Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King #2)

Elm caught Filick before the Physician got to the main stairwell. He had to hold the galley railing to keep himself upright, so tired his knees had begun to buckle.

Filick took a deep breath. “The King is in a foul mood.”

“I’ve seen worse.” Elm ran a hand over his face. “Did you see where they put Hawthorn? Don’t tell me those idiots took her to the dungeon.”

The Physician yawned. “She’s on the servants’ floor, I think.”

“Did you send her a Physician?”

“What for?”

“Her hands. Erik tore them open.”

Filick blinked, shook his head. “You’re mistaken.” When Elm’s mouth dropped open, the Physician gave a stiff laugh. “I assure you, her hands were perfectly intact when I saw her.”

“I assure you, there was a wound. A bad one.”

“Likely someone else’s blood.” Filick put a hand on Elm’s shoulder. “Get some sleep, Prince. I promise, Miss Hawthorn is safe and well.”

Elm watched Filick disappear down the stairs into darkness, his thoughts straining against fatigue. He couldn’t have imagined it—not the cold sting of Ione’s iron chains, nor the curling dread he’d felt at the sight of her maimed palms.

The feeling of her hands, pressing into his chest.

Elm’s eyes shot to his doublet. He half expected to see nothing. But when he looked down, they were there. Even in the black fabric, a stain remained.

Two bloody handprints.

The castle guards stationed on either side of the fifth door of the servants’ wing made it easy to discern where the Destriers had stashed Ione. When Elm approached, the guards stepped into shadow and lowered their gazes.

He banged on the door, then swore for the bruises on his knuckles. “Open up, Hawthorn.” When no one answered, he slapped the knotted pine. “Hawthorn!”

“She’s locked in, sire,” said the guard on his left, offering Elm a small brass key.

Elm weighed it in his palm. He’d always told Ravyn he looked like a jailer with his ring of keys. When actually it was Elm’s—the second Prince’s—duty to carry the castle keys. And Ravyn, like in so many other things he did, carried the iron ring so that Elm didn’t have to.

“Off with you,” he said to the guards. He waited for them to hurry away and slid the key into the lock.

The door creaked open, the room lit by a single glass lantern. The smell of wool and fresh kindling filled Elm’s nose. He shut the door, something shifting in his periphery.

“Trees,” he said, whirling, “what are you—”

Ione Hawthorn stepped out of shadow, coming so close to Elm his spine crashed against the door. She held out a finger and poked it with impressive force into his chest, emphasizing each word. “What. Was. That?”

The intensity in her eyes startled Elm. She was no taller than his shoulder—his clavicle, really—but that didn’t make her any less frightening. There was a quiet fury in Ione Hawthorn. The Maiden did a good job of masking it, or tempering it, but it was still there.

Perhaps there were some things not even magic could erase.

“Careful with that finger, Hawthorn. I told you, I’m delicate.”

“What you are is a damn idiot.” She stepped back. “My father—what he said during the inquest. That was you, wasn’t it? You and your Scythe.”

Hair fell into Elm’s face. He blew it back with a hot breath. “Not my finest work, I’ll admit,” he said, a touch defensive. “Then again, I usually don’t have to fight against a Chalice to get people to do what I want.”

“And that was your best idea? Make my father threaten the King?”

Elm leaned against the door. “All I did was make him leverage the correct words.” He frowned down at her. “You’re welcome, by the way. The King won’t kill you now. At least not right away, when he fears people will talk. He’s always been afraid of that. Talk. He’ll rue your every breath for what Elspeth did to his favorite son.” He gestured to her room. “But I’ve spared you the dungeon. You’ll be watched, but still welcome at court. I can arrange a guarded escort when you need range of the castle. And if the King changes his mind…” He bit the inside of his cheek. “I’ll find a way for you to slip out of Stone unnoticed.”

Ione said nothing, her nose twisting as if something wretched had died beneath it. Elm’s shoulders stiffened. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? A life for a life?” He fixed her with a hard look. “We’re even, Hawthorn.”

“I didn’t want to be paraded around court, fielding the gossip of what happened to your wretched brother. I wanted to get what I needed out of the castle and disappear. Trees, I thought you were clever enough to understand that.”

Her words prodded into Elm’s skin. Got under it. “You had your chance to disappear on the forest road,” he said, matching her ire. “Yet you didn’t.” He pushed away from the door, his shadow looming over her. “What is it you need at Stone you couldn’t leave behind?”

Ione said nothing. But her eyes were burning. Too vibrant to be named hazel, they were the color of a green field, punctuated by autumn leaves. Amber sap, slipping over moss. Heat and life and anger—so much anger they flared, even in the darkness of his shadow.

Still, she said nothing.

Elm moved so quickly the lantern’s flame flickered behind its glass. He caught Ione’s hand and lifted it, relishing in the surprise that crossed her face—the tilt of her brows, the little gasp that escaped her lips. “Show me your hand, Hawthorn,” he said, his voice dangerously low.

Her fingers curled, not quite a fist, but enough to hide her palm. All Elm had to do was squeeze—apply the right pressure—and her fingers would splay for him.

He didn’t. If she was injured, it would hurt like hell. And even if she wasn’t—

“Please,” he said, softer than before. “Will you show me?”

Ione didn’t move. Her entire posture had gone rigid, those hazel eyes widening at his please. Almost as if she’d expected him to force her hand open.

Elm didn’t like that. It made him feel dirty all over. He dropped her hand.

Ione’s gaze traced his reddening cheeks. Slowly, she uncurled her fingers one at a time. When she offered him her upturned palm, Elm’s breath caught.

The blood was gone, washed away. What remained was unblemished, finely lined skin. Not a single trace of injury.

He ran his thumb over her palm, pressing into the flesh, searching for what he could not find.

“You’re not out of your mind,” Ione murmured. “The cut was deep.”

The urge to scrape his teeth across her palm—to press her skin like clay and test her fortitude—was overwhelming. “How?”

“Can’t you guess?”

Elm recalled the feeling of Hawthorn House’s aged wood door beneath his ear. Rain on his cheek. Frigid wind. Ione’s yellow hair, damp and wild as they rode. The highwayman’s hand on her leg. The ice in her voice, unrelenting and sure.

Kill me. If you can.

His vision snapped, everything coming into painful focus, the labyrinth beginning to unravel. His eyes traced her face—her unblemished visage. Her skin was too flawless, her face too symmetrical, her voice too even. He’d known from the start that this wasn’t the real Ione Hawthorn. This was how the Maiden Card had remade her, masking her in unearthly beauty. Caging her. Protecting her.

Healing her.

“The Maiden.” The words scraped out of him.

So small Elm almost missed it, the tip of Ione’s brow lifted. “Seems you are clever. On occasion.”

Elm stepped into the room, dizzy, elated, and a little sick to his stomach. “Trees, I need to sit down.” He found the edge of the bed, plopped down, wincing at the thin mattress. “Five hundred years,” he mumbled to himself. “For five hundred years, Maiden Cards haven’t been used for anything but gifts for wealthy men’s daughters.”

“Five hundred years have been wasted on women, is that it, Prince?”

“That’s not—” He bit his lip. “Don’t twist my words. If the Maiden can heal, gross oversights have clearly been made.”

Ione sat next to him on the bed. She didn’t look tired, but her shoulders slumped, and her voice was dull. “Men have no use for the Maiden. What is beauty to real power? My father never let me touch his Providence Cards. But the Maiden—the Maiden I was gifted freely, like a horse a lump of sugar. Something sweet to distract me from the bit they shoved in my mouth.” She lowered her chin, hair spilling over her shoulder. “Is it any wonder, if women discovered the Maiden’s true potential, its healing power, that they kept it a secret?”

Elm was silent. But in his mind, he was shouting. Was his Rowan legacy that of idiots as well as brutes? Someone should have figured this out.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where is it? Your Maiden Card?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Still don’t trust me, Hawthorn?”

“You’re a Rowan.”

She said it softly. But an accusation hid in the melody of her voice—a quiet abhorrence. It sunk into Elm through all the sore, bruised pieces of him. “It’s here, isn’t it?” he said. “Your Maiden. That’s why you wanted to come back to Stone—to retrieve it.” He searched her face. “Where, Ione?”

But that face—that beautiful, unfeeling face—held nothing. Elm knew before she spoke that she wouldn’t answer his question. “Now that you know what the Maiden Card can do,” Ione said, tucking hair behind her ear, “are you going to use one to heal your brother?”

Elm hadn’t thought of that. He groaned and dragged his hands over his eyes. “There are not enough curse words in all the languages,” he muttered, “for me to answer that question.”

“Because, if you do, he’s going to—”

“The list of terrible things my brother will do if he wakes is longer than you know.” Elm closed his eyes and heaved a long, aching breath. Days ago, when he’d stood in the icy dungeon with Ravyn and his father in front of Elspeth Spindle’s cell, he couldn’t imagine a situation more dire.

But it had become so, all because of Ione bloody Hawthorn and her Maiden Card. If he ever grew old enough do so, he would tell this story to his children, with the firm lesson being don’t ever strike bargains with beautiful women.

“It seems the best option is to keep the Maiden’s magic a secret,” he said. “For now.”

When he opened his eyes, Ione was looking at him. Searching his face for something she couldn’t seem to find. Her stare was like running unwashed wool over his bare skin. Elm felt itchy, too warm.

But with the discomfort came another feeling—something low in his stomach. A tumbling exhilaration, like clearing a fence on horseback. And though he was tired to the point of pain, maybe he’d stay awake just a little while longer to get that feeling to stay.

He stood, bracing himself a moment on the bedframe when his legs buckled. “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“The dungeon.”

Ione went rigid. “What for?”

“Elspeth,” Elm said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’m taking you to see Elspeth. Or what’s left of her.”