Page 90 of Thorn Season
“Where is he? Amarie,where is he?”
I didn’t wait for her reply.
I bolted for the staircase, taking the steps two at a time. I tripped on the third floor, but scrambled up and kept climbing.
He wouldn’t be there. Somehow I knew it—I couldn’t feel his presence.
Someone had taken my father.
His study doors were open. I stumbled in, grasping the doorframe.
I saw the blood first. I’d almost anticipated it, but I hadn’t expected its volume. And I hadn’t expected the inky halo of hair spilling around my father’s vacant face.
The wound in his chest gaped like the mouth of a beast.
Then screaming. In my head, in my bones. Screaming and screaming andscreaming and—
The room blurred, and I fell to my knees.
I hadn’t been here to protect him.
A hand closed around my arm. I didn’t care who it belonged to. I didn’t care if they plunged a knife into me right now.
I was already hemorrhaging. Emptying out, waves choking over themselves—hot and thick and rippling. Layers upon layers I hadn’t known existed, hazing like steam in the air. Convulsing in their own shriek of agony.
Glasses rattled in the liquor cabinet. Books ripped from their bindings. Wood groaned and splintered.
Screaming and screaming and screaming.
Someone was shaking me.Stop, Alissa, stop!
Their touch receded. The doors slammed shut.
The dam inside me fractured and exploded in a shower of glass and wood and blood.
The world was ending, and I was grateful.
26
To cleave a person’s heart was the greatest crime against nature.
The heart became forever ruined; the gods could not weigh it to determine its goodness, and the victim was left to wander the empty halls of limbo, never reaching the next realm but unable to return to the living world.
It meant dishonor after death.
It meant the killing was personal.
27
The hours were long and empty yet impossibly full. Black roses arrived from the palace, and I turned my stomach out into the malachite bathtub.
The Verenian nobles knew of my position at court and pushed for a lavish funeral.To honor Heron, they said, faces drawn. They only wanted to spend the king’s gold. But I was the ruling lady of Vereen now. I vetoed their ideas and they obliged me, though whether it was from pity or genuine respect, I couldn’t tell.
Tari had been granted bereavement leave, and she coaxed the meals down me each day. She stirred nightmilk into my tea when the world became too heavy and sat beside me while I slept. I caught her weeping in the parlor one morning and wished she would return to Henthorn.
Stop your search, the attacker had said.
I hadn’t listened.
