Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King #2)

The urge to vomit was oppressive.

Elm clamped his jaw shut so tightly he worried for his teeth. He dropped his hand into his pocket and ran a finger along his Scythe, begging the violent churnings in his stomach to settle. He pictured riding horseback through a meadow, free and at ease. Calm, he told himself. Calm. Steady. Easy.

Filick led them to the door with a rearing stallion carved into its frame. No one spoke a word. Filick entered the room, but Elm stalled at the threshold. He hadn’t been inside Hauth’s room since he was a boy.

Ione shifted behind him. Her voice was frostbite cold. “I don’t want to see him.”

Elm shut his eyes a moment. “You needn’t go in.”

“What about you?”

He didn’t have an answer. He wanted to lock his fist in her skirt and keep her with him like he had in the library. Everything was out of focus, dark around the edges. He heaved a rattling sigh, his voice strange in his ears. “I’ll be fine.”

He stepped inside.

Hauth’s bedchamber was overwarm, lit by dozens of candles, the fireplace roaring. Not even the smell of the Physician’s herbs and balms could mask the foul odor of unhealed wounds. Of blood.

Elm put a hand over his mouth and pushed past two other Physicians, planting himself against the wall where the most shadow remained. Filick moved to the center of the room, where Royce Linden and two other Physicians were gathered around a large canopied bed.

The body on the bed groaned.

No ease, no steadiness. Zero fucking calm. Hauth was awake.

“Any improvements?” Filick asked, rolling up his bloodstained sleeves.

“A little less blood in his saliva,” another Physician replied.

Linden’s voice was sharp. “That’s good, right?”

Filick gave a stiff nod. “Has he said anything?”

“Nothing yet.”

A tremendous bang shook the chamber. Several candles snuffed out and then the King was stomping into the room, eyes red and wide, mouth agape and smelling of wine. “Son,” he barked, “how’s my son?”

Drunk. The King was very drunk. Elm squeezed deeper into shadow.

“Alive and stirring, sire,” Filick said. “He hasn’t opened his eyes.”

The King stalked forward, pushing to get to the bed. When he passed Elm, he held out a brutish hand. A test of obedience. “Come, Renelm.”

Elm’s vision went foggy. For a blissful second, he considered disobeying. He’d walk out the door and down the stairs and just keep walking. He’d done it once with Ravyn.

A stone dropped into Elm’s stomach at the thought of his cousin. Trees, what he wouldn’t give to see Ravyn walk through that door, all angles and blades, and simply lay waste to anyone who so much as looked at him wrong. Everyone was afraid of Ravyn. Even, though he’d never admit it, the King.

And Elm—no one was afraid of him. His Scythe, maybe, but not him. He was a rotted-out tree, and Ravyn the impenetrable, untouchable vines that held the pieces of him together.

The King came back into shaky focus. So did the candlelit room beyond him. The body on the bed. Elm sucked in a breath, dragged a foot forward—

Ione stepped into the chamber. She traced her cold eyes over the room, the Physicians, the King. When she found Elm, her gaze softened a fraction. Her body was rigid. But her shoulders rose in the smallest shrug. She’d come. Into Hauth’s room.

For him.

The fragments of Elm’s rotted-out heart rearranged themselves. He stepped forward, surer. Broader. So tall that, when he reached the bed in the heart of the room, he looked down even upon his father.

Ione came up next to him. Their knuckles brushed.

They stood at the foot of the bed, facing it together. Hauth’s lips were a pale gray, pressed so tightly that they looked hemmed shut. His cheeks and neck were parceled by long, ugly claw marks, similar to the ones he’d gotten the night Wayland Pine’s Iron Gate Card had been stolen. Only worse—deeper. His eyelids were split, purple with bruises, his skull wrapped in thick, blood-stained linen.

The King leaned next to the bed, coarse hands gripping the quilt. “What of my Nightmare Card?” he gritted out. “Have you been able to reach him with it?”

Filick shook his head.

“We should try again,” Linden said. “Where’s the Card?”

“There, sire,” a Physician offered, pointing to a long mahogany chest at the foot of the bed.

All eyes turned to Ione, who stood near its latch.

“Get it,” came the King’s barking command.

Ione’s eyes remained untouched. She pushed open the heavy lid of the chest. The smell of leather and copper filled Elm’s nose, calling back the nausea from before. He clenched his jaw and peered into the chest, watching as Ione pushed past bandages and tonics, searching.

She pushed aside a belt, and there it was—the Nightmare Card. The one her father had traded on Equinox to earn her a place on the dais. The Card that had tied her to Hauth.

Ione stared down at it. The room was overwarm. But there was nothing but coldness in her face.

“Are you daft, woman?” Linden said. “The Nightmare Card. Now.”

“She’s getting it, asshole.”

Linden’s gaze shifted to Elm. “She should not be in here. It was her cousin that did this. There are plenty of empty cells in the dungeon, yet she wanders the castle like a harlot, twisting her betrothed’s brother around her finger—”

“No one asked for your opinion, Destrier.” Elm’s Scythe was already out. Already accessed. “Shut your mouth.”

Linden’s mouth snapped shut, a low, strangled noise coming out of his throat.

Ione didn’t look at him. She closed the chest, pinching the Nightmare’s Card’s velvet edge like it were a dead thing, and held it out.

The King wrenched it from her grasp. Tapped it three times.

Everything was so silent Elm could hear his insides scream. The King gnashed his teeth and tapped the Nightmare three more times and threw it on the floor. Defeat.

Elm let out a sharp exhale. Wherever Hauth was, his father was either too drunk or too unfocused to reach him.

Hauth’s eyelids fluttered. When they opened, his eyes were bloodshot.

The King’s voice broke. He reached for Hauth’s arm. “Son?”

Linden leaned forward. He tried to speak but couldn’t, shooting Elm a poisonous glare.

“Prince Hauth,” Filick called. “Can you hear us?”

Hauth said nothing. A vein in his bruised forehead pulsed and his nostrils flared. His breath grew louder, labored. Bloody saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth. Filick wiped it away and pushed a poultice over his brow.

Hauth thrashed a moment, then stilled. He looked like he might close those horrid red-green eyes again, but they jerked wide, suddenly focused on something at his bedside.

Ione.

No one spoke. Then, as if it took all his strength to do so, Hauth dragged his eyes off of Ione. They rolled, disappearing under bruised eyelids.

He didn’t open them again.

“You’ve signed it, then? My testament, naming your heir?”

Elm and the King stood alone in the hallway outside of Hauth’s door. The Physicians and Linden remained inside. Ione hurried down the hall so fast Elm didn’t even have the chance to call after her.

The King’s voice came out harder. “I asked if you’d signed my testament.”

Elm’s hand drifted into his pocket. He tapped the Scythe three times, releasing Linden from its control. As he did, his knuckles grazed the second Card in his pocket—the one he’d snagged off Hauth’s floor when no one was looking.

“Yes. Baldwyn has it stowed in his rooms.”

The King let out a low breath. His shoulders released. “Good.” His hands were shaking. From drink, but also—

Elm looked away. “Your son,” he managed, bile in the back of this throat. “It’s worse than I thought. The damage to his body.”

“My son.” The King’s green, bleary gaze found Elm’s face. “Even on his deathbed, you will not call him a brother?”

“He never played the part well enough.”

The King shook his head. Pressed the heel of his palm into his eye. “Your rancor is a mark upon you, Renelm. Wash it off.”

“If there are marks upon me, it is because your son put them there.” He turned to leave, but the King’s voice held him back.

“Have you chosen a wife?”

Elm went still. “There is a contract.”

“With whom?”

“You’ll learn soon enough.”

The King’s eyes narrowed. “Who, Renelm?”

When Elm kept his mouth sealed, the King’s hands flexed. He reached into his pocket—retrieved his Scythe—

But Elm was faster. On the third tap of his own Scythe, he said, “You won’t use that Card on me. You won’t make a puppet out of me the way he did.”

The King’s hand froze in his pocket. It felt good, watching surprise, then fear, flicker across his aged face. “You think you’re special—that the hurt Hauth dealt you was personal. It wasn’t.” His words were ragged. “What happened to you has happened to Rowan Princes for centuries. It takes an understanding of pain to wield the Scythe. When you have a son, he will learn as well.”

“That will never happen.” Elm turned away, releasing his father from the red Card. “You will have my marriage contract before the last feast.”

He heard his father shout, but he was halfway down the stairs, already a mile ahead. Elm quit the castle and went to the stables. The grooms were gone, so he found his horse and mounted without a saddle, hurtling out of the bailey at a full gallop. Three taps of his Scythe and the castle guards lowered the drawbridge—then he was free of Stone, the night air wrapping him in frosty arms. He hardly felt the cold. He was riding, fast and free and harder than he had in an age.

And all that rage, walled up deep inside him—Elm let it out. He yelled into the night and the night answered, his echo reaching over treetops and into valleys, a war cry. He yelled for that boy, small and brutalized, who’d needed saving. He yelled for his helplessness—the rope he’d corded around his own neck, tethering himself to the Scythe, to Ravyn. Tears fell from his eyes, and he let the wind strike them away. He yelled himself raw—until a sky full of stars danced before his eyes.

And something tore loose.

Elm didn’t believe the Spirit of the Wood took note of the fleeting lives of men. But if she did, he swore she’d mapped his future in the twisted rings of the trees. That she’d designed his every failure, his every fear, to get to this moment. He’d needed Ravyn to leave him behind. Needed to face the throne, his father, the Rowan in him, alone.

His shout eased to a boyish whoop, and he laughed and cursed and roared into the night, the world emptying of monsters. All that remained was him and the night and the forest road. It welcomed him, ribboning him in darkness, leading him to the ivy-laden house with darkened windows, its scent now as familiar to him as his own name.

Blossoms and magnolia trees. Grass fields during the first summer rain. Heady, sweet, wistful. Hawthorn House.

Ione’s house.

Hours later, when he was back at Stone, just before dawn, Elm’s arms were full.

He didn’t need to knock. He had a key now. But he did just the same.

Ione was in her nightdress, her yellow hair tangled from sleep. Her gaze widened as she took him in—his full arms and windblown face. But before she could open her mouth, Elm handed her the heap in his arms.

Ione peered down at it. “Dresses?”

“Come with me to the next feast,” Elm said, the words rushing out of him. “I have the Nightmare Card. We’ll find your Maiden. After that, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” His throat caught. “Please. Come with me to the feast.”

Her indecipherable eyes measured him, her answer hardly a whisper. “All right.”

Elm smiled, unconstrained. “Good.” He glanced at the dresses. “Those are yours from Hawthorn House. You needn’t wear another one of the abominations my father sends. Maybe this way, you can feel a bit more like yourself.”

He didn’t let himself stay. He stepped back down the hall. “A bit more like the real Ione.”