?”
I jolted, almost dropping the knife.Some people are simply cruel. Fathering a child doesn’t erase that cruelty.
Carmen hadn’t been talking about Perla’s father at all.
“My mother killed him before he could turn his violence on me,” she said. “Erik destroyed her for it. So yes, I want his crown. And yes, I would do almost anything to get it...” She inhaled deeply, the burst of color draining from her face. “But not this. I swore to protect the Wielders on that ship, and I will die before I let a Hunter go near them.”
In the resounding silence, I grappled for any threat with which I could bend her enough to break. But as Carmen folded her hands in resignation, my knife drooped.
For so long, I’d inhaled the stench of Wholeborn cowardice and let it convince me of their collective blame. But hadn’t sixty-three Parrians recently died trying to help Wielders? Hadn’t the Jacombs risked their lives to bury their Wielder employees while Perla had risked herself forme? And Tari and Amarie and my dear tormented father who’d loved my mother more than anything and had drowned in his guilt for years so I wouldn’t share her fate?
Under the perpetual heat of his temperament, Erik had forged true sympathizers in Daradon. He’d even increased the Huntings—unafraid of risking rebellion—because, like me, he hadn’t realized the truth:
That although the kingdom hadn’t always been fighting in a waywe’d recognized... ithadbeen fighting.
Now this was Carmen’s time for battle—she who’d suffered under the king’s tyranny more intimately than perhaps anyone else. But as this mismatched suite suggested, she’d inherited more from Nelle than people realized. She would defend the vulnerable just as her mother had defended her. She would not help a Hunter.
But astonishingly... she would help a Wielder.
With shaking fingers, I transferred the blade to my left hand and extended the latticed handle.
“I’m the one who told Sabira to call off the mercenaries,” I said quietly. “The initiative was a ruse. I would never hurt my people.”
Carmen eyed the knife suspiciously. I stepped closer.
