Page 79 of Thorn Season
I tried not to clench up as his body curved behind me. He commandeered my hold on the bow, fingers closing over mine, his cool breath tickling my bare nape. I shivered, wishing I’d worn my hair down. Of course trapping a girl had to be Erik’s idea of courtship.
“They’re good shots.” His words grazed against me. “The Parrians.”
I took the opportunity to shift away slightly, looking toward the nobles from the military province and their trough of conquered apples. Sabira seemed the anomaly of the group, having just about hit her second apple after widely missing the first—a combination foretelling no produce, all appetite.
For a woman who always appeared battle-ready in her armored gown, I’d expected better aim.
“Did you know,” said Erik, lifting my bow into my eyeline, “that Parrians have a way of identifying Wielders?”
My body tensed. My specter curled into a knot. “Oh?” I breathed.
“In fact”—he drew the bowstring for me, forcing my elbow back—“Sabira’s mercenaries employed the method a few days ago, on sixty-three sympathizers.”
These must have been the mercenaries who were scouring Parrey’s abandoned smithies. My palms slickened inside my gloves.
“The trick,” Erik said, “is to tie a person down...” His lips brushed my ear. “Take aim between their eyes...” His grip tightened until it hurt. “And fire.”
He released the bowstring, and I jumped as my arrow thwacked the apple.
I tried to control my breathing while Erik nocked the second arrow. But my pulse was pounding in my throat as he folded himself around me again, taking my fingers under his. Keil had held me in a comparable position only recently, his embrace more confining than Erik’s. And yet the heat flooding me now wasn’t similarly slow and molten. It was a blotchy fever-heat. The sickly sweat of a body in danger.
“If you strike true,” Erik continued, “you’ve offered a Wholeborn a quick death. But if the arrow veers off course?” He swiveled abruptly. Cocooned in his hold, I was forced to swivel with him.
As he directed my next arrow squarely at Perla.
“Well.” Erik’s voice betrayed a cruel smile. “Then you’ve caught yourself a Wielder.”
Perla froze. Her eyes went round; her white-washed lips trembled. A more violent tremble rose up my limbs.
“It’s very clever,” I said, voice wispy with panic, my fingers trying to strain away. Though Perla wasn’t my favorite person, I didn’t want herdead.
“Shall we test the method, you and I?” Erik angled the bow toward Perla’s foot. “Perhaps someplace she won’t miss?”
“I believe most people would miss their toes.”
His laughter juddered against my back, and I fought the impulse to arch away. “Did I misread that look you gave her?” His voice took on a twist of teasing. “Wouldn’t you like to make her bow to you—right here, in front of everyone?”
I flicked my eyes around to the alarmed faces of the gentry, trained in our direction. About to watch the king of Daradon fire an arrow into a young woman’s foot. About to watchusfire the arrow, together.
“Not like this,” I panted, my specter writhing with indecision. Because to redirect the arrow would be to expose myself—or implicate Perla. But toreleasethe arrow, to hear her screaming, to have her blood on my hands because of Erik—
No.
My specter roared forward, frantically coiling around the arrow shaft, ready to swing it aside.
Then Erik—just as suddenly—swerved me back toward the apple. My specter swung with the movement, the breath hitching up my throat.
“Very well,” he said placidly. “Imagine, then, a Wielder tied to your stand. Perhaps our Ansoran friend.” I felt his face shifting behind me, and I followed his stare.
Unlike the open-mouthed nobles, Keil was watching us from against his own apple stand, his expression calm and unreadable—so at odds with my own anxious jittering.
“Picture the arrowhead burying deep,” Erik whispered. “And then”—his fingers slid off mine, leaving them quivering around the bowstring—“fire.”
The bowstring slipped from my hold.
My specter rushed out like the line of a fishing rod, guiding the arrow straight toward the apple. Too straight.
With a painful tug, I forced its release. The arrow lost momentum.
