Page 5 of Thorn Season
He marched off, and I cut the strings of my puppet smile.
“How do you do that?” Tari mumbled as I glimpsed movement from Lidia’s house across the street: curtains swishing, Lidia darting away.
“Lidia reported us,” I said flatly. Lidia and Marge had been dearest friends, as close as Tari and me. Now Lidia wouldn’t offer Marge the dignity of an unmarked door.
Of all the cowards on this street, she was the worst.
“She’s afraid,” Tari said. “Everyone’safraid. It doesn’t mean they don’t care.”
I went to shout her down. Cowering under a table, being yanked into the open, feeling a tooth tear from its gum—thatwas fear.
But I stopped myself. Tari had no specter; she didn’t understand what it was to be truly afraid. She might support me, worry for me, but I alone experienced the constant hum of dread that, at any moment, the Hunters could prune me from the world. I wouldn’t be kindly overlooked if they discovered my specter, and I certainly wouldn’t be spared.
After all, the Hunters’ bloodline had to remain untainted.
And I was the thorn on their family tree.
2
Iwalked the side streets home, avoiding the bustle-and-haggle of the market, ducking around every corner like the criminal I was. Though Byron had accepted my ugly excuse, Lidia had seen everything, and my steaming indignation was cooling into doubt.
Never show your power, Father had always taught me.Never give them a reason to look.And what had I done? I’d openly vandalized the Hunters’ Mark, then inexplicably conquered a locked door. I may as well have taken the pinkHappy Rose Season!banner from the square and waved it above my head.
It had been foolish. Reckless. Yet despite my churning anxiety, I knew it had also beenright.
Some believed that the Hunters descended from the legendary Spellmakers of old, the only beings who could sniff out power like bloodhounds—and could even harness certain forms of power to forge indestructible objects.
My father knew the truth. His late mother, a Hunter, had married into nobility, and his inherited title had saved him from having to execute Wielders with the rest of the vast Capewell family. But though this had made Father an outcast among them—subject to both scorn and envy—he’d still learned how the Hunters truly foundtheir targets. While the family didn’t possess a drop of Spellmaker blood, they did possess a Spellmade compass.
A compass that pointed to Wielders, separating us from Wholeborns like chaff from grain.
The idea of such an object had always horrified me—but even more so since the rise in Huntings. Was this uptick born of sadistic boredom, or had it been a directive from the young king, wanting to reassert his power? Most importantly: Was the spike going to drop?
I’d implored Father to extract answers from the Capewells, but he’d looked so pained that I hadn’t pressed again.
And now Marge was dead. Slaughtered by the same people who’d sent my father a premature condolence letter during my childhood bout of blueneck fever. The same people who spoke to him as though he wasn’t worth half the space he took up in a room.
Father only tolerated the Capewells so they wouldn’t look in my direction; he believed they wouldn’t think to consult the compass around their own family members without cause.
But if I’d survived this long purely because of the fortune of my blood ties... how could Inotuse my extra time to wash the hateful mark off Marge’s door?
The ruddy water was drying stiff to my blouse as I gusted into the foyer, inhaling the scent of the sesame biscuits Father toasted every morning. While Rose Season had ensnared the rest of Vereen, our staff knew to keep our manor rose-free—though they didn’t knowwhyI’d emptied my stomach when a new maid had arranged a vase in my chambers last spring.
To this day, I wouldn’t discuss the root of my aversion. Wouldn’t explain the dark months when I’d refused to leave my chambers, and the maids had wafted fresh-bread steam under my door just to get meto eat. Only Amarie knew about the old, rose-infused memory I still couldn’t face; as our house manager and only live-in staff member, she was the only person my father trusted with every secret.
She was also the only person who scolded me like a child.
“I know, I know.” I cringed at my boot-treads as she hurried toward me, her tawny hair jouncing in its bun. “I’ll clean up—”
“Go back out,” she said, hissing and shooing me toward the door.
The wide staircase creaked, and I scrambled backward. Father should’ve been in his study by now.
My hand was on the doorknob when someone said, “Alissa.”
The voice twisted like a knife in my gut.
I hadn’t seen Garret since the increase in Huntings, and I felt too raw for this meeting. Too weary. But when I turned, I knew that despite the vinegar fumes making me smell like a meat marinade, I looked just as composed and aloof as the boy coming down the stairs.
