Page 64 of Thorn Season
“Why not?” I whispered. “You could kill me right now. Just another name crossed off your list.”
His features flickered with hurt and then hardened, his own defenses slamming down. “I’m not Briar.”
“Aren’t you?” I searched his face for the boy I knew. Only the man stared back. “A quick death. That’s what you offer, isn’t it? Or is thatjust for the ones who don’t fight back? I’ll bet the ones in that wagon fought. Did you torture them yourself before you were forced to free them? Would you have killed them if—?” I hiccupped on the words. “How many have you killed?”
A bloated silence passed. Dimly, I knew I should’ve felt grateful; Garret had just saved me from a battering. But instead I felt eggshell-hollow and just as breakable, and all I wanted was to heave until the rose stench emptied out of me. And here was Garret—the ally who should’ve been my enemy—trying to comfort me. I thought I’d resigned myself long ago to his role as a Hunter, but watching him battle that man, watching himrelishit... the full magnitude hit me.
The person who’d once reached for my specter with awe in his eyes had become this murderer, crouched before me. He was righthere.
Yet I would never reach him again.
Garret drew a slow breath, then said flatly, “I was fourteen for my first kill. Briar took me into a cell with a Parrian man, handed me a knife, and locked the door behind me. Do you know what the man said? ‘It’s all right, son. Do what you must.’ Would you believe that? I was holding a blade to his throat, and he spent his last words reassuringme. Briar heard me crying. She wouldn’t open the door until his blood cooled on my hands.”
“Stop,” I breathed.
“Why? You wanted to hear it, didn’t you? The tale of how the Big Bad Hunter began slaughtering your people. A child, with a life in his hands.”
“You’re not a child anymore. Who’s forcing you now? Who’s locking you in that cell?”
He shook his head with bitter laughter. “You will never know what this is like.”
“Then explain.”
“Explain what?” he snapped. “That I look into the eyes of every Wielder and seeyoulooking back at me? That I lie awake, replaying each Hunting, because I don’t deserve to sleep? Don’t you understand?” His voice cracked; his eyes shone tear-bright in the dark. “This wasn’t supposed to be my life. But if I run from it now, Briar would mark me a traitor. And she wouldn’t just hurt me. She would hurt everyone I—” The words choked him, and he looked at me with so much spite that it stole my breath. “Everyone I’ve ever loved,” he finished, harsh, without feeling.
And I understood. A part of me would always hate Garret, but a part of him would hate me, too. Not just for what my father had done in my name—sending him to Briar, putting that first weapon in his hands. Garret hated me because he still loved me, and Briar could use that love against him.
She wasn’t the one locking him in that cell anymore.Iwas.
“You know better than anyone,” he said, “that we don’t always get to choose what we are.” He sniffed, then went to stand.
My specter shuddered out. And despite the threat he’d once given me, despite the more recent memory of his blade, I touched my power to Garret’s brow.
He inhaled sharply, halting in his crouch. His wide gaze locked onto mine. My specter rippled gently against his eyebrow scar, as faint as fingertips, and I held my breath—waiting for him to cut through it again.
But his throat only bobbed once, twice. He closed his eyes. And slowly, he raised his hand.
Tears scalded my throat as Garret’s fingers brushed my power, the touch strange and new—and yet as ancient as the pained lines across his forehead.
My specter flickered faster, fraying thin with my desperate hope, and I stretched it across Garret’s jaw in an embrace.
“I believe that you are good,” I whispered.
His eyes shut tighter, lashes swallowed by the squeeze. He turned his face into my touch until the shimmering edges lapped against his mouth. For three delicate seconds, his breath trembled across my power.
Then his eyes quivered open. Fixed distantly away.
“One of us should,” he said.
He left my specter curled in the air as he withdrew from its touch, stood, and left.
19
“You should be watching Carmen,” I said, sweeping crystal onto a metal slat—the remnants of last night’s battle. Tari had found me on the floor this morning, sweaty and exhausted from replaying the attack. She’d cleaned my face, fetched me tea, then held my hair as I’d emptied the liquid straight into the washbasin. She’d refused to leave my side ever since.
“Don’t worry,” she said now, wiping dried blood off the dresser. “When I went down for the tea, I told one of the girls to serve cocktails in the Games Hall.”
“Why?”
