Thorns (6 page)

Somewhere far away amid the shadows, past the safety of the tree line, a branch snapped, and my nerves drew taut as a bowstring. I poised for flight, quivering like a startled doe, bathed in the lantern light and exposed.

Two figures emerged from the trees. My heartbeat tripled. I reached for my knife as I scanned their faces. A boy and a girl. Both thin, almost waifish. Dark circles ringed their eyes, and their wrists were as slender as sticks.

“Please,” the girl said, and lifted her arm. I sucked in a sharp breath when I saw the red marks crisscrossing her wrists. Angry, freshly healed wounds covered every inch of bare skin.

Then my gaze slid down, and I saw what she was holding. A crude pair of sticks tied together with twine.

The sign of the Thorns.

I STARED AT the sticks in her hand as my pulse pounded in my ears and my head felt too light. Was this a trick? A trap? A clever ruse invented by Raine’s men to catch me?

But no. The sign of the Thorns was secret.

They must have been sent here, just as Gabe was.

I looked at their skeletal bodies and their paper-thin rags, and they looked back with the kind of defiance hardened through beatings and starvation. Something in me squeezed so tight I couldn’t breathe. Were children political prisoners now in Aeralis, too?

“I can help you. You’re going to be all right,” I said, doing my best to use my gentlest voice.

The girl made a soft sound like a kitten’s mew. It might have been a sob.

“This way,” I said. I took a step back and looked over my shoulder to make sure they were coming.

After a moment’s hesitation, they followed. The girl held tightly to the boy’s hand.

Thoughts ran circles in my head. They were Aeralians; the features were obvious, as were the clothes. I recognized the slick, synthetic fabric and the strange cut of the shirts. Had they crossed into the Frost themselves? Who had sent them? The same operative that sent Gabe?

I needed Adam. He would know what to do.

I took them to the barn.

The hinges creaked as I shoved the door open, and the children crept inside and huddled by the chicken cages, shivering and waiting for me to speak. They were like birds—timid, skittish, their hands fluttering restlessly. The clothing hanging from their bodies was far too thin for the weather. They needed blankets, scarves.

“Stay here,” I said. “I’ll bring you food and warmer things to wear. And don’t worry—you’re safe now.”

The girl blinked at me.

Safe
. I thought of Officer Raine and the rest of the Farther soldiers less than a mile away in the town. Did my words about safety sound as hollow to her as they did to me? Could this child ever feel safe again after what she’d been through?

“I’ll be right back,” I promised, and then I shut the door and leaned against it while I caught my breath. In my mind’s eye, I saw the cuts on her arms. A shudder ran through me, and I pushed off the door and hurried to the house.

When I returned with milk and a stack of clothing and blankets, they were waiting, sitting together with their backs to the wall and their hands clasped.

“I brought you warm things. You’ll sleep here tonight.”

They took the clothing and stripped out of their rags, revealing their bodies. Skin stretched over bone. Bruises made purple patterns across ribcages, chests. Cuts told a story of unimaginable cruelty. My hands formed fists, but I hid them behind my back so the children wouldn’t see them and think I was angry at them.

The girl dressed the boy first. Jonn’s shirt and pants swallowed him up, and he looked at the sleeves flopping over his hands and made a barking sound like he was trying to laugh but had forgotten how. When she’d finished with him, the girl pulled on one of Ivy’s nightgowns and turned to me expectantly.

“You can sleep here,” I said, going to the middle of the room and crouching down to press the button for the trap door. The stone panel slid aside, revealing steps into a dark room below. “You’ll be hidden.”

“Safe,” the girl said.

I nodded.

They climbed down the stairs slowly after me. A faint glow lit the room—a few of the phosphorus fungi from the deep Frost had burrowed into the cracks of the walls, and a bluish light tinged the air. I made them a bed of blankets and poured the milk into bowls. They looked so malnourished that I was afraid to give them anything more substantial.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said. “Don’t worry. A man is coming to help you. He’ll take you somewhere safe.”

The girl’s lips parted in a ghost of a smile.

~

The fire cast red-gold light across Jonn and Ivy’s faces as we worked silently on the quota. Outside, the wind howled and hissed across the snow.

Worry gnawed a hole in my stomach. I hadn’t told them about the children in the barn. I’d hidden their dirty clothes in my quota basket and set out the lantern at the edge of the yard, but I hadn’t spoken a word of it yet. I didn’t know what to say.

Putting down the yarn, I paced to the window and peeked through the shutter at the yard. No snow fell from the sky tonight. Cool black shadows swathed everything, and a sprinkling of stars dusted the sky. At the edge of the yard, the lantern I’d hung earlier glowed against the trees like a single, captured firefly in the night.

Would Adam see it?

“You’re restless,” Jonn observed from his place beside the fire.

I tapped my fingers against the shutter, avoiding the question in his tone. “Ann said that Everiss and Dan are no longer betrothed.”

His hands stilled. He looked up.

Ivy sighed loudly. “Everything is going wrong,” she grumbled. “The Farthers, the village, even love is falling apart.”

“Did Ann say why?” Jonn asked, and I didn’t miss the way his eyebrows pinched together.

“No,” I said. Why did he care about a bit of village gossip? Did he think the news made me miss Gabe? Did he think I would go crazy in a fit of lonely passion and leave them while I forged off in the Frost? “I don’t know what happened between them, but either way it’s unfortunate timing after what happened to her father today. The marriage would have helped her family significantly.”

He frowned.

I glanced back at the lantern, and my breath caught in my throat.

Was that movement in the shadows? Adam?

My breath fogged the glass as I leaned closer and craned my neck. The fire crackled loudly in the silence behind me as I squinted.

Outside, a black shape rushed past the light and vanished.

I grabbed the windowsill, straining to see. My heart pounded against my ribs like a fist against a door.

Watchers?

The light of the lantern winked as another shape passed between it and us. A flash of spikes and fur. The gleam of long, powerful limbs. A low, trembling growl filled the air.

I sucked in a breath as cold swept over me. I eased the shutters shut and took a step back. My pulse throbbed in my throat. My fingers turned numb.

“What is it?” Ivy hissed. The yarn in her lap fell to the floor and rolled under a chair.

“Watchers. They’re in the yard.” I backed away from the window slowly.

Jonn grabbed the arms of his chair. “Are you sure?”

“I saw them,” I insisted. “They were past the woods.”

We were three points of a triangle—Ivy, Jonn, and me, frozen and facing each other. My thoughts swirled as I looked around the room. My blood buzzed with terror. The Aeralian children in the barn would be fine. They were safe below ground. I didn’t know if I could say the same for us, trapped in this rickety farmhouse. The walls suddenly seemed perilously thin, the door a shred of wood, the windows delicate as ice.

“We’re going to be fine,” Jonn said, his tone low and calm like he was soothing a frightened animal. “The windows are covered by the shutters, and we’ve got plenty of snow blossoms beneath every window and beside every door. They’ll look around and then they’ll go away just like they always do. Perhaps they’ve come out to look for food, but they won’t pass the blossoms for it.”

Maybe he was right. I gulped air and sank down at the hearth.

Silence descended. We remained still, breathing shallowly, listening for any telltale sounds of footsteps, of snow sifting, of guttural snarls.

Nothing.

I sighed. Jonn smiled at me. Ivy relaxed and leaned back in her chair. Perhaps they’d already moved on. Perhaps I’d just imagined it in my worry-plagued mind. Too much anxiety, too little rest.

I started to rise—

CRACK
!

Something slammed against the side of the house.

Ivy covered her mouth with both hands. Jonn jerked himself upright, his eyes wide. I ran to the mantle and fumbled with my father’s ancient pistol that hung there.

“Ivy,” I hissed. “Help Jonn into the bedroom and push the dresser in front of the door.”

“But—”

“Help. Jonn. Into. The. Bedroom.”

“No,” he growled.

“Get in the bedroom and get under the bed, Jonn.”

Another shudder shook the house. Dust fell from the rafters. In the kitchen, the pots shivered.

“Lia,” he snapped, and for the first time his voice was less than calm.

Instead, I shot a glance at my sister. She scrambled to do what I said. She grabbed his arm and slipped it over her shoulders, helping him stand. A single look passed between my twin and me—every shred of pride and love and shame and self-loathing and fear in him poured from his eyes. He wasn’t able to defend us. I shook my head at the protest I saw in his eyes. I just wanted him safe. Both of them.

The door to our parents’ bedroom clicked shut. I heard the scrape of the dresser across the floor. I turned to face the door, the only point of entry I was really worried about. The bones of this house were strong. It was built from sturdy oak beams. But the door...

It’d been in disrepair since my father’s death. The wood was old, weak. One well-placed blow from an angry Watcher might snap the lock, and throw it wide open.

I could hear the scrape of claws in the snow, the hiss of breath just outside the window. In my mind’s eye I saw them—hulking black creatures with bristling, spiny backs, long necks, and glowing, blood-red eyes that shone in the night. I’d only gotten a good look at the monsters once, the night we took Gabe to the gate far in the Frost.

The night I’d seen one kill Cole Carver with one bite.

Why were they here now? What did they want?

My skin prickled all over as something scraped against the side of the house and dragged around it like the screech of a thousand fingernails. It went along the side and toward the door. The point of entry. The weak spot.

The room was too hot, too dark, too flickering, and lit only by firelight. My dress squeezed me, my throat hurt from holding my breath. My eyes were straining, and my ears were full of the sound of my own heartbeat.

The Watcher Ward that hung outside the front door clattered.

Would the monsters see the painted snow blossom symbol on the door, or would they bust right through?

I lifted the gun and braced myself. A bullet wasn’t going to do anything, but I’d die before I’d run and hide and let the monsters come after my siblings without a fight. Maybe if they got me they’d think I was the only one, and they’d go away without searching further.

The hinges on the door squealed as something pressed against it. My pulse pounded. My mind was screaming at me. All the air left my lungs in one giant, terrified exhale. Sweat slipped into my eyes, and my hands were shaking so hard I could barely hold the gun.
Pleasedon’tpleasedon’tpleasedon’t
was the only thing in my head.

I stared at the door, held my breath, and tried my best not to whimper.

And then…

Silence.

My hands sagged with the weight of the pistol, but I stayed standing, waiting for what felt like eons while the fire crackled and the wind howled against the cracks in the wall. Nothing outside stirred. An eternity ebbed and flowed in the absolute quietude as I waited.

Had they gone?

Or was this a cruel trick?

“Lia?” Ivy’s voice trickled through the bedroom door. “What’s happening?”

But I couldn’t answer her. My eyes were glued to the door, the knob.

It was turning
.

I lifted the gun again and squinted down the barrel. My heart was in my mouth. My blood was on fire. My legs trembled.

“Lia?”

The voice that called my named was muffled, but I still recognized it.

Adam Brewer
.

ADAM STRODE INTO the room as soon as I unlatched the door, a swirl of snowflakes following him. Outside, the flakes drifted down gently in the darkness. A quiet snowfall, not a storm.

Adam’s cloak swept the floor as he turned to trap me with his gaze, and his eyes burned with quiet intensity. He took in the sight of me, the gun in my hand, the absence of my siblings. He went back to the door and looked out, and a blast of icy wind fanned my cheeks and brought me back to a semblance of sanity.

“You’re shaking,” he observed quietly. “Not to mention the fact you’re holding a weapon. Were you not expecting me?”

“Watchers,” I managed, my voice rusty with relief. Seeing him standing there whole and uneaten when he’d been outside just moments ago squeezed the last bit of air from my lungs. The memory of blood on the snow flashed through my head again, and I blinked to banish it. I shut the door and leaned against it. “Didn’t you see them?”

“There were tracks around the house, but the yard was empty.” He turned to face me again, one hand braced against the door and one hand reaching for me. “You put out the lantern and I saw the light.” He paused. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. No.” The gun was too heavy in my hand now. I went to the mantle and put it back. The movements, precise and ordinary, restored my sanity and helped my hands to stop shaking. “I’m fine. It’s just…they were slamming against the door. I can’t imagine what might have—” I stopped. The children’s clothing. It was in my basket—in the house—