Page 56 of Thorn Season
I bolted forward and slid it open, finding a new addition: a palm-size wooden box, engraved with a crisscross pattern. Before I could grab it, the box flew up past my head.
Keil plucked it from the air—from hisspecter—with smug satisfaction.
I stormed toward him, and he lifted the box above my reach. “Are you serious?” I snapped.
“I’ll make you another deal,” Keil said, mischief bubbling over. “Tell me what it is, and you can have it.”
I stared, agape. I’d have kicked him in the shins if it would lower his arm, but I knew he’d keep the box aloft to be contrary. So I said, evenly, “It’s a jewelry box.”
Laughter played around his mouth. “I don’t know what’s more impressive. The lie or the conviction with which you said it. But for the attempt—” He tossed me the box and I fumbled, catching it awkwardly against my chest.
Brassy numbers lined the opening—a combination lock, like those the Parrian military used to secure their armories.
I thumbed the first number just as Keil said, “I wouldn’t do that. That’s a Bolting Box. Spies use them to organize meetings and avoid speaking among listening ears.” He sauntered closer, and I craned my neck to hold his stare. “The sender enters a time and location using the mechanism, they close the box, and it locks in place. Only those with the code can reopen it. Entering the wrong numbers will destroy the information inside.”
I squinted at the box, doubtful.
“Try your luck if you don’t believe me. I’m certainly curious as to why the princess has a Bolting Box in her possession.”
I was too. But from the way Keil quirked his head in challenge, hewantedme to attempt it. Either to watch me fail spectacularly or to land me in a greater heap of trouble.
I wouldn’t take the bait.
“Then ask her.” I smacked the box against his chest, forcing him back a step. “And while you’re at it, you can explain what you were doing in her chambers.” I went to let the box fall when Keil’s hand snapped over mine.
“Tumbling around in the closet with you?” His thumb grazed my knuckles. “I’d hate to make her jealous.”
The words curled in my core, molten, making me forget my retort. It took me a second to rip my hand away.
Keil caught the box and chuckled, all heat and honey. “Picking locks, rifling through the princess’s belongings...” He brushed around me, circling with slow, predatory steps. “I’m beginning to think you aren’t as clean-cut as I’d believed.”
I swung around, skirts twisting at the waist. “And I’m glad to confirm that you are precisely the man I thought you were.”
“Charming and indecently handsome?”
“Conceited and inappropriate.”
His eyes sparkled. “You have a lovely way of making compliments sound like insults.”
“Or perhaps, with your head so far up your own backside, you can no longer tell the difference.”
Keil’s eyebrows snapped up. Then he tipped his head to the ceiling and laughed so wholeheartedly that the sound must have traveled into the hall.
I crossed my arms. Tapped my foot as his laughter pattered out. “Have you finished?”
“With you?” he asked, lightly flushed from humor. “Certainly not,my lady.” He took a single step closer, golden eyes heavy. “I have a feeling we’re just beginning.”
Again, warmth crawled up my skin—and not just from anger. Keil must have known it, too, because his roguish smile was broad. A little dimple creased his left cheek, and my hand twitched with the desire to smack it off his face.
Still grinning, he returned the Bolting Box to the vanity and swept an arm toward the door. “After you.”
Just like that, suspicion turned me cold.
I’d thought Keil had been following me... but maybe he was similarly searching Carmen’s suite. I’d theorized that Keil’s sister had come to Daradon to investigate the Huntings, and what if I was right? What if Keil already knew the compass was missing, had stationed himself at court to find it, and, like me, possessed evidence leading to these chambers?
Though I wouldn’t return the compass to the Capewells, I couldn’t let Keil reclaim it, either. Before my kidnapping, I’d never imagined fellow Wielders as a threat to me inanycapacity. Now I knew better. As long as Wielders were being executed—in any part of the world—that compass could only be a weapon.
A weapon I couldn’t let anyone use against me.
