Page 162 of Thorn Season
Erik’s head whipped up at the glimmer, his attention narrowing on the coin. The moment his eyes turned, I stretched my hand out behind him. My fingers connected with the knife handle.
Then Erik stood to get a closer look, carrying me up with him. The coin swiveled harmlessly in his eyeline, bobbing with every splutter of my power. He exhaled—with something like relief. He opened his mouth as if to laugh at the feeble display.
And I rammed the knife into his back.
His breath snagged. He looked down at me wide-eyed, with the expression of someone betrayed.
Then the king’s blood warmed my fingers, and the fight rushed back into me.
I yanked out the blade, and Erik’s roar shook the walls. He dropped me. I cried out as I tumbled, losing the knife. My forehead smacked the floor. Blood dribbled into my lashes.
But up ahead, I could see the light of the kitchens. I clambered forward, breathing fast.
His sticky hand seized my calf. “It will take more than that,” he growled.
As he hauled me back, I looked over my shoulder so I would know where to aim. Then I drove my heel into his nose. He bellowed again, spraying red. I wrenched away with a final kick.
In a hot, heaving scramble, I pushed to my feet and staggered ahead.
I charged into the kitchens and light stunned me, the blast of fresh air drying my sweat. His breaths echoed a few paces behind, relentless.
I whipped around. Cleavers, carving knives, kitchen shears—allgleaming for the taking. But as the passage door swung wide, I darted to the shelf of nightmilk vials beside it. If I could smash them at Erik’s bare feet, release the sedative into his wounds—
I reached out too late.
Because his hand snapped around my throat—squeezing—crushing in harder when I tried to claw him away.
He slowly drove me back—away from the nightmilk vials, the passageway, the kitchen blades. He loomed over me until his ice-glazed eyes reflected my own terror. Until his face—as cold and hard as marble—was all that would ever exist. And as my lungs spasmed, burning for air, I realized I’d never seen him truly angry until now. Not at the Opal, not in the dungeons, not in the ballroom after I’d struck him.
Thiswas the king’s wrath. A wrath so fierce—so blind—that he really would kill me, whether he meant to or not.
And he would send with me every life that had ever fueled my own.
Tears scalded my eyes as I saw Lady Fiona, signing her name onto my birthing papers; the blurred faces of every Wielder my father had condemned; my mother’s smiling face, rendered in Father’s hand; my father, wrapping his arms around me, kissing the top of my head.
Father again, teaching me to swim.
Father, stirring honey into his tea.
Father, looking up from his book, eyes creasing at a joke I’d made.
My specter was corkscrewing tighter and tighter inside me now—but not to hide. This was the rapid recoil of a backswing. The inhale before a scream.
I saw myself at seven years old, threading strands of my power through the eye of a needle while holding the rest within.
I saw the spectral waves heaving free around my father’s body—thelayers I hadn’t known existed because I’dkeptthem within for all those years.
The dullroot had left my system; it wasn’t the poison tethering my specter now, thinning it out into fragile ribbons. It was years of habitual control. It was instinct, rekindled by my fresh fear.
It wasme.
The greater the power, the greater the need for release.
I remembered the compass’s needle, shuddering to maintain its hold on such a power.
And as Erik’s face fragmented in my vision, as I weakened in his hold, I painfully unclenched the long-calcified fist inside me.
My body shuddered.
