Thorns (The Frost Chronicles) by Kate Avery Ellison

Author:Kate Avery Ellison
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Kate Avery Ellison
Published: 2012-09-04T22:00:00+00:00

~

The living area was empty when I entered it.

“Ivy? Jonn?”

The fire smoldered on the hearth, and yarn lay on the chairs. The utter stillness was palpable. I looked into my parents’ old room, thinking maybe Jonn was sleeping, but the bed was empty. Upstairs was equally silent.

I returned to the main room and called their names again, and my voice splintered with panic.

Silence.

Dragging in a quick, frightened breath, I ran to the door. Ivy was always running off, but Jonn? Where could he be?

The yard was white, empty. The shadows of the forest were bleeding into the gathering darkness in the air. Flecks of snow swirled in front of my face. The only footprints in the yard were my own, which meant they’d left hours ago or not at all.

I returned to the house. “Jonn? Ivy?”

The barest scraping sound met my straining ears.

The bedroom.

I ran back to the doorway of my parents’ room and around the bed to the very end of the room, where a wardrobe sheltered a corner from view. I stopped short at what I saw, my mouth falling open.

My brother and sister sat on the ground, surrounded by papers they were scrambling to put into one pile. They froze at my entrance. Ivy’s face scrunched up in horror, and her cheeks flushed a bright red. “We did all the chores,” she said quickly, as if in a last-ditch effort to distract me. “The quota’s finished. Ask Jonn.”

He wouldn’t look at me.

“What is this?” I reached down and grabbed one of the papers before she could snatch it away. My gaze fell over it—my parents’ handwriting. This was one of the documents from the secret room beneath the barn. I looked at my brother, astonishment and anger filling me in equal measures. “What are you doing?”

A muscle in his jaw flexed. He put another paper on the stack they were assembling, presumably so they could stuff it somewhere to hide it from me.

“Reading,” he said. I could tell he was angry because I knew his moods better than anyone, but he was very calm as he finally looked up at me.

Ivy was not so calm, however. “We’re getting involved,” she said, grabbing another paper before I could get to it.

“Involved? With the Thorns? Absolutely not—”

“This isn’t Thorns business,” Jonn said.

“Those papers involve the Thorns,” I growled. “Give them back.”

“These are our parents’ papers, and they belong to us,” he said, daring me to disagree. “We’re reading them. I don’t think your Adam knows what’s in these.”

“He isn’t my Adam,” I said, and then stopped short as the rest of the words sunk in. “What’s in them?”

“Nice try,” he said, shaking his head. “But no. You have your duties, and I think we’ve found ours.”

“Jonn—”

Ivy tried to yank the paper from my hands, and I lifted it out of her reach. I glared at my brother, who was now pretending to ignore me. He shuffled more papers.

“Where were you all afternoon?” she demanded. She gave up trying to get the paper in my hands and sank back to the floor.

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