Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King #2)

I remembered irises in a parlor. A tree with red leaves growing in a courtyard beneath the shadow of a narrow, towering house. A wood. Wild yellow hair. Laughter in a garden. Hands with crepe wrinkles working a mortar and pestle.

A library. A touch of velvet.

White robes. Blood on the flagstone. Claw marks in the dirt. A voice, spun of silk, in the walls of my head. Get up, Elspeth.

I clutched my throat, digging into my own mind for the voice. It was not there. I felt its absence, the darkness of my thoughts hollowed out, like an unfilled grave. Nightmare?

Taxus stood above me. I didn’t know how long he’d been there, watching me. “You are remembering,” he said slowly. “I will leave you now. You will be safe here.”

I cast my gaze to the dark water, the endless, listless shore. “Where is here?”

“A place to rest. To recover.”

“I don’t want to rest,” I whispered. “I want you to let me out.”

His yellow eyes softened. “Soon, my dear.”

He walked away, leaving no footprints. I watched him go until the gold of his armor disappeared into darkness, then stood on shaky legs and tried to follow. “Taxus—wait.”

But he was gone.

In his absence, I tried to piece the shattered mirror of my memories back together. I remembered impressions—colors and smells and sounds. The names were harder to recount, like working an atrophied muscle.

Strained, they came. Opal. Nya. Dimia. Erik. Tyrn.

Aunt. Half sisters. Father. Uncle.

Then, on a day or a night without marker, I remembered a walk through the wood. A nameday. An old rhyme. Yellow girl, soft and clean. Yellow girl, plain—unseen. Yellow girl, overlooked. Yellow girl, won’t be Queen.

Ione. I’d joined my cousin Ione in town. Followed her to my father’s house. Left early…

And met two highwaymen on the forest road.