Page 24 of Thorn Season
Keil was wrong about Father.Istood a better chance of accessing Capewell Manor, and only because Garret had once sneaked me inside himself.
We’d been children—aged eight and ten—with a brash, heroic plan to steal the Hunters’ compass and protect Daradon’s Wielders from exposure. We made a game of it—pouring tar across the corridors, stringing twine between the walls to trip pursuers. We’d just reached Wray Capewell’s office when Briar caught us snooping through her brother’s belongings.
It should’ve been funny—her tar-squelching shoeprints, her blotchy anger. But suddenly, nothing about this was funny. Garret wasbraver than me, was actually opening his mouth to laugh.
Then Briar struck him so hard that he bit his own tongue.
I shrieked as her arm rose a second time—and Briar found the sound so aggravating that she whipped her hand across my face instead. I sobbed while she smiled down at me. Her hand lifted again, slowly, its shadow looming over me before the release.
And Garret’s eyes took on a dark glimmer.
He pounced upon her back, took a fistful of her hair, and pulled. Tearing and biting and punching, he fought her, like a wild canine having broken out of its cage. Briar was bleeding, too, as she dealt him three more blows. Then we fled—back into the booby-trapped hallways and out through the manor’s escape tunnel.
I told Father we’d tripped down the mosaic steps in town, and spent the evening pressing a cool cloth to Garret’s bruises.
I won’t let her turn me into a Hunter, he’d said that night, battered and proud.I don’t care what she does to me. She can’t make me become like her.
And for the first time, I’d imagined my life sprawling out beside his. I’d been too young to name or understand the feeling; I’d only known that Garret felt like home.
Then, three years later, Garret’s adoptive father, Wray, had died. And at thirteen, Garret had been orphaned all over again.
I begged Father to take in Garret as his ward—to stop Briar digging her claws into him. But by the time Father relented and I summoned Garret to deliver the news, it was too late. My specter rushed out to meet him, flickering fast with my excitement.
And Garret recoiled from it. Stepped back.
A locked bracelet glinted at his wrist.
Put your dirty specter on me again, he’d said in a voice that was nolonger his own,and I’ll cut through it, Wielder.
He could have hit me in that moment, and it would’ve hurt less.
That quickly, my world had shifted. And I never put my specter on him again.
The wisps of power slid back to me now, quieted by the memories. Garret had fought for me tonight—had acted as the boy he’d been rather than the man he’d become.
I was still considering what that meant when a knock jolted me from my reverie.
Aknock. As if this cell were a dressing room and I was busy primping myself.
The door opened and I tensed. Though I could only see the man’s dark eyes framed by deep brown skin, I recognized his lean build.
Dashiel. The one who’d raised his hand to me in the parlor.
He approached, arm lifting again, and I inhaled sharply—
Then he stopped, one palm held up and facing out. Just as he’d held it in the parlor.
A retrospective lens slipped over the memory, bathing it in a new light. Dashiel hadn’t raised his palm to strike me. In the chaos of my kidnapping, he’d shown his open palm in reassurance—to signalpeace.
He must have seen my dread melting, because he now gestured to the door. “This way, my lady.”
I tentatively approached, and aswooshsounded from behind. I jumped as the cloak billowed from the chair and deflated around Dashiel’s arm.
He held it forward. “You may get cold.”
I stared wide-eyed, my specter humming at the display. Such free, careless Wielding—from all of them. How had this kingdom not beaten the impulse out of them?
How had it never gotten themkilled?
