Page 92 of Thorn Season
Perla came to me alone, her large eyes brimming with sympathy. “I’m very sorry for your loss, my lady.” She opened her hand and offered a single black pearl. “In Avanford, we string them along our windows for mourning. I know it’s different in Vereen, but—”
“It was a lovely thought,” I said. “Thank you for your kindness.”
I dropped the pearl to the dirt as soon as she walked away.
The journey home was swollen with foggy sunlight and silence. Jewel-toned houses smearing past my unseeing eyes.Pat-pat-pat, Amarie’s clammy hand atop mine.
I’d always been tortured by the idea of dying before my father—of having to leave him behind. Why then, as the distance from the mausoleum stretched out like a fraying thread, did it still feel like I was the one abandoning him?
The Verenian nobles were assembled in the gardens when I returned. My stomach plunged as I saw the Capewells among them—the monsters I’d feared for eighteen years, crawling around my lands like locusts and drinking my father’s brandy. Some were fair like Briar, others darker-skinned or blue-eyed, with hair straight or braided or shaved close to the scalp. I’d always known they were a vast family, with branches that stretched across Daradon, but I hadn’t realized how vast until today.
“I couldn’t say no,” Amarie whispered. “They were your father’s only family.”
“I’m my father’s only family,” I replied, and drifted into their midst.
Garret was nowhere to be found but many Capewells approached me, their words dripping with compassion. A particularly beautiful young woman with glossy blond hair, who introduced herself to me as Mara, toasted to my father and downed her brandy with such enthusiasm that I considered smashing the glass against her forehead.
After an hour, I escaped to a jasmine-adorned gazebo and leaned against one of the poles. Capewells and nobles milled around me, their voices droning like bloated flies.
Then one voice bit out above the rest. “He was a good man.”
“Everyone keeps telling me that,” I said blankly.
“It’s true.” Briar stepped into the gazebo—a shark rising from the churning black sea of mourners, the wind teasing straw-yellow wisps from her braid. Her neckline swooped to catch the tips of her Hunters’ Mark tattoo. The same tattoo she’d inked over my father’s heart. “He never enjoyed the more...challengingaspects of the family business.”
“Family business.” A sharp huff escaped me—the closest I’d been to laughter in days. “That’s a quaint way to describe murder.”
“Careful where you point your finger. I hear you’re growing close to the man who sanctions those murders.”
A spark of feeling—ofrage—crackled inside me. I grabbed on to it before it slipped away. “Why are you here? To use me as you used my father? Don’t waste your breath. I won’t be so easily persuaded to join your service.”
“You might not have suffered captivity if you’d joined our service earlier. Garret told me about that ordeal.”
“You flogged him.”
“I disciplined him. If we released prisoners whenever an innocent was threatened, there would be chaos.”
“Maybe if you didn’t take prisoners, innocents wouldn’t be threatened.”
A condescending smile—the same smile she’d given after slapping me as a child. “Innocents will always be threatened. Our job ensures that those threats come from the natural world alone.”
“You think what you do is natural?” I spat. “That executing an entire household is natural? That tearing a mother from her child isnatural?”
“We don’t tear mothers from their children,” Briar said calmly. “We eradicate the bloodline in its entirety.”
Not always.
“And how is business lately?” I asked. “I’m sure Erik would love to know that you’re no closer to finding the compass than you were seven years ago.”
Briar looked me over, unblinking. “You’re very much like your father, aren’t you?”
I flinched. When I’d pictured Father working for Briar, I’d never imagined him challenging her authority. My chest split at the thought, but I shoved the pain far down.
“Take your Hunter filth,” I said, “and get off my lands.”
“Is that any way to address your elders?”
“I’m your ruling lady as long as you reside in Vereen. If you don’t like how I speak to you, relocate.”
