Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King #2)

The Nightmare watched Ravyn and Jespyr as they drifted to sleep.

Will they be safe in there? I asked. In the alderwood?

No.

Then you must keep them safe.

He lowered himself to a crouch, then slowly onto the ground. He hauled his sword onto his lap. I have not done well, guarding those I cherish.

When he slept, I waded through the darkness of his mind, his memories quick to find me.

I sat on the stone in the chamber I had built and looked up. The ceiling I had crafted as a younger man was weathered. Outside, the yew trees swayed, stirred by a chill autumn breeze. No dappled sunlight streamed between their branches.

There was only gray mist.

“Father?”

My gaze wrenched to the window. Ayris was there, standing hand in hand with Tilly. My sister’s usual warmth was guarded, her yellow eyes hard. But when she spoke to my daughter, her voice was gentle. “Go on, Tilly. Ask him.”

Tilly curled a finger at the end of one of her dark plaits. Smiled sheepishly. “Can we swing in the yew tree like you promised?”

I looked at her, indifferent. It was easier, now I had fashioned the Nightmare Card—my soul lost to velvet—telling the children no. “Not now, my darling girl,” I said in a voice smooth as silk. “I have work yet to do.”

Her smile faded. “All right.” She let go of Ayris’s hand, picked up her skirt—heaved a sigh. “I’ll wait in the meadow. In case you change your mind.”

When she looked at me, Ayris, my sunshine sister, was full of frost. “Your work,” she said, “has made a stranger of you.”

She hurried after Tilly.

A moment later, the chorus of tree voices rattled through my mind.

Eleven Cards the Spirit has given you, Taxus. Do you still ask for more?

“This mist,” I said, the word a hiss on my tongue. “It makes my people lose their way. Draws them into the wood. Its magic is not a blessing, but a curse.”

That is the way of magic, the trees whispered.

“I want another Card. One that will lift the mist.”

The Spirit will not give you a Card to undo the very thing she has created to lure people back into her woods.

“Then I want a way to heal the fever and the infection it brings. You told me, after barters were made, a day would come when I could heal it.”

That day has not yet arrived, Shepherd King.

I ground my molars together. “I grow weary of your riddles, trees. If I cannot get answers from you”—my gaze narrowed—“then I would speak to the Spirit herself. Give me a Card to do so.”

Their pause was deafening. Very well, they whispered. But of price, she will not say.

“I don’t care. I’ll pay anything.”

Anything?

“Anything.”

Salt filled the chamber, stronger than I’d ever smelled it. My vision buckled and I fell. My head hit the earth with a brutal thud, eleven Providence Cards falling from my pocket and scattering around me.

When I woke, a twelfth Card was atop the stone. Forest green, with two trees depicted upon it—one pale, the other dark. In script above them was writ The Twin Alders.

I tapped it three times. Waited. Nothing. A curse formed on my lips. I tapped the Maiden Card to heal my head—

But the Card did not work.

My throat tightened. I tapped the Mirror—tried to go invisible. Nothing.

The Well showed me no enemies—the Iron Gate gave no serenity. I screamed myself raw and tapped the Cards until my fingers ached. Still, I could not wield them.

I crumpled to the foot of the stone, surrounded by the Cards’ colorful lights. I’d found a way to speak to the Spirit of the Wood. I’d bled, bartered, and bent for twelve Providence Cards.

And I could not use a single one.

The pages of memory turned faster.

A town crier read a royal decree, warning all of Blunder to stay out of the mist.

Then, a woman, screaming in pain, veins the color of ink. She’d made it past castle guards into my throne room, begging for an audience with my Physicians. My Captain of the Guard, Brutus Rowan, tapped his Scythe three times, forcing her out.

“Blunder is in grave danger,” he said to me in the privacy of my library. “This mist is a blight. And it spreads.”

I was seated at a wide desk surrounded by stacks of inky parchment. I leaned over a notebook, scribbling madly. With my other hand, I twirled the Twin Alders Card between my fingers. “I’ve told you a hundred times already,” I said, not bothering to look up, “I will find a way to lift the mist.”

“People have lost their way in it. Trade routes have been disrupted. People are not asking for the fever any longer—the Spirit is forcing it upon them.” He paused. “I’ve seen mere children with magic powerful enough to give my men pause.”

“And that frightens you, Brutus? Unfettered magic?”

He said nothing.

“My orders go unchanged. Stay your hand. Neither you, nor your ponies, are to arrest or harm anyone who catches the fever in the mist.”

“Destriers, not ponies,” Brutus said, his voice hard as iron. “You named them so yourself.”

I flipped through my notebook, landing on a page somewhere in the middle. “The King’s Guard wears no seal. The Black Horse is their emblem, their duty, their creed. With it, they uphold Blunder’s laws. They are the shadows in the room—the eyes on your back—the footsteps upon your streets. The King’s Guard wears no seal.” I snapped the notebook shut. “Not a single mention of a Destrier.” My eyes lifted to Brutus. “I believe it was you, Captain, not I, who saddled them with that ridiculous name.”

A muscle along Brutus’s jaw flexed. “I’m in no mood to laugh, Taxus.”

“Just as well. I’ve forgotten the sound.”

“There was nothing to laugh at when the mist arrived. Nothing to laugh at when you bartered away every part of yourself for the Cards.”

I glanced at the red light coming from his tunic pocket. “You have benefitted from my barters, have you not? You have made a ruthless name for yourself at the edge of my Scythe.”

He paled.

“Yes, Brutus. I know what you have been doing behind my back. I may not be able to trespass into your mind with a Nightmare Card any longer, but I hear plenty. Apparently, you have a fondness for using the red Card on criminals. Finding new ways to punish them. You’ve even sent them into the very mist you claim so loudly to abhor.”

“Perhaps if you spent as much time ruling as you do scribbling about magic in that damn book,” he bit back, “there would be no criminals for me to punish. Besides—you gave me a free hand to protect the kingdom.”

When my voice slipped out of my lips, it was smoother than before. “And when you become red-stained, too familiar with pain—too reliant on the Scythe to put it down? I wonder then, Brutus, who will protect Blunder from you?” My hand dropped to the hilt of my sword upon my belt. “I care not that you are my sister’s husband. Kill another soul with my Scythe, and I will not merely take it back. I will pry it from your lifeless hands. Now get out.”

Red limned his green eyes. With a curt bow, he quit the library.

When the door slammed, I heaved a sigh. “There’s no use hiding, Bennett. I can see your Cards.”

A boy stepped out of thin air, twirling a Mirror Card between his fingers. He was young, no older than thirteen. His skin was a warm brown, his hair dark and unkempt. When he tilted his head to the side, birdlike in his movements, light caught his gray eyes and the high planes of his face.

“I know a part of you agrees with Brutus, Father. The mist is dangerous.” Bennett dragged a thumb over the Mirror Card’s edge. “Why not make peace with him?”

I set to scribbling once more. “And give your aunt Ayris the satisfaction of bridging the gap between us? I think not.”

“Everyone is frightened of catching fever. Of degenerating.”

“Not all who catch it degenerate. I never have.” I raised my gaze. “You certainly haven’t.”

Bennett smiled. “Haven’t I? I can’t use a Black Horse Card anymore.” He pulled a second Providence Card from his pocket, the Nightmare, violet and burgundy blurring between his fingers. “Someday, I won’t be able to use these either.”

“And yet you have incredible magic.” I opened my notebook—set to scribbling once more. “You could undo my life’s work, if you were feeling particularly spiteful.”

“Which I commonly am.” He paused. “The children miss you, especially Tilly. Come to dinner. Just this once.”

I waved an impatient hand, dismissing him.

Bennett stepped to the desk. Peered into my face. Sighed. “You’re with us, but you’re never really here, are you, Father?”

The memory fell away.

In the next, I was hurrying out of the castle, tucking a few small provisions—bread and cheese—into a satchel.

I stepped into the meadow, passed the stone chamber—aimed toward the woods.

“Going somewhere, brother?”

My hand flew to the hilt of my sword, my mouth drawing into a fine line. “Ayris.”

“You’re easier to follow without your Mirror Card,” she said, smiling at me. “Where are you going?”

I might have lied, once. But it took too much effort, fooling my sister. I needed to preserve my strength for whatever barter lay ahead of me. “To speak to the Spirit of the Wood. To learn about the mist—to ask her to withdraw it.”

Ayris’s smile slipped. “Alone?”

“It is better that way.”

She rolled her eyes, then her shoulders, and stepped closer. “I know you’re tired. Forlorn. I see it your face. Let me walk with you into the wood.”

“Brutus will be angry.”

She ignored mention of her husband and looked up at me, her yellow eyes weary. “What was it Father used to call us? When we disappeared into the trees as children?”

“Twisted,” I said, the corners of my mouth lifting. “Intrepid.”

“It has not been like that for many years. There are twelve versions of you, brother, each more distant than the last.”

I heard the sadness in her voice, but it hardly touched me. With my soul lost to the Nightmare Card, I felt as I once did when, by folly, I used a Maiden too long. Cold, unaware of the beating heart in my chest. Shut off.

And yet Ayris was still the sun to me. Even in the wood, cold and gray with mist, her presence was a light, a warmth. I wanted her near me, for there are some things not even magic can erase. “Very well,” I told her. “So long as you mind the mist.”

She smiled.

The memory faded.

When it returned, Ayris and I stood side by side. We stared up at a wall of alder trees.

Voices echoed all around me.

The wood that awaits you is a place of no time. A place of new barters, a hill you must climb. Betwixt ancient trees, where the mist cuts bone-deep, the Spirit safeguards, like a dragon its keep. The wood knows no road, no path through the snare. Step into the mist—it will guide your way there.

Ayris and I stepped into the alderwood, and the mist honed in on my sister. It shot into her nose, her mouth. She gasped—breathed it in—

And the warmth of the sun snuffed out.