Page 96 of Thorn Season
Vermin.
Something inside me was screaming again—making acid of my blood, claws of my specter. And as the man’s neck swam out of focus, I knew—with painful clarity—I would not yet lie in the tomb beside my father.
I pulled my nails from his wrists, slick with blood, and scrabbled for the base of his throat. Then I burrowed my nails deep.
He bellowed, and his grip loosened. My specter heaved through me with my gasping breath. I thrust it forward—a rush of solid power.
Thecrackechoed through my bones.
A pause.
Then he slumped on top of me, arms collapsing around my head. My brooch bit into my breast under the weight.
For several muzzy seconds, I could only lie there, inhaling his hair, my vision crisscrossing on the ceiling’s painted beams. At last, I forced him off using both my arms and my quivering specter. The dark spots blinked out, and air streamed into my burning lungs. Warmth trickled down my neck from where his knife had clipped my ear. My face felt tacky with blood, but I didn’t know if it was mine or his.
I labored up, grasping the knife he’d plunged through my specter.With a wisp of power, I drew the dullroot canister toward me, steel screeching across the floor.
The canister bit cold inside my clammy palm, slightly larger than Briar’s prototype yet much lighter than I’d expected. I was lucky he’d only brought one. He’d returned here to cut up a Wholeborn girl—to leave me with a “parting gift” after I’d dared to interfere with the copycats.
He would’ve been better prepared against a Wielder.
I staggered toward the knife in the wall, locked all his weapons inside the desk, and leaned against it. Then I took the brandy decanter by the neck and tipped back a swallow. My raw throat burned. I drank deeper.
A knock. A door whispering open.
“Alissa, everybody’s gone—”
Garret froze. He paled as he took it all in: my red-smeared face; the decanter in my steady hand; the man’s neck, bent stiff at a gruesome angle.
I wanted to immortalize the look on his face—to trap it between glass like a pressed penny blossom.
“Don’t look so disturbed,” I croaked. “I’m sure you’ve seen worse.”
“You killed him,” he whispered, more stunned than accusatory.
“He killed my father,” I said. “I didn’t heed his warning, and he killed my father.”
Garret’s sunken eyes lifted to mine. “You can’t blame yourself.”
“I don’t. There’s only one person responsible for the role I’ve been playing at court.”
I set the decanter down with athunk, and Garret blinked at me, still dazed. As though I wasn’t capable of murder. As though he couldn’t believe the blood under my nails.
And I realized, for all these years, I’d represented the last glimmer of Garret Shaw’s morality. The lifeline to his conscience, keeping him from dropping into the storm of himself.
Because now, I was watching him fall.
“You didn’t tell me Erik was targeting Capewells,” I said. “Did you think I might like what he was doing? That I would stop pushing so hard to find the compass?” I tilted my head, looked him over. “Or did you worry I would realize your own time was running out?” My voice darkened. “And that you always played the riskiest hands when you felt cornered.”
Garret’s expression shifted. Cleared.
The irony struck me: I’d been trying to unearth the boy in him, and now here he was—that boy. Wearing the same expression he’d worn whenever he’d been caught cheating at a game.
But this wasn’t a game.
“Briar was called into Dawning on the first night of Rose Season,” I said, eerily calm. “The Capewells targeted the Jacombs’ employees, and she went to help round them up. You brought me home early from court, remember? You made sure to be here when the Wielders came.”
I remembered how he’d grabbed my arm in the carriage. How he’d looked toward the house, hesitant. How he’d let me go anyway.
