Thorns (16 page)

Adam crouched by the fire, fussing with the blankets Ivy had brought him. The firelight flickered over his shoulders and face and illuminated his hands. When I entered, he sat back on his heels and waited.

I offered him the quilt. He accepted it silently, and our hands brushed. A tingle slipped up my arm, a spark, and I drew my hand back quickly. He looked up and held me in place with his gaze, and suddenly the air was thick as glue, and I was stuck in it.

A nervous sensation fluttered in my stomach. Unspoken words clouded the air. I remembered the way he’d taken my hand in the village, and how it had comforted me.

Are you sure about what you’re doing there
? my brother had asked.

I blanched. I wasn’t sure.

Was it wrong for me to feel something for him, when I had also felt something for Gabe? My heart still ached for the Farther boy I’d known for only a few short weeks, but…he was gone. Forever.

I didn’t know what to think.

Adam was watching me, his eyes opaque. What did he see when he looked at me? An asset, a necessary connection, a duty to my dead parents? Or something else?

The silence had stretched too long. I was staring. I blinked and licked my lips, finding a place on the floor to look at instead. “I’m sorry about what my brother said.”

Adam settled back against my brother’s chair and crossed his arms over his knees. He leaned his head back and shut his eyes. “He’s not angry at you or me. He’s angry at himself.”

“How do you know?”

He opened one eye. “You don’t get to where I am without knowing how to read people.”

The words slid off my tongue, unbidden. “And what do you read in me?”

He lifted his head and looked at me without answering right away. His gaze was a caress, and my stomach twisted. Had he always looked at me this way? Or had it begun over the last few weeks, when we’d spent so much time together?

“You love your siblings deeply.”

Was that all? “I don’t think you need any insight to guess that.”

“You think you have to protect them, shield them,” he continued quietly, ignoring my retort. “But you’re wrong. They’re strong, just like you. They grew up in the same perilous place. They have what it takes.”

My cheeks flushed. “I can’t be sure, and I’m not willing to be wrong.”

He frowned. “Holding them back will only hurt them, and you.”

“If you’d lost loved ones the way I have, you would feel the same.”

“I have lost loved ones,” he said quietly.

I bit my lip, and the stillness wrapped around us again. I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. The moment had shattered, and the warmth that had been drawing us closer bled away, leaving coldness in its wake.

I paced to the window and peaked through the shutters, more because I wanted to avoid looking at him than for any fear of finding monsters outside. My breath fogged the glass. “Ann asked me to help serve at a gathering for Officer Raine and the new Farther.”

“Really?” He leaned forward with interest. “You said yes, I assume.”

“Of course.” I studied the yard. Everything was still, silent. “What do you think about Korr?” I left my implications unspoken, but they leaked into my voice.

He turned his head toward the fire. “Obviously your Gabe left a few things out of his story, didn’t he?”

My Gabe
. It was like a slap.

“Don’t do that,” I said.

“No?” Adam ran fingers through his hair and ground his teeth together, the only sign that he might be as nervous and conflicted as I was. He turned his head toward the fire.

We were dancing around the topic like moths around a flame, teasing and testing but never landing. I turned back to the window and leaned my forehead against the glass.

He wasn’t
my Gabe
, and I was beginning to think he never was. I’d known so little about him, and although we’d had an intense connection, had it been based on more fantasy than truth? Of course, Gabe had never had any obligation to tell me everything about him. But I’d believed he’d shared his situation with me, and now I questioned that. Had I been completely mistaken about him?

The thought made my stomach churn.

“Korr,” he said, pulling me out of my thoughts and back to the conversation at hand. “Obviously he has some other agenda.”

I took a breath and let him steer the conversation back to something safe. “He’s Aeralian, and a noble. Related to…well.” I didn’t say Gabe’s name, but we both knew. “Obviously they have some family connection.”

“If he’s looking for the Farther, he’s more than two months too late, and he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who makes those kinds of mistakes.”

I nodded. He’d been so deliberate at the Assembly Hall, as if he knew the effect every word he spoke would have on both Officer Raine and the crowd.

“He was toying with Raine,” Adam continued thoughtfully. “They must have some sort of history. There’s tension between them. Dueling political aspirations, maybe?”

I snorted. “Seems more like a personal vendetta to me. Korr is making Raine look like a fool and he’s enjoying every second of it, too. And I doubt the officer can do anything about it, seeing as Korr’s a noble.” I remembered the way Raine had put his hand on his pistol, as if he wanted nothing more than to yank it out and shoot it. But he’d remained silent and still.

Adam leaned his head back and laced both arms behind his neck. His eyes gleamed in the firelight. “True,” he agreed.

“So what could he want?”

He sighed. “I want you to do everything you can to find out more at that gathering of the Elders you’ve been so fortunate as to obtain an invite to.”

“An invite?” I snorted. “I’ll be slaving in the kitchens, Adam. She asked me, so perhaps she wants me close for comfort, but I don’t even merit an actual invitation. It’s an insult.”

“It’s an opportunity,” he said. “I’ll make sure to be in town that night, as close to the Mayor’s house as I can get, so we might be able to communicate, and I’ll be searching for information too. But you have a unique source of information that I do not, and a way to obtain access.”

A unique source of information
. He meant Ann. It was not an inaccurate way of describing her, but it was rather cold. Was that all we were to him? Sources of information, sources of assistance? Was that all
I
was to him?

His face revealed nothing. His expression was neutral, unreadable.

“After,” he said, “I’ll come by the farmhouse, and we can discuss what we learned.”

I watched the firelight play over his face. “How do you dare to travel the Frost at night, knowing the Watchers have become even more restless?”

A frown tugged at his lips. “I have my secrets, just like everyone else,” he said. “Maybe sometime I’ll show you.”

Something else lingered beneath the surface of the statement, something heavy and hesitant and full of promise. I paused, wanting to accept it but afraid. The moment stretched, thickened. His eyes flicked over my face, and he leaned away and rubbed a hand over his eyes.

“Goodnight, Lia Weaver.”

“Goodnight, Adam.”

I crept up the stairs and slipped into bed beside Ivy, my mind spinning with weariness and questions.

THE TREES STOOD out starkly against the bird’s wing-blue sky as I traveled the path to the village. As I walked, I turned the events of the previous night over in my mind. Adam. Me. Gabe.

It was snarled up like a tangle of yarn in my mind. I cared about Gabe deeply, but he was gone. And there were things he hadn’t told me about himself, important things.

Did that matter?

I reached the Cage and slipped inside, shivering as the shadows striped my skin and the Farthers’ gazes searched me. I reached the entrance to the village and hurried through the streets. The wind-scrubbed stone walls and buildings formed a tunnel of gray and I wandered through it in a fog of thought.

Someone called my name, and I turned, my heart beating fast. Blackcoats?

But it was Jullia, her stained hands gesturing at me from the alleyway.

“How are you?” I asked. Once, the Dyers had been among the most well-dressed of the village. Now, Jullia’s hair fell in wispy strands around her face, and threads hung from the edges of her dress. Her pale cloak, previously soft and white as milk, had turned dishwater gray.

“We manage,” she said briskly, but then her mouth softened and gave me a smile like it was a peace offering. “I wanted to thank you for before, for helping us. My sister has been…busy…” she trailed off.

My response stuck in my throat. I remembered what Ann had told me. Everiss was working with the Blackcoats now.

Jullia blinked. She scrutinized my face, and then she frowned. “You know, don’t you?”

I fumbled for words. “Know what?” I managed, and then cringed at such a banal and obvious response.

“About Everiss’s new…alliance?” A line formed between her eyebrows, and she fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve. “You and Ann helped us the other day, and I just wanted to say…” She breathed in and out quickly. “Regardless of what my sister chooses to do, I am grateful for your help. And—and in the future, I’d be happy to help you with anything you need, too.”

A lump filled my throat. I nodded, unable to find an appropriate verbal reply. She looked at me a moment longer, shifted her weight from foot to foot, then wrapped her cloak tight around her shoulders and headed back the way she’d come.

I was left standing in the street, feeling curiously sad and whole at the same time.

The stamp of footsteps jerked me back to reality as a pair of soldiers passed me, their gazes sharp. I ducked my head and pressed on for Ann’s house. I would speak with her and then head home again. I had a great deal of work to do now that quota had been increased.

Ann was waiting for me in the gardens behind her house. She stood in the snow, beneath one of the ornamental red pines that ringed the glass greenhouse and shielded the garden from the rest of the village. Standing there all alone, she looked thin and cold and impossibly fragile, like a baby bird fallen from its nest.

She lifted her head as I approached. “You came.”

She sounded…disappointed?

“You asked me to,” I said, and a chuckle bubbled up in my throat.

But the laughter died on my lips when a man in a black cloak stepped out from behind the pines. Shock flashed over my skin like cold water. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

Korr
.

“Lia Weaver,” he drawled, pinning me in place with his bright, cold eyes and precise smile. “I remember you. You were at the gathering a few days ago, looking incensed at my speech.” His tone was perfectly composed, polite, as if we were discussing the weather. But there was an edge of danger underneath. He had a proverbial blade to my throat, and we both knew it.

Shivers started at my knees and worked up my body. My hands and lips felt numb. My feet wouldn’t move. My mouth wouldn’t work. My thoughts turned in frightened circles. Did he know about Gabe? Did he know I was with the Thorns? What was he going to do?

“Surprised I remembered you? I have a knack for faces, they say. I never forget one once I’ve seen it.” He dimpled and tapped his cheek with one long, gloved finger. “And I must say yours looks rather familiar to me, although I’ve never met you before. I wonder why.”

I was numb, white, blank as snow. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make sense of anything that was happening. I saw everything as if I were a casual observer looking out a window: Ann, her curls shining in the pale sunlight; Korr, his dark hair blowing in the wind and his teeth gleaming behind his smirk as he tapped a gloved finger against his lips; and me, my ragged little cloak curling around my body as if to hide me from the nightmare unfolding around me. I stared at him as he stepped closer, stopping beside Ann. A memory floated to the forefront of my mind: Adam saying a word softly, hesitantly.
Torture
.

Did he know what I was?

“Your friend has been most obliging by luring you here,” Korr continued, his gaze playing over my face. “I’ve heard your name a few times among the soldiers…apparently you recently had a little incident in the quota yard?”

My blood was ice. My lungs were wood. Should I speak, or remain silent? I looked at Ann for help, but she was studying the snow at her feet as if frozen water were the most fascinating thing she’d ever laid eyes on.

“You’re quite the silent one. Well, I thought we could become better acquainted. I hope you don’t mind?” He waved a hand, and I saw his coach waiting just beyond the house.

My heart sunk like a stone. I couldn’t run. There was nowhere to go. I was trapped.

Ann still wouldn’t look at me.

She’d lured me here. She’d known…

Finally, I found my voice. I stared hard at my friend. “What have you done?”

“Lia, it isn’t…it isn’t what it seems.” Ann held the edges of her cloak with both fists, her knuckles the grayish-white color of dirty snow.

“Yes, don’t blame your friend,” Korr said in a pleasant tone. “I left her little choice but cooperation, and she’s been very helpful.”

Ann bit her lip so hard a seam of blood appeared beneath her teeth.

“Ann,” I whispered. “Why?”

The wind blew between us, and she didn’t reply.

“This is all so deliciously melodramatic,” Korr drawled. “But I’m pressed for time. And I want to get this over quickly. Shall we go?”

Get this over quickly
.

This.

Me.

I wanted to retch my breakfast in the snow.

He extended his hand, a mockery of an invitation, and I stepped toward the coach. He followed, keeping close enough that I knew I was completely under his control. There would be no escape.

I twisted my head to look back at my friend, the one I loved and trusted. She stood motionless, her arms dangling, her bloodied lips pressed together tightly and a single tear running down her cheek.

~

Korr sat with his head leaned against the plush back of the coach seat, his eyes narrowed into slits as he gazed out the window. He ran his hand up and down the glass, a restless gesture that unnerved me. I huddled in the opposite corner, a miserable loop of scenarios playing through my mind. Would they torture the truth out of me? Would they take Jonn and Ivy, confiscate the farm? What would Adam do? How would he find out?