Page 6 of Thorn Season
Not a boy anymore, I reminded myself. In a black waistcoat and blazer, his leather shoes polished to a mirror-gleam, Garret Shaw looked every bit the Capewell he’d promised never to become. Long limbs and sleek edges. A clean shave across his deeply tanned skin. The only token of his youth was the eight-year-old scar interrupting one eyebrow like a crack in a mask—a souvenir from headbutting a doorknob the night we’d swiped my father’s brandy.
I hated that scar more than any other piece of him. It always reminded me of how hard we’d laughed that night.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, automatically scanning for the weapons he must have been carrying beneath his fine clothes. Weapons he hadn’t yet used against me, despite being the only Hunter who wouldn’t need the compass to know what I was.
I’d made the mistake of telling him myself.
“I had business with your father.” Garret descended the last step and looked me over, that dark eyebrow lifting in cool amusement. “Been swimming?”
“Painting.”
“You don’t paint.”
No—while my father had produced the peacock-colored spray of artwork along the mahogany walls, I could barely draw an apple.
“You don’t do business with my father,” I countered.
Garret’s mouth flattened. Although they’d long ago given up the attempt, the Capewells used to proposition Father to join the Hunters’ service, for the triumph of having him—a ruling lord—under their command. Father had always given the same answer: no.
Garret turned to Amarie, whose eyes flitted nervously between us. “Send word if Heron reconsiders our discussion.Beforetonight’s ball.”
“Amarie doesn’t take orders from you,” I said.
“That wasn’t an order.” Garret smiled thinly. “Just a request.”
He slunk toward me, the clasp of his steel bracelet flashing in the sunlight. Even after seven years, I shuddered at the sight of Garret’s oath band.
Though still permissible by Daradonian law, the oath band was deemed archaic; it served as a shackle, only removable by the person to whom the wearer had sworn an oath. And if the wearer broke their oath—or the band—without permission, the law demanded they forfeit their hand from the wrist down.
Garret was the only Hunter who wore one of those bands. Probably because he was the only Hunter who hadn’t been born into the role.
Garret’s birth parents had been killed during the Starling Rebellion, when rogue Wielders had attacked Wholeborns in a gruesomeattempt to balance the score of violence. Wray Capewell, my father’s cousin, had known Garret’s parents well, and he’d raised their orphaned child within the family of Hunters, treating Garret no worse—but certainly no better—than the many young Capewells squalling about Capewell Manor.
Now Garret stopped before me, as flinty-eyed as he’d been for the past seven years—since he’d been sharpened under the whetstone of the Hunters’ influence.
Since he’d chosen them over me.
I refused to shrink back when he reached around me for the door handle. Then, because I could still feel the phantom dint of Marge’s tooth, because I wanted to torture myself with one more reason to despise him, I asked, “Been to town recently?”
Garret paused, his arm outstretched behind me, his severe face inches above mine. His warm breath skimmed my cheek as he said, eyes narrowed, “Not for weeks.”
It was the note of confusion that made me believe him. And though his answer changed nothing between us—though he’d killed countless other Wielders—I felt a stab of relief that he hadn’t been the one to kill my friend.
He looked all the way down me then, and I tensed as his gaze landed on my red-stained fingers. “Mind that nobody sees you,” he said carefully, “when you’re... painting.”
I glowered as he brushed past me, and with a tendril of my specter, I slammed the door behind him.
“You’ll get a rash,” I muttered atop the grand staircase, the heat-and-perfume haze pressing around me.
Father had been scratching his chest for the entire hour-longjourney into Henthorn, the capital city. I couldn’t blame him; city visits tested both our nerves. But Father wore his anxiety for all to see.
And courtiers saw everything.
They twirled in a sea of satin below us, music and laughter flowing as freely as the sparkling wine. Roses coiled up marble pillars and burst like sores between the archways, their petals weeping over the king’s throne. And above the dais, shimmering in silver, were the symbols representing Daradon’s five provinces: a carp for Avanford; a wheat stalk for Creak; a sword for the soldiers of Parrey; a book for the scholars of Dawning; and in the center of them all, a bejeweled ring for the craftspeople of Vereen.
“At least they have lemon cakes.” I nodded toward the dessert table, where sugared tarts, brandied plums, and pistachio-crusted truffles tumbled from a pastry cornucopia. But the semolina lemon cakes—my favorite dessert—were a new addition and usually only found at Verenian bakeries. “How terrible can one night be with a lemon cake in hand?”
“Don’t tempt the gods,” Father grumbled.
