Page 30 of Thorn Season
“You really should eat something.” He was talking again. “That much nightmilk will produce a headache unless—”
My specter gusted free.
Athud, then a grunt as my power pinned Garret against the wall, rippling fiercely, keeping himaway from meas I scrambled for the door.
Silver flashed between his fingers. “Alissa, wait.”
I wrenched the door open—thenpain, sharp as a blade on skin. My specter smacked back to my body, and my knees hit the floor.
I doubled over, whimpering. My specter quivered against my bones.
Through spotted vision, I saw Garret set a double-edged knife atop his desk.Put your dirty specter on me again, he’d once said,and I’ll cut through it, Wielder.
I’d always hoped he’d been bluffing.
Apparently not.
“Be gentle, please,” he said now, disapproving. He gestured to his face: the raw bruises; the nose gashed at the bridge; the left eye, puffed and bloodshot. “I just took a beating for you, if you remember.”
“Why did you bring me here?” I growled.
“It was closer than your estate.” His shoes clacked forward. “And holding you upright in that saddle wasn’t exactly easy. Do you know how much that dress weighs?”
I recoiled as his shadow loomed over me. But he only shut the door, locked it, and pocketed the key. Then he offered me his hand.
I ignored it.
“You can’t keep me here.” My specter was already convalescing; in a few seconds, I’d be able to unlock the door myself.
Garret sighed, withdrawing his hand. “And they call courtiers dramatic.” He turned toward the seating area. “If I wanted to keep you here, you would’ve woken in the hold.”
The hold.
I stood as the scenes flipped through my mind: the wagon, the dullroot ash, the instinctive recoil of my specter.
“There were people in that wagon,” I said with disgust.“Wielders.”
“Prisoners,” Garret clarified. “Briar’s prisoners.” He took a medicinal jar from the low table and eased into an armchair. He wore just his dark shirt tucked into tailored trousers, and his edges appeared softer than usual. But he sounded sharper than ever when he said, “How do you think she’ll react if she discovers your father freed them?”
My specter shuddered. It was exactly what I’d feared when Keil had ordered Father into Capewell Manor.
“You freed them,” I said.
“That Wielder’s ransom note suggests otherwise. It was addressed to Heron, after all.” Garret set the jar on the armrest. Began unbuttoning his shirt. “Briar was called away on business tonight. But she’ll return to the hold to find her prisoners gone, and that ransom note sitting in their empty cell. I expect she’ll put the pieces together.”
I gaped at him, blood rushing behind my ears. This was why he’d ordered Father to stay behind. So he could plant Keil’s ransom note in the hold.
And frame my father.
My cheek smarted with a phantom pain—made worse by how small this room made me feel. Briar had hit me here, hadbatteredGarret when he’d only been a child.
If she believed that Father had infiltrated her territory... she would tear him to pieces.
“Why are you doing this?” I whispered. “My father has done nothing to you.”
Anger flashed in Garret’s eyes. Then they iced over again. “I can retrieve the note before Briar sees it.” He unscrewed the medicinal jar. “But I’ll need a reason.”
My specter bristled, and I was about to ask whether keeping all his teeth was a good enough reason—
