Of all the treasonous acts I’d ever committed, this shouldn’t have been the one to get me caught.
Red water streamed between my fingers with each frantic sponge-drag across Marge’s door, but even my frothing assault of soap and vinegar wouldn’t erase the Hunters’ Mark. I was only spreading the paint around, making a mess of the rose pattern Marge had drawn above the door-knocker last summer.
So much for preserving her memory.
Footsteps clopped behind me and I spun, heart racing. The air was still fuzzed and dewy as a morning peach, the jewel-toned houses barely flushed with colour; I had to squint to see the figures through the haze.
I exhaled in a sharp blast. Not the guards. Just some children racing across the mosaic-encrusted road, too caught up in their laughter to notice me. They rounded the corner, and the street returned to its sleepy silence, the silver penny blossom trees rustling like sequins in the wind.
But a few streets away, the market was yawning awake and exhaling the stench of roses. Soon, the festivity of Rose Season would drag locals from their beds.
I was running out of time.
I dunked the sponge into the bucket and slapped it across
2 KIERA AZAR
the door once more, scrubbing until vinegar fumes stung my eyes. Marge had loved the first day of Rose Season. Last year, she’d gorged on so many syrup-steeped confections that we’d had to cancel our Double Decks game and I’d brought her mint tea instead. I’d risen in the early hours of this morning and, remembering her sweet, grateful face, had known I couldn’t leave the Hunters’ Mark on her door one more day.
The tenth Hunters’ Mark to appear in the kingdom of Daradon within the last two months.
The Hunters had never struck so frequently within such a short period, and the sudden, inexplicable increase had left me with a permanent chest-fluttering feeling.
It had made the locals nervous too.
Another Wielder living among us all this time! I’d heard them whisper. I once let her watch the children! As if Marge hadn’t also volunteered at the clinic, or salted the ice off her neighbours’ doorsteps, or distributed lemon baskets when her potted trees had overflowed. As if her existence had been a scandal, and her slaughter an inconvenience.
I clenched the sponge, water veining my olive-brown skin. Marge should’ve let them break their bones on the ice. I would.
Footsteps pounded again, and this time I recognised those long strides. I whirled as my best friend braced her hands on her knees, her black braid snapping around her hip.
‘The guards,’ Tari said, panting. ‘They’re coming this way.’
I swore, hurling the sponge into the bucket. Our hands scrabbled to clean the evidence. Water slopped and wood clacked, and robins scattered at the noise.
‘There!’ Tari pointed across the street.
Three guards ambled up the pavement, their silver-stitched uniforms gleaming.
I dropped to the doorstep and mopped the water, red streaking under my sponge like a bloodstain. ‘How did they get here so fast? You were meant to be watching!’
THORN SEASON 3
She winced, bending to help me. ‘I got distracted.’ A green gem swung from her neck like a pendulum, flashing rainbows over her rich copper skin.
My eyes snapped up. ‘You left your post for that?’
‘It was on sale!’
‘It’s fake!’
Tari faltered, then plucked up the gem. ‘Really?’
I stood, trousers soaked. ‘Do you understand what a lookout does?’
‘Do you understand what a cleaner does?’ She gestured at the mark, now bleeding down the door. ‘Gracious gods, it looks worse than when you started!’
‘If my father finds out about this—’
The guards’ voices halted me, now audible over our bickering. Father was the least of my worries.
I hefted the bucket, tipping water down my blouse. Murkier water ribboned downhill across the mosaic tiles; the guards would follow that trail to the perpetrators. Tari could outrun them, but I couldn’t.
I looked towards Marge’s door and swallowed. Houses were always locked up after a Hunting.
‘Alissa, don’t,’ Tari warned.
But the guards’ eyes would land on us soon.
So, committing my second treasonous act of the day, I reached for my spectre.
It reeled out of me like a thread from an internal skein, and I exhaled as the ever-present tightness eased within me. Though invisible to everyone else, my spectre looked to me like a mirage shimmer rising off hot concrete or the eddy of air above a flame –rippling faster today on account of my rapid heartbeat.
I breathed deeply, settling the urge to feed out more than I needed. There was a reason I’d never knowingly met another Wielder: to Wield was to risk exposure.
One strand would have to be enough.
I poured the tendril through the keyhole, reshaping it to fill
4 KIERA AZAR
the cavity – one of the first tricks I’d ever taught myself – and the lock clicked open.
I shoved Tari inside and hustled after her. I relocked the door as gloom engulfed us, my spectre lurching in protest when I yanked it back beside my bones. Our breaths puffed into the silence, dust spiralling past our lips like vapour on a snow-frosted night.
My vision adjusted . . . and my blood chilled.
I’d imagined broken glass and upturned furniture – evidence of Marge’s struggle before the Hunters had forced dullroot, the spectre poison, into her veins to trap the power beneath her skin.
This scene was somehow more disturbing. Because the lounge was exactly as I remembered, with the paint-speckled table and four mismatched chairs – for Tari, Lidia, Marge and me. Yet an unnatural layer of grey dust carpeted every surface, giving the impression of years of neglect. As though Marge was already long-forgotten by the world.
‘It’s only been one week,’ I whispered.
Tari’s angular face tightened with concern. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. Because she must have known how this room would affect me.
She knew my horror flowed alongside the deep, aching guilt of survival.
I shakily set the bucket down and approached the table. Once a month, Marge would shuffle the cards here for Double Decks. Tari and Lidia would pretend not to cheat while Marge and I would roll our eyes, and we would all trade town gossip over hot lemonade.
Now, only one mug occupied the surface. Mould feathered in its centre, Marge’s burgundy kiss crusting the rim.
In a gut-wrenching flash, I imagined my own bedchamber deserted like this: a half-empty glass of pomegranate tea sweating on to my dressing table, the dark strands of my hair straggling round a wide-tooth comb. The last pieces of me, outliving the whole.
‘Remember last summer,’ Tari murmured, ‘when we moved
the table outside? Lidia hid a pair of queens up her shirtsleeves, and they flew off . . .’
‘But there was no breeze,’ I said softly. ‘I remember.’
‘Do you think Marge . . .?’
I’d asked myself similar questions all week: had Marge ever Wielded her spectre around us, undetected? Had she, like me, suffered under the strain of constant confinement?
‘She always hated when Lidia cheated,’ I said.
Sad laughter. ‘Only because she didn’t know how to cheat herself.’
My heart panged at the memory of Marge’s eye, twitching with every bluff. Had she tried lying to the Hunters when they’d come, hoping the eye-twitch wouldn’t give her away?
Tari shuffled closer, dust pluming under her boots. ‘Do you smell that?’
I inhaled. My wet blouse clung to my chest. ‘I smell only vinegar.’
She shook her head. ‘It smells bitter. Like something burning.’
I frowned at the hearth. The smell of a fire wouldn’t have lingered unless someone had sneaked in more recently.
‘The door was locked,’ I said.
‘Locks only stop Wholeborns. Maybe Marge had family she didn’t tell us about.’ Tari spoke with tentative encouragement, but I trampled my flaring hope.
Tari had spent her early childhood in Bormia, where the small Wielder population lived unprosecuted; though a Wholeborn herself, she’d already met more Wielders than I would knowingly encounter in my lifetime. I’d once petitioned Father to arrange for our passage there. But Bormia didn’t accept refugees, he’d said, and even if it did, Daradon’s ships couldn’t cross the choppy waters into their territory.
Since then, I’d imagined finding a fellow Wielder in this prison of a kingdom. We could learn from each other, confide in each other. We wouldn’t be alone.
But Marge had been here all along, and I’d never guessed that we’d been concealing the same secret. She’d always seemed so free with her laughter – so different from everything I’d expected to find in another Wielder . . . So different from me.
Even if I miraculously crossed paths with a Wielder again, it would lead to the same painful ending: I wouldn’t recognise them as an ally until it was too late.
Swallowing a knot of emotion, I reached for Marge’s dusty table.
I gasped, my spectre heaving me backwards at the first touch.
‘What is it?’ Tari asked.
I scrubbed my hand across my trousers, gaping. The dust hadn’t felt like dust. And now my spectre coiled deeply inside me, squirming with the effort to get out, out, out
A silhouette darkened the curtains. ‘Anyone in there?’
Tari and I shared a panicked look. Then we clambered under the table, elbows digging into ribs. The dust flurry threatened to tickle up a cough, and my spectre twisted again.
The door handle rattled. ‘Hello?’
‘I’ll go,’ Tari murmured. ‘Stay inside.’
I grabbed her wrist. ‘No.’
‘It’s fine. I’ll feign parch fever.’
‘And do what? Sneeze all over them?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Parch fever makes people disoriented. I’ve seen it at Mama’s clinic.’
‘Disoriented people don’t scrub Hunters’ Marks off doors.’
‘No?’ She flung a hand to her forehead, eyes saucer-round. ‘But I thought this was my house, sir.’ Her whisper pitched up and down in hysteria. ‘The vandals must’ve come overnight!’
I gave her a deadpan stare. ‘They’ll never buy that.’
‘Then I’ll spend the night in the town jails. It’ll be my first arrest.’ A wicked grin. ‘My parents might throw me a party.’
She wasn’t exaggerating. Tari’s parents would reward this rebellion the way my father might reward me for going a day without Wielding. Not that I’d ever lasted that long.
But I knew the real reason she didn’t want the guards to catch me here. Because while Tari’s crime began and ended at Marge’s doorstep, my crime began at birth.
‘Quickly,’ Tari said. ‘Before they bring the locksmith.’
She tugged away, and my hand smacked the floor. Something nipped my skin, and I hissed. Tari paused as I turned my hand over.
Horror glued me to the spot.
Because stuck to my clammy palm was a human tooth.
The sharp points dug into my skin, revealing the pink, fleshy underside where the gum still plastered the root. I glanced further down, and nausea choked me. Dark, dried spatter-marks covered the floor.
This was why there hadn’t been signs of struggle elsewhere. Because Marge had crouched here, too frightened to face the Hunters. They’d found her anyway.
And they’d hit her hard enough to knock out a tooth.
Tari regained her faculties first, seizing the tooth and tossing it aside with a sickening clatter. But the indent remained on my palm – little dimples where the points had nearly broken the skin. I blinked rapidly, trying not to picture the Hunters’ faces. Trying not to guess which one of them had issued that tooth-loosening blow.
Had they unleashed a similar violence upon my mother before they’d killed her? Would they unleash the same upon me?
My ears rang as the guards’ voices drifted away.
‘They’re leaving,’ Tari said, eyes glassy. ‘We should go.’
I fought to steady my breathing, to settle the frantic thrum of my spectre. Then we dashed out of the door and into the street, the bucket wrapped in my sopping embrace.
I managed three steps before someone grasped my arm.
‘All right, the fun’s over—’
The guard broke off as I turned, my eyes already framed wide with innocence. I hoped he couldn’t feel the nervous quiver down my limbs.
‘Is there a problem?’ I asked.
The guard dropped his hand, stammering. ‘Lady Alissa. I didn’t recognise you.’
I tilted my head, letting my face bronze in the first light of morning. The guard was young enough that my smile sent a shock of pink to his cheeks. ‘I hope you don’t go around grabbing every citizen like that.’ My voice lilted between a flirt and a threat. The voice of a courtier.
His blush deepened. ‘No, my lady. We received a report that someone was destroying town property.’ He glanced at Marge’s dripping door. To where I could still make out the two connected spires of the Hunters’ Mark – a long, sharp M with a plunging centre.
Father once told me the spires represented the two gods of passing, a symbol to honour the dead. But my first visit to court had taught me that those spires mimicked the two-tined crown of Daradon. Not a tribute to the gods – but to the vicious king who held the Hunters’ leash.
And I’d just been caught scrubbing those tines away.
I readjusted my bucket, chin lifted. ‘That would be me.’
The guard’s eyes flicked to Tari and tightened on her tan waistcoat. ‘Are you sure, my lady?’
I gritted my teeth. The bucket was in my arms. My clothes were sodden with paint and water. Yet he’d seen Tari’s lotus pin – the national Bormian flower – shining proudly at her breast, and he’d thought to accuse her.
Bormians were always labelled as sympathisers.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked, fighting to conceal the bite in my tone.
He straightened. ‘Byron, my lady.’
‘Byron.’ Names held power, and I said his like I would never forget it. ‘You’re new?’
‘Yes, my lady. I trained with the royal guard before coming to Vereen.’
The royal guard. I could work with that.
‘You must forgive my father, Byron. He should have warned the guards I’d be here. With the preparations for tonight’s ball, it surely slipped his mind.’
Byron frowned. ‘This was Lord Heron’s idea?’
‘It’s the first day of Rose Season. People from across the kingdom have travelled to Vereen to see our famed craftwork.’ I leaned closer, confiding. ‘This street is so near the market. We don’t want to drive away shoppers.’ When Byron looked unconvinced, I wrinkled my nose towards Marge’s door. ‘And we certainly don’t want to be associated with their kind.’
I felt sick at the words. Felt sick that Byron’s face softened with understanding. But nobody questioned cruelty the way they questioned kindness.
‘My father didn’t wish to draw attention,’ I said, driving in my final weapon. ‘He’ll be mortified to hear I dragged you from your post on such an important day.’
Bullseye. Having trained at the palace, Byron would’ve seen how royal guards were punished for their oversights. Vereen was nothing like the capital, but Byron didn’t know that. And leaving his post to accost the lady of Vereen? That was a medal-worthy oversight.
He gulped, looking so ill that I almost pitied him. Then he said, as if doing me a favour, ‘Don’t fear, my lady. I won’t mention this to His Lordship.’
He marched off, and I cut the strings of my puppet smile.
‘How do you do that?’ Tari mumbled as I glimpsed movement from Lidia’s house across the street: curtains swishing, Lidia darting away.
‘Lidia reported us,’ I said flatly. Lidia and Marge had been dearest friends, as close as Tari and me. Now Lidia wouldn’t offer Marge the dignity of an unmarked door.
Of all the cowards on this street, she was the worst.
‘She’s afraid,’ Tari said. ‘Everyone’s afraid. It doesn’t mean they don’t care.’
10 KIERA AZAR
I went to shout her down. Cowering under a table; being yanked into the open; feeling a tooth tear from its gum – that was fear.
But I stopped myself. Tari had no spectre; she didn’t understand what it was to be truly afraid. She might support me, worry for me, but I alone experienced the constant hum of dread that, at any moment, the Hunters could prune me from the world. I wouldn’t be kindly overlooked if they discovered my spectre, and I certainly wouldn’t be spared.
After all, the Hunters’ bloodline had to remain untainted.
And I was the thorn on their family tree.
CHAPTER
2
Iwalked the side streets home, avoiding the bustle and haggle of the market, ducking round every corner like the criminal I was. Though Byron had accepted my ugly excuse, Lidia had seen everything, and my steaming indignation was cooling into doubt. Never show your power, Father had always taught me. Never give them a reason to look. And what had I done? I’d openly vandalised the Hunters’ Mark, then inexplicably conquered a locked door. I may as well have taken the pink Happy Rose Season! banner from the square and waved it above my head.
It had been foolish. Reckless. Yet despite my churning anxiety, I knew it had also been right.
Some believed that the Hunters descended from the legendary Spellmakers of old, the only beings who could sniff out power like bloodhounds – and could even harness certain forms of power to forge indestructible objects.
My father knew the truth. His late mother, a Hunter, had married into nobility, and his inherited title had saved him from having to execute Wielders with the rest of the vast Capewell family. But though this had made Father an outcast among them –subject to both scorn and envy – he’d still learned how the Hunters truly found their targets. While the family didn’t possess a drop of Spellmaker blood, they did possess a Spellmade compass.
A compass that pointed to Wielders, separating us from Wholeborns like chaff from grain.
The idea of such an object had always horrified me – but even more so since the rise in Huntings. Was this upshoot born of sadistic boredom, or had it been a directive from the young king, wanting to reassert his power? Most importantly: was the spike going to drop?
I’d implored Father to extract answers from the Capewells, but he’d looked so pained that I hadn’t pressed again.
And now Marge was dead. Slaughtered by the same people who’d sent my father a premature condolence letter during my childhood bout of blueneck fever. The same people who spoke to him as though he wasn’t worth half the space he took up in a room.
Father only tolerated the Capewells so they wouldn’t look in my direction; he believed they wouldn’t think to consult the compass around their own family members without cause.
But if I’d survived this long purely because of the fortune of my blood ties . . . how could I not use my extra time to wash the hateful mark off Marge’s door?
The ruddy water was drying stiff to my blouse as I gusted into the foyer, inhaling the scent of the sesame biscuits Father toasted every morning. While Rose Season had ensnared the rest of Vereen, our staff knew to keep our manor rose-free – though they didn’t know why I’d emptied my stomach when a new maid had arranged a vase in my chambers last spring.
To this day, I wouldn’t discuss the root of my aversion. Wouldn’t explain the dark months when I’d refused to leave my chambers, and the maids had wafted fresh-bread steam under my door just to get me to eat. Only Amarie knew about the old, rose-infused memory I still couldn’t face; as our house manager and only live-in staff member, she was the only person my father trusted with every secret.
She was also the only person who scolded me like a child.
‘I know, I know.’ I cringed at my boot treads as she hurried towards me, her tawny hair jouncing in its bun. ‘I’ll clean up—’
‘Go back out,’ she said, hissing, and shooing me towards the door.
The wide staircase creaked, and I scrambled backwards. Father should’ve been in his study by now.
My hand was on the doorknob when someone said, ‘Alissa.’
The voice twisted like a knife in my gut.
I hadn’t seen Garret since the increase in Huntings, and I felt too raw for this meeting. Too weary. But when I turned, I knew that despite the vinegar fumes making me smell like a meat marinade, I looked just as composed and aloof as the boy coming down the stairs.
Not a boy any more, I reminded myself. In a black waistcoat and blazer, his leather shoes polished to a mirror-gleam, Garret Shaw looked every bit the Capewell he’d promised never to become. Long limbs and sleek edges. A clean shave across his deeply tanned skin. The only token of his youth was the eightyear-old scar interrupting one eyebrow like a crack in a mask – a souvenir from head-butting a doorknob the night we’d swiped my father’s brandy.
I hated that scar more than any other piece of him. It always reminded me of how hard we’d laughed that night.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, automatically scanning for the weapons he must have been carrying beneath his fine clothes. Weapons he hadn’t yet used against me, despite being the only Hunter who wouldn’t need the compass to know what I was.
I’d made the mistake of telling him myself.
‘I had business with your father.’ Garret descended the last step and looked me over, that dark eyebrow lifting in cool amusement. ‘Been swimming?’
‘Painting.’
‘You don’t paint.’
No – while my father had produced the peacock-coloured spray of artwork along the mahogany walls, I could barely draw an apple.
‘You don’t do business with my father,’ I countered.
Garret’s mouth flattened. Although they’d long given up the attempt, the Capewells used to proposition Father to join the Hunters’ service, for the triumph of having him – a ruling lord –under their command. Father had always given the same answer: no.
Garret turned to Amarie, whose eyes flitted nervously between us. ‘Send word if Heron reconsiders our discussion. Before tonight’s ball.’
‘Amarie doesn’t take orders from you,’ I said.
‘That wasn’t an order.’ Garret smiled thinly. ‘Just a request.’
He slunk towards me, the clasp of his steel bracelet flashing in the sunlight. Even after seven years, I shuddered at the sight of Garret’s oath band.
Though still permissible by Daradonian law, the oath band was deemed archaic; it served as a shackle, only removable by the person to whom the wearer had sworn an oath. And if the wearer broke their oath – or the band – without permission, the law demanded they forfeit their hand from the wrist down.
Garret was the only Hunter who wore one of those bands. Probably because he was the only Hunter who hadn’t been born into the role.
Garret’s birth parents had been killed during the Starling Rebellion, when rogue Wielders had attacked Wholeborns in a gruesome attempt to balance the score of violence. Wray Capewell, my father’s cousin, had known Garret’s parents well, and he’d raised their orphaned child within the family of Hunters, treating Garret no worse – but certainly no better – than the many young Capewells squalling about Capewell Manor.
Now Garret stopped before me, as flinty-eyed as he’d been for the past seven years – since he’d sharpened under the whetstone of the Hunters’ influence.
Since he’d chosen them over me.
I refused to shrink back when he reached round me for the door handle. Then, because I could still feel the phantom dint of
Marge’s tooth, because I wanted to torture myself with one more reason to despise him, I asked, ‘Been to town recently?’
Garret paused, his arm outstretched behind me, his severe face inches above mine. His warm breath skimmed my cheek as he said, eyes narrowed, ‘Not for weeks.’
It was the note of confusion that made me believe him. And though his answer changed nothing between us – though he’d killed countless other Wielders – I felt a stab of relief that he hadn’t been the one to kill my friend.
He looked all the way down me then, and I tensed as his gaze landed on my red-stained fingers. ‘Mind that nobody sees you,’ he said carefully, ‘when you’re . . . painting.’
I glowered as he brushed past me, and, with a tendril of my spectre, I slammed the door behind him.
‘You’ll get a rash,’ I muttered atop the grand staircase, the heatand-perfume haze pressing around me.
Father had been scratching his chest for the entire hour-long journey into Henthorn, the capital city. I couldn’t blame him; city visits tested both our nerves. But Father wore his anxiety for all to see.
And courtiers saw everything.
They twirled in a sea of satin below us, music and laughter flowing as freely as the sparkling wine. Roses coiled up marble pillars and burst like sores between the archways, their petals weeping over the king’s throne. And above the dais, shimmering in silver, were the symbols representing Daradon’s five provinces: a carp for Avanford; a wheat stalk for Creak; a sword for the soldiers of Parrey; a book for the scholars of Dawning; and in the centre of them all, a bejewelled ring for the craftspeople of Vereen.
‘At least they have lemon cakes.’ I nodded towards the dessert table, where sugared tarts, brandied plums and pistachio-crusted truffles tumbled from a pastry cornucopia. But the semolina lemon cakes – my favourite dessert – were a new addition, and usually
16 KIERA AZAR
only found at Verenian bakeries. ‘How terrible can one night be with a lemon cake in hand?’
‘Don’t tempt the gods,’ Father grumbled.
‘The gods don’t care about lemon cakes. Now, stop scratching, and be glad you don’t look like you belong on a plate beside the lemon cakes.’
Father eyed me and cringed. I’d heaped myself in Henthornian fashion this evening, with puffed pink sleeves hanging low off my shoulders and satiny skirts tenting below my corseted waist. I resembled a walking meringue – and my sweeping updo was the swirl of chocolate cream on top.
‘You didn’t have to wear that,’ he said.
‘And miss the chance to trip over my skirts on the way to the dance floor? I was hoping to take a few centrepieces down with me.’
Father’s mouth barely twitched in amusement. He seemed especially fretful tonight. While Rose Season manifested at court as the annual social season – during which the nobles indulged in enough gossip, merriment and rich foods to hibernate over the cooler months – its roots originated from a more formal tradition, which still held strong:
Every noble, on their eighteenth season, would participate in a closing ceremony to swear fealty to the reigning monarch. Though appearance was only mandatory on the first and last nights of the season, these eighteenth-season nobles were encouraged – no, expected – to pass the six weeks leading up to the ceremony in a first stay at court.
And this year marked my eighteenth season.
I’d told Father I could handle court for six weeks, but he’d been adamant. Sending his Wielder daughter to live at the palace would’ve felt like sending a deer into a wolf’s den, and he would only relax once these weeks of Rose Season had wilted off the calendar.
But with the festivity in full bloom tonight, he was on the brink of sweating through his coat-tails.
THORN SEASON 17
I grabbed his clammy hand and squeezed. ‘Back straight. Chin high. And by all the gracious gods, stay away from Rupert when he drinks. Last year, he breathed beside a candle and singed my eyebrows.’
Father actually cracked a faint smile at that. Then he briefly touched my cheek. ‘What would I do without you, my girl?’
Sudden guilt stabbed at me. He would unravel if he noticed the tinge of red paint staining my fingernails.
Returning his smile a little tightly, I descended the stairs at his side, one meringue joining the others on the white tray of the ballroom floor. As the stench of roses swept over me, roiling my stomach, I inhaled the citrus-and-lavender perfume at my wrist. It was a trick Tari had learned at her mother’s clinic, and, as usual, my nausea settled.
But it returned with a vengeance as I noticed Briar Capewell’s straw-yellow hair swishing through the crowd.
Father subtly angled himself between us.
He and Briar were first cousins on his mother’s side, and while Father and I had inherited most of our characteristics from the Paine side of the family – heavy brows, olive colouring, dark lashes around broody almond-brown eyes – Briar presented a statuesque figure of creams-and-golds. But today, her high cheeks blazed with florid anger. The crisscross straps of her peach dress shifted with every violent footfall, threatening to reveal the Hunters’ Mark tattooed over her heart.
A defiant outfit choice.
The Crown forbade the Hunters from revealing their true identities, claiming that faceless executioners produced a greater fear. But Briar Capewell, the head of the Hunter family, resented the powerlessness of anonymity. When standing over a Wielder’s body, wearing the mask of the Hunters, she was horror incarnate.
But standing among the gentry, wearing the guise of a merchant, she was the bitter human equivalent of a lemon pith.
‘The ship docked this morning, Heron,’ she said, stopping before us. ‘Were you aware?’
KIERA AZAR
‘Hello to you, too, Briar,’ Father mumbled.
‘They’ve prepared the ambassadorial chambers.’ She laughed roughly. ‘They should’ve prepared the dungeons.’
I frowned at Father. ‘An ambassador’s here?’
Father hesitated, seeming oddly reluctant to speak around me.
Briar said, ‘His Majesty is hosting an Ansoran ambassador for Rose Season.’
I fought to school my expression. Ansora, the Wielderruled empire across the sea, had always seemed like an illusion glimmering at the map’s western edge. While their ongoing conflict with our neighbouring kingdom, Orren, had made their surrounding waters near-impenetrable, the Ansoran mainland thrived with culture and prosperity, a haven for Wielders and Wholeborns alike.
And one of their ambassadors had journeyed here?
‘The king should’ve refused,’ Briar said, popping my vision like a soap bubble. ‘Doesn’t he understand the risk?’ She picked at a hangnail, uncharacteristically fidgety. ‘You’re a ruling lord. What’s the point of having influence at court if you don’t use it?’
‘It’s not in my interest to influence our king’s political decisions,’ Father said.
Briar’s lips thinned. ‘The Wielder will have free rein here. What if he gets his hands on your lovely daughter?’
Father tensed, but my spectre was already rousing inside me. No wonder Briar looked so distressed.
‘The ambassador is a Wielder?’ I asked, breathless. ‘It’s been confirmed?’
‘No,’ Father said, his voice even flatter than his expression. This must be why he’d kept the news to himself. He’d wanted to avoid raising my interest, my hopefulness. He surely knew how much I wanted to meet another Wielder.
And he knew how dangerous that could be.
‘All we know,’ he continued, ‘is that the Ansorans requested an invitation for this year’s season. Their empress is known to
be particularly vicious when affronted, and our king thought to preserve international relations.’
‘With vermin?’ Briar spat.
Father flinched, and I almost flinched with him. The way most people said Wielder was usually insult enough. But now I imagined Briar spitting the word vermin at Marge, and I had to breathe deep to settle the spectral tug inside me.
A spectre was said to be a natural extension of a Wielder’s physiology – a gathering of power not only governed by its Wielder’s intent, but also deeply attuned to their subconscious. Their most primal and instinctive impulses.
Which was why, right now, my spectre strained with my desire to yank Briar away by her hair.
‘I suppose you know vermin better than anyone,’ I said, heat clawing up my neck, ‘after so many years of scavenging around court.’
‘Alissa,’ Father warned, inching further between us. Rankling a Hunter was exactly what I shouldn’t be doing.
But even in her agitation, Briar seemed vaguely entertained. ‘Your daughter’s tongue grows sharper each year, Heron. You should train her to keep it inside that pretty mouth before it gets her into trouble.’ She smiled at me, and there it was – the only secret we shared, dripping like acid into the silence.
Because this was the exact smile she’d given me ten years ago, after she’d whipped her palm across my face.
Back then, I’d been too afraid of her to tell Father what she’d done. But she was no longer the greatest monster I knew.
I opened my mouth, but Father spoke first, his expression hard. ‘Be quiet, Briar.’
I startled, pride swelling in my chest. Father never risked standing up for himself against the Hunters. But he would always stand up for me.
Briar glanced at Father’s silver brooch: a circlet of penny blossoms –the Paine emblem. At court, jewellery meant status. Rubies glittered
KIERA AZAR
from every corner; emeralds winked under crystal chandeliers; pink diamonds dripped from my own earlobes. And while Father’s brooch sparkled with dark blue xerylites – coveted gemstones native to Vereen – Briar’s only adornment was the Hunters’ Mark over her heart. The tattoo she wasn’t allowed to reveal.
Her cheeks blotched again – an angry, resentful red. ‘My lord,’ she conceded with a mocking air, her entire face puckering as though from a nasty taste. Lemon pith, indeed.
Father turned to me, eyes shadowed. ‘Why don’t you go find Carmen?’
With a glare at Briar, I departed. But as the ball raged around me, I didn’t search for my friend. I began examining each garment for a rising sun, the Ansoran insignia.
I had to find the ambassador.
I wouldn’t return here until the last night of Rose Season, and he might have left by then; I couldn’t lose my only chance at meeting another Wielder. I wouldn’t expose myself, of course. Despite Father’s fears, I wasn’t that reckless. But maybe just knowing of another Wielder’s spectre would be enough – more than I’d had with Marge.
I hastened, growing giddy with anticipation, when Lord Rupert of Creak planted a moustache-tickling kiss on my knuckles and started rambling about the vineyard he’d acquired in Avanford.
‘Oh, you’re not serious.’ I scrunched my nose just so. ‘Avanish wine is horribly tart.’
‘Tart?’ Rupert adjusted his monocle. ‘Why, Fiona adored the stuff, gods rest her!’
I internally winced at the mention of Father’s late wife, a Creakish noblewoman I’d never met, yet whose name I exploited with my every breath. Lady Fiona’s death had occurred so shortly after my birth that Father had been able to pass her off as my mother without raising suspicion. If these nobles discovered I was actually the bastard child from Father’s secret love affair, they would want me stripped of my title.
THORN SEASON 21
And if they learned my birth mother had been a Wielder, they would want me dead.
‘I’ll make a connoisseur of you yet, dear girl,’ Rupert continued. ‘I’ll send you a case for sampling. That ought to change your mind.’
He puffed up as though he’d won the argument, and I slipped away as a Parrian merchant approached him, eager to offload a case of rum.
After twenty more minutes of searching, I collapsed against the dessert table and downed a flute of sparkling wine. I was raising another, surveying the crowd, when a familiar voice said, ‘He’s not here.’
I lowered the flute as Garret slid beside me.
‘The ambassador,’ he clarified, his knowing gaze sweeping my face. ‘He’s making his appearance tomorrow.’
Hope flooded out of me as quickly as it had risen, leaving me hollow.
‘It’s your eighteenth season.’ Garret leaned back against the table and adjusted his bronze cufflink. ‘You’re bound to meet him during your stay.’
‘I’m not joining court this year,’ I said, surprised at the bite in my voice. Even more surprised that it wasn’t directed at Garret.
Each time I Wielded, I knew I scored another stress line into Father’s forehead, spun another silver thread into his hair. And because Wielding was the most selfish thing I could never stop doing, I tried to appease him in everything else. I didn’t push him to acknowledge the increase in Huntings; I didn’t push him to talk about my birth mother; I didn’t even push to join court for my eighteenth season.
But when I’d agreed to stay home, I hadn’t realised he’d been keeping me from another Wielder.
‘Shame.’ Garret’s faint, genuine smile pierced me through the ribs; it made his face seem softer. Younger. ‘I saw that trick you pulled on Rupert.’
It was Carmen, the princess of Daradon, who’d first taught
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me how to charm Rupert into sending me gifts. From there, I’d learned the secret to getting anything from anyone.
Never ask a person for what you truly want; wait until they offer it freely.
‘You’ve always thrived here,’ Garret said. ‘It’s your craft.’ I tensed, waiting for the insult. But he left the compliment as it was – an invisible hand reaching across the chasm between us.
I stood a little straighter. Smacked that invisible hand away. ‘That’s what happens when you’re born into nobility.’
‘Tell your father that.’ He nodded towards a dim alcove, and I went taut. Father usually spent these balls cloistered with the Jacombs of Dawning, his closest acquaintances at court. But tonight, he was still shrinking under Briar’s tirade. Probably paying for having shut her up within earshot of the gentry.
My spectre squirmed. With my next exhale, I let it breach my bare skin. I unspooled a tendril across the cool marble floor, feeling the satisfying stretch of release from deep inside me. Then I slipped it under a nobleman’s shoe.
The man stumbled. And crashed right into Briar.
I chuckled under my breath.
Garret grabbed my arm, his soft smile gone. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘Do what?’ I wrenched away, all innocence. ‘I can’t help that she’s more sour tonight than usual. Though I’m surprised she has time to pout about the ambassador when she’s so busy with her night-time excursions.’ My tone turned bitter. ‘Ten Huntings within two months is bound to wear a person out.’
‘Lower your voice.’
As Briar scrambled under the nobleman, I remembered her tight, anxious expression from earlier. And I understood what it meant.
‘Oh,’ I breathed, smiling grimly. ‘Don’t tell me the leader of the king’s Hunters is afraid of one little Wielder.’
Garret reached for my wine. ‘Maybe you’ve had enough.’
I pulled back. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t tell me what to do.’
THORN SEASON 23
I was turning when Garret seized my wrist. He tugged me towards him and I gasped, stumbling into the space between us. Wine fizzled over our fingers.
‘Is this fun for you?’ he hissed. His stare bore down on mine, turning me rigid. ‘Seeing how far you can push before—’
‘Before what?’ I gritted out.
His grip contracted round my wrist.
Before I expose you, I waited for him to say. Before I decide you’re not worth keeping alive.
My spectre reared, and I was moments away from lashing it against him when he abruptly released me and dropped his gaze. A coiffed blond head crept into my eyeline, and my spectre shrivelled tight.
Then His Majesty King Erik Vard of Daradon asked, ‘Lady Alissa, may I have this dance?’
CHAPTER 3
Father used to read me fairy tales – stories of strapping young heroes who slayed monsters and rescued damsels, all without getting a speck of blood on their hands.
The gods had sculpted King Erik after those heroes. That same power and grace sang in his every movement – honed his knifesharp bone structure, then generously softened it with romance: fair starburst lashes framing his frost-blue eyes, and a lush mouth that flirted on the edge of swollen, like he’d either just returned from a heady kiss or was about to engage in one.
But it was those clean hands that cemented his fairy tale image: never stained by the blood he’d spilled.
My skin crawled at the cold feel of them – one clasping mine, the other settling at the dip of my waist – as he led me in a dance. I hoped Father couldn’t see us. The sight of me in the king’s grasp would be hell on his rash.
‘I felt it my duty to rescue you.’ King Erik smirked, his voice low and sultry. Dressed in his usual finery – silver-embroidered indigo, with a cape fastened at his shoulders – he stood out like a pillar against the twinkling pink backdrop. ‘You looked terribly affronted. That was one of Briar’s boys, wasn’t it?’
The king wasn’t much older than Garret, but I knew what he’d meant. One of Briar’s boys. As if she’d moulded him herself.
‘It was, Your Majesty.’
‘I hope he wasn’t bothering you.’
‘No more than usual,’ I said, and regretted it instantly. Because Erik’s gaze tightened over my shoulder, closing in on a target.
I didn’t know what exactly compelled me to clunk forward, digging my heel into his polished boot. But I exhaled when his icy attention slid off Garret.
‘My apologies,’ I said. ‘I rarely dance.’
The king smiled, all warmth and tolerance. ‘You may step on my toes as often as you wish. You’re saving me from dancing with Lady Perla.’ He whispered intimately, ‘It’s like dragging a wet fish across the dance floor.’ At my false laughter, his smile grew sharper. More satisfied. ‘I’m fortunate you’ll be joining court this year, Lady Alissa. I’m far too dependent on your trampling feet to let them wander off now.’
Here we go. I’d grown accustomed to Erik’s appreciative glances since I’d come of age.
I’d grown equally accustomed to batting away his flirtations like swatting flies.
‘I’m afraid Your Majesty will have to manage without me this year,’ I said, laughing again. ‘Though I’m certain your shoes will thank me.’
His head tilted – a predator prickling with awareness. ‘This is your eighteenth season, no?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘Then I assume you’re unaware of Rose Season’s origins. You see, the tradition began so each new generation of nobles could swear fealty to the Crown.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’ I maintained my smile. ‘I look forward to the ceremony at the end of the season.’
‘But you won’t be remaining at the palace in the meantime?’
‘No, Your Majesty.’
He licked his lips, his wry smile glistening. ‘Forgive me, Lady
Alissa. I feel myself growing offended, and I doubt that’s what you intend.’
My spectre twitched at his tone – falsely playful, dark with meaning. The anxious thrum of my pulse grew palpable where my palm pressed his.
You’ve always thrived here, Garret had said. Because court had always enthralled me – the schemes and secrets, the verbal warfare that sent my spectre zipping with a little thrill. In different circumstances, I might’ve joined court despite Father’s wishes. But it wasn’t court he wanted to keep me from.
It had always been the king.
‘We have a large house, Your Majesty,’ I said, thick with apology. ‘I couldn’t bear to leave my father alone in it for so long.’
‘By all means, tell him to join you.’
‘You wouldn’t like that, Your Majesty.’ Another empty laugh. ‘You have enough Verenian nobles cluttering your halls for Rose Season. Craftspeople can be a fussy lot.’
‘Ah, that’s why you don’t stay? For fear of cluttering my halls?’ He twirled me to a swell of music. My twisting skirts dragged me off kilter, but he steadied me against him – a wolf keeping hold of its prey. ‘I’m relieved, Lady Alissa. My imagination had quite run away with me. I’d believed you were deliberately avoiding my company.’
I faltered – just for a moment. Then I lowered my lashes. Plastered on a brave, wobbling smile. ‘You read me too well, Your Majesty, though it’s not your company I wish to avoid. I hear you’re hosting a Wielder at court this year.’
He quirked an eyebrow. ‘I’m hosting an Ansoran at court.’
‘Aren’t they mostly Wielders?’
‘In this case, it’s of no consequence. It would be against any creature’s interest to lose control within my walls.’
I clenched my jaw behind my smile. Allegedly, a spectre’s natural tendency was to extend outside a Wielder’s body – like a plant moving towards light, or a muscle craving to be stretched. It
THORN SEASON 27
was therefore argued that spectres might execute their Wielders’ desires even without conscious intention. That a spectre’s freeflowing nature made it uncontrollable. Dangerous.
And that, in being unable to manage such volatile power, Wielders were no better than beasts untethered.
So why, after two centuries of slaughtering Wielders under the Execution Decree, would the kingdom welcome a foreign Wielder now? If this was of no consequence, why did people like Marge still have to die?
‘You mustn’t worry yourself,’ Erik said, in true hero fashion. ‘The creature wouldn’t do you any harm. And if it tried –’ he twirled me again, dragged me firmly back – ‘where else could be safer than right here, beside your king?’ His gaze dropped to my lips, heavy with suggestion.
I stilled. Flirtations were a regular part of the script. But the look in his eyes was something new . . . Something that made my blood spike with the threat of danger.
He gave a slow, curving grin. ‘I’ve startled you.’
‘No, Your Majesty.’ My chest fluttered rapidly, still trapped against his. I had to crane to meet his stare. ‘You could never startle me.’
I already know what you’re capable of.
Erik leaned down, and I fought the instinct to recoil. ‘My advisors are campaigning for Lady Perla.’ His breath rippled against my ear; his fingers splayed across my back. ‘But I believe they’ve overlooked another, far more pleasing option.’
He pulled away, and I knew what he saw: the colour draining from my face like wet paint dripping down a canvas. The young king was looking to reaffirm his power over the kingdom.
Because, apparently, he was searching for a bride.
‘Tell me, Lady Alissa.’ His thumb trailed down my spine. ‘Did you like the lemon cakes?’
My head emptied. And in the stillness, I finally heard the whispers. Finally saw the wide circle we’d created with our
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dance – an invisible barrier the other nobles hadn’t crossed, but had pierced with their razor-sharp notice.
They had noticed what this dance had meant. And I hadn’t.
‘Your Majesty.’ I swallowed, heart racing. ‘You flatter me, but—’ ‘But.’ Erik clicked his tongue, teasing. ‘Why must you follow that statement with but?’
Because I’m not a damsel in need of rescuing. I’m one of the creatures you like to cut down.
I wanted to run, or throw up – or shove my hairpins into his jugular – but just then, the noise in the ballroom abruptly ratcheted. We broke eye contact, faces snapping in opposite directions. Messengers weaved through the crowd, leaving open mouths wherever they passed.
The word bounced towards me, an echo layered in different voices. Hunters, Hunters, Hunters.
Goose bumps lashed up my skin.
Distracted by the chaos, Erik relaxed his grip, and I used the excuse to feign a stumble. He reached out to steady me too late; the sudden swarm of people created a barrier between us, and I let myself get swept away.
I jostled between the bodies, devouring scraps of conversations, head swivelling to find my father.
‘They crashed through the estate.’
‘A noble household!’
Oh, gods.
The room became too stifling, my skin too tight. I could still feel the king’s hands on me, and I was breathing fast, tasting roses on every breath.
Then Father’s arm banded round my shoulders, towing me through the crowd.
‘The estate,’ I gasped. ‘Amarie—’
‘Not ours,’ Father murmured. ‘The Jacombs’ estate.’ He looked to where the Jacombs were extracting the news from a messenger, their faces carved with horror. ‘Their staff.’
My stomach turned. The Jacombs’ household had two dozen live-in staff members.
‘How many?’ I whispered.
Father’s neck tensed with a hard swallow. ‘All of them.’
Two dozen Wielders. Two dozen deaths.
The misery in Father’s eyes warred with relief – a relief that felt obscene in the wake of such slaughter.
I knew. Because I felt it too.
‘I’ll take her home.’ Garret appeared beside me, and my emotion kindled into rage.
‘This doesn’t concern you,’ I snapped.
But Father didn’t dismiss him; his gaze had darkened on Garret’s oath band.
‘You worry too much, Heron.’ Garret tugged his blazer sleeve, smiling blandly. ‘She’s perfectly safe with me.’
Father cast him a sharp look of warning. Then he kissed the top of my head and urged me forward. I would’ve tripped if Garret hadn’t grasped my elbow.
‘I don’t need an escort—’
‘Please, my girl.’ Father’s voice warbled, cracking my resolve. ‘I need to be here. I’ll see you at home.’
As Garret steered me towards an arched exit, I caught a final glimpse of the ballroom.
The king’s eyes were searching the crowd.
CHAPTER 4
I’d first met Garret one blustery morning when his adoptive father, Wray Capewell, had visited our estate. Father told me to play outside, away from the Hunter; while splashing in rain puddles, I found Garret shivering in Wray’s lacquered carriage, forgotten. I invited him inside for cinnamon milk, and when Wray scolded him for taking handouts like a street urchin, I ‘accidentally’ tipped steaming milk down the man’s trousers. Father withheld my desserts all week, but it had been worth it for the grateful smile twitching round Garret’s mouth. And when, months later, I told him about my spectre, I hadn’t glimpsed a lick of judgement in his awed reaction.
He judged me now.
As I twirled my mother’s lucky coin over a tendril of my spectre, Garret watched, tight-lipped and wary, as though it might shoot down his throat. My mother had been Hunted mere weeks after my birth, and this coin was all I possessed of her – lighter than real gold, with a chip on the circumference, as if a tiny person had taken a bite. Garret must have recognised it – or he simply didn’t want to risk touching my dirty spectre – because he didn’t seize the coin like he probably should have.
Wielding an object was always dangerous; though I alone saw my spectre, rippling like a heatwave around a fire, witnesses might
THORN SEASON 31
see the coin held invisibly aloft, and I would be exposed. But right now, sweating in a heap of satin, heart beating faster than the clattering wheels over the Verenian roads, I needed the sense of release only Wielding could offer.
For eighteen years, I’d managed my fear, balancing on the knife’s edge between guilt and gratitude. The Hunters’ compass couldn’t target Wielders beyond a certain distance, Father always assured me, and the Capewells had no reason to consult it in my presence. As long as I was careful, I was safe. But tonight had marked the eleventh Hunting in two months, with the largest body count yet.
And the background hum of my dread was quickly whirring into panic.
What had warranted this torrent of slaughter after two centuries of a drip-pace? Were the Capewells finally picking off the last of Daradon’s Wielders? I’d never wanted my father to experience the pain of outliving his child. But if the Huntings continued like this . . .
Did I truly have as much time left as I’d wanted to believe?
My mother’s coin spun faster, and Garret’s fists tightened in his lap. Even he couldn’t protect me if someone saw me now. More than that – I wasn’t sure he would want to.
So, as the street festivities grew louder, I released the coin and forcibly withdrew my spectre.
Garret exhaled. ‘So Erik’s in the market for a bride.’
‘In the market?’ I shifted uncomfortably, hot-faced and agitated after an hour in the carriage. ‘I’m not a sack of grain. He’s not trying to buy me.’
‘Isn’t he?’
I opened my mouth, then remembered the lemon cakes and sank back.
‘Everyone saw how he looked at you,’ Garret said. ‘They’ll be lobbying for your favour.’
‘Is that why Briar sent you to the estate today? She wants me to endear her to the nobles?’
Garret lifted the curtain and looked on to the square, overflowing with music and dancers and syrup cakes, all glittering under the lantern-strung canopy. The light dappled his face in one long, moving streak. ‘That’s not why I was at your estate.’
I was about to probe when I saw him roll his wrist under the oath band, restless. As though he couldn’t elaborate without breaching whatever vow he’d made upon joining the Capewells’ service.
The vow he would have to cut off his hand to break.
We jostled on to a residential street, and his gaze tightened on the red smudge across Marge’s door – the last vestige of the Hunters’ Mark that Tari and I hadn’t managed to erase.
‘I heard the last Hunting in Vereen was close to your estate,’ he murmured. ‘I hadn’t realised how close.’
Too close. I fidgeted with my mother’s coin, my spectre twitching to spin it again.
‘She was young,’ Garret continued. ‘Unmarried. She left nobody behind.’
‘Nobody to miss her, you mean?’
He dropped the curtain, stone-faced. ‘If they suspect a Wielder community here, they might search this area for the rest.’
They. As if he didn’t classify himself among them.
He wedged a little finger under his oath band. Swallowed. Then: ‘You should join court for your eighteenth season. The palace could be the safest place for you right now.’
We rolled on to the paths of my estate, and I gathered my skirts. I didn’t know what range of distance the compass covered; my home might fall inside its boundary if the Hunters searched here again, and with Marge gone, I may well be the next Wielder in the vicinity.
But with the fresh memory of the king’s eyes grazing over me, Garret had chosen the wrong night for his appeal.
‘If you believe any place so near the king could be considered safe,’ I said, ‘then you don’t know the king.’
Not like I did.
I opened the door to a rush of air, and Garret captured my arm. He hesitated, eyes flicking between me and the house.
‘What?’ I bit out.
He frowned towards my white-knuckled hold on the door, then slowly withdrew his hand. ‘You don’t have to end up like her.’
My spectre flared with my temper.
‘She was my friend.’ I tumbled on to the drive. ‘And her name was Marge.’
I went to slam the door when Garret said softly, ‘I wasn’t talking about your friend.’
I froze, breath snagging. He hadn’t been alluding to the trace of paint on my nails, but to the coin between my fingers.
My mother’s coin.
You don’t have to end up like her.
I glanced over my shoulder. With the night-time flies whirring like rain-drizzle around him, Garret might have been that boy again, shivering and forgotten – if not for those guarded eyes, the grimly set mouth. A part of me would always mourn the loss of him. But tonight, that part was quiet.
‘If you want to wait for my father,’ I said, pocketing the coin, ‘you’re waiting here.’
In a cruel mirror-reversal of the day we’d met, I left him on the drive, staring after me.
Amarie was waiting at the door, warm light streaming around her shoulders. ‘Your father?’
‘Still in Henthorn,’ I said, heading for the kitchens. I was less hungry than restless, but that seemed a good-enough reason to raid the pantry. ‘I fell sick from the roses, and he made me leave early.’
Amarie would learn about the Hunting soon enough, and I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. To acknowledge the feeling of the noose slowly tightening round me.
Her steps clacked after me. ‘He sent you with that boy?’
‘Yes, because between the absent ambassador and the king’s proposal, I hadn’t suffered enough.’
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Amarie grabbed my hand, halting me. Her wide eyes reflected the candlelight. ‘The king proposed?’
‘Not outright.’ I sighed, extricating my fingers. ‘But my sudden exit won’t go unnoticed.’
‘Your father won’t like this.’
‘You can’t tell him,’ I said, already cursing myself. Amarie had worked in this house since her teenage years – had grown up with my father – and she was too loyal to him to ever really serve as my secret-keeper. ‘By the time I return to Henthorn, Erik will have forgotten about me.’ Though my spectre twisted in protest, I knew that even meeting the ambassador wasn’t worth joining court. Nothing was worth the king’s attention.
‘Men like King Erik don’t forget, Alissa. The longer he cannot have you, the more he will want you.’
I went to object – the king is fickle, shallow – but true fear had deepened the groove between her brows. And suddenly all I could remember was the eagerness in Erik’s eyes when I’d started to refuse him.
Reality hit me. I’d refused the king of Daradon. And now I was his challenge, a prize deer in a royal hunt. He didn’t necessarily want me. He just wanted to mount my head on his wall. And if, while in pursuit, he discovered my secret . . .
Well, the head-mounting would take a more literal turn.
‘Amarie,’ I whispered, horror rising, ‘what do I—’
A crash shook through the manor, startling the words off my tongue. Then shouting – voices I didn’t recognise. And among them—
Garret.
I didn’t think. I was already running towards the thumping and yelling and shattering glass. My spectre pulsed around my body, pumping me faster through the halls. My blood thundered with one name, one purpose. Garret, Garret, Garret.
I rounded a corner and smacked against him. The relief almost knocked me over.
THORN SEASON 35
But Garret pushed me backwards, his breath hot on my face. ‘Run, Alissa.’ He looked to Amarie, who panted behind me. ‘Run.’
Time seemed to slow as I looked over Garret’s shoulder and saw the glint of a battle-axe. For a moment, nothing existed but those wicked double blades. Nothing but the man’s gloved fist, tightening round the handle. The roaring in my head.
Then Garret shoved me into the parlour, and time sped up once more. He slammed the door and pushed a desk across it, the screech singing in my teeth.
‘Out the back!’ He yanked me towards the opposite door.
And stopped short as three more figures stalked from that doorway. All were hooded and weapons-strapped, with black masks concealing everything but their eyes.
I began to tremble.
This was really happening. The Capewells had finally found me out.
They prowled closer, and my breaths sawed out hot and fast, the scene taking on a nightmare quality. I’d expected royally embellished uniforms, indicating their service to the Crown. I’d expected to recognise individuals among them, even masked.
I’d been wrong on both fronts. I must’ve never met these particular Hunters, because I couldn’t identify anyone amid this display of worn, armoured leather and combat knives.
I would never know which of my family members had been sent to kill me.
Garret tugged me behind him. ‘Be calm, Alissa.’ He would reason with them – tell them they’d made a mistake.
But my stomach plunged when he dropped into a fighting stance. Like he knew he couldn’t dissuade them.
Like he hoped instead to shield me from their blades.
Something collided with the door, rattling the desk, and my spectre fed off my panic. The power curled in on itself – shrinking –as the figures dispersed around the parlour.
One figure by the hearth, where Amarie warmed her hands
each night; one by the window, where Tari and I always watched the snowfall; one by the armchair, where Father’s slippers poked between the legs. The slippers were old and shedding fabric, and a new pair sat wrapped in my closet for Father’s birthday. And suddenly all I wanted was to fall to my knees and beg – not for my life, but for a moment to retrieve those slippers, because Father wouldn’t think to buy them for himself and his feet would be cold once I was gone.
Once I was gone.
The thought lashed around me, near-choking. How would Father survive this? He would return to find the Hunters’ Mark on our door, and it would break him – kill him.
I’d scrubbed the mark this morning. I’d brought this upon us both.
The door splintered under the axe, and Amarie screamed. The Hunters pounced on Garret in the distraction.
He moved fast – dodging one figure, punching another in the ribs. He was reaching under his blazer when the smallest Hunter landed a blow that sent him careening into the drinks table.
Crystal shattered and Garret’s blood rained over the shards.
‘No!’ I stumbled forward, tripping against the table. I gasped as broken crystal sliced my palm, but I didn’t feel the pain.
‘Alissa.’ Garret’s whisper sounded clogged with blood. ‘Don’t show them. Don’t—’
They yanked him away from me, forced him to his knees, twisted his arms behind his back. I lurched towards him again but the tallest Hunter blocked me, one palm on his sheathed weapon, the other rising—
I staggered back, my rapid breaths spinning me off balance. Not here, please not here. I didn’t want Amarie to see them strike me.
I didn’t want Father to find my teeth.
The door crashed open, stalling the Hunter’s hand. It wasn’t a mercy.
The largest of the four – the axe-wielding Hunter – eclipsed
the threshold, muscles rippling under leather. His gaze locked on mine, and he advanced.
My spectre coiled tighter with each pounding step, and I held myself rigid. Stripped bare of the jewels and the charm and the bloodline – of every tool that had ever saved me.
These brutes had violated my home. Yet I’d never felt more like a criminal.
The Hunter was a foot away when Amarie darted between us. The moment layered within a breath – his hand reaching for her arm, her face shying away, the fury sharpening my panic to a knifepoint.
My limbs unfroze. I pushed Amarie aside and shoved the Hunter – hard.
He stumbled back, blinking in shock. His armour glistened with a streak of my blood.
‘You do not touch her,’ I snarled.
The room tensed, heavy breathing all around. The axe-wielding Hunter glanced darkly at the arm I’d stretched in front of Amarie, and I had a terrible premonition of him hacking it off.
But I’d promised myself I wouldn’t shrink like a coward before the Hunters. I would face them with my chin high. So I didn’t baulk, even as my vision throbbed with my ragged pulse. Even as the man’s hazel eyes flickered over me in grim assessment – and then, scowling, he drew a glass vial from his pocket.
Dullroot.
I’d always dreaded to learn how the poison would feel, stifling my spectre and robbing me of any chance at fighting back. After eighteen years, I should’ve been ready to find out. But amid Garret’s struggling, and Amarie’s weeping, and my own racehorse heartbeat kicking against my ribs, there came the same crashing realisation that every Hunted Wielder must have experienced before me:
I wasn’t ready to die.
I felt far from my body – numb with disbelief – as the Hunter thumbed the cork off the vial and held it out.
38 KIERA AZAR
‘Drink,’ he ordered, low and guttural.
I stiffened, recognising the too-sweet scent emanating from the cloudy liquid. This wasn’t dullroot, the spectre poison. It was nightmilk.
And I knew what that much nightmilk would do. His leather glove groaned round the axe. ‘Drink.’
My ears rang, a more powerful dread seeping into me. This wasn’t right.
Then the smallest Hunter raised a knife to Garret’s throat in warning. And I took the vial, my shaky fingers smearing blood against the glass. Amarie sobbed her prayers as I brought the vial to my lips.
‘Don’t,’ Garret said. His eyes brimmed with sudden fear and regret.
But there was nothing to regret. Despite the bitter distance between us, Garret had tried to protect me tonight. They would hurt him for his disobedience.
I couldn’t let them kill him for it.
Slowly, so my free hand appeared lost in the folds of my skirts, I reached for my mother’s coin. I squeezed, feeling its face imprint my palm. Then I drew my hand behind me and dropped the coin to the carpet.
I didn’t want the Hunters to bury it with me. To bury her again.
My eyes blurred on Father’s slippers as I tipped the nightmilk into my mouth. I lasted four seconds before the vial slipped from my fingers. An arm looped round my waist to catch me.
