Page 28 of Thorn Season
“Why should it benefit me to lie?” Garret asked. “Or to withholdfrom you that which I have no desire to keep?” He jerked his chin toward the wagon. “There are five there. Surely you found the one among them you really wanted.”
Keil held his breath, waiting. Dashiel gave a hard nod, and Keil’s chest deflated.
The reaction unsettled me.
“Well, then.” Garret smoothed his blazer. “I’ve relinquished all I can. I suggest you let that be enough, since you can’t relinquish a fraction ofyourleverage.”
“Is that a challenge?” Goren’s rough voice preceded the whoosh of his axe-flip.
Garret stared over my shoulder, his expression bored. Cold. “If you wanted to hurt her, you would have already. You wish to do so now, out of spite?” He smiled—a bruised, skin-splitting smile—and met my gaze as he said, “Go ahead.”
I hated myself for flinching. I hated him more for having seen it.
Garret may have fought for me in the parlor, but he’d emerged unchanged—as ruthless as he’d been for the past seven years.
“No?” he probed when the Wielders made no move against me. “Then kindly relieve us all of each other’s company. This has wasted enough of my time.”
Wind whistled through the silence, my specter flaring with each shallow breath.
Finally, Keil turned toward me. He reached into his pocket, and Garret tensed in my periphery.
Then Keil withdrew his hand. My hairpins shone in his palm.
“Goodbye, Lady Alissa,” he said quietly. His lashes fanned low, skimming the top edge of his mask. “I pray that you can accept my apology.”
I held his gaze, struggling to decipher the heavy meaning in his eyes. I gathered the hairpins, and Keil’s hand twitched when my fingers grazed his palm.
Pocketing the pins, I saw Garret drag his narrowed stare between us. My face flamed inexplicably as I crunched forward again.
My breathing heaved loud in my ears, and I entered that slant of foggy light oozing from the wagon—
And my specter lurched, rocking me back a step.
Goose bumps rushed up my arms.
My hand trembled into the light, dust freckling my fingertips. I crumbled the specks against my thumb, then hissed quietly at the writhe of my specter. At the deep, internal coiling as it raced from the surface. It had reacted the same way this morning, to the same strange dust in Marge’s lounge.
Horror sank through my bones as I finally realized why.
This wasn’t dust. It wasash. An ash that specters couldn’t bear to touch—it felt vile,wrong—because it was a product of the only poison that could stifle a specter’s power.
The ash of burnt dullroot.
“Oh, gods.” My words wobbled on an exhale. Because there was only one reason why this wagon would contain dullroot.
“Walk, Alissa,” Garret said, glaring at me.“Now.”
He drew the word out, chilling and thawing me all at once. But rather than stepping toward Garret, I stepped sideways. Toward the wagon.
“You don’t want to do that,” he said, now with a tinge of sympathy.
He was right. I didn’t want to witness this atrocity firsthand. I didn’t want to bear my kidnappers’ grief alongside my own. But it wasn’t just morbid compulsion driving me. It was guilt.
Something was stolen from me, Keil had said. Not something. Someone.
There were Wielder prisoners inside this wagon.
My specter was pumping wildly now, a second heartbeat against my ribs, and I couldn’t keep from turning, from reaching toward the doors—
