Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King #2)

The moment Petyr sought to enter the alderwood, the trees barred his way. It seemed the Spirit of the Wood would not let anyone who was not already infected into her lair.

He tried nonetheless. “I’ll wait for you—” he called.

The trees slammed shut, locking him out and Ravyn, Jespyr—the Nightmare and me—in.

Ahead, Jespyr’s laughter cut through the mist. “This way.”

The Nightmare had known all along that, to enter the alderwood, someone needed to get lost in the mist. His own sister had done it. He’d known this was coming—

And said nothing. I didn’t have claws or jagged teeth, but I had enough anger to turn the dark chamber we shared into a battering cacophony of fury. I screamed until I earned a flinch, then screamed again.

Enough, Elspeth! he snarled, hurtling after Jespyr through a bramble of thorns so sharp they cut through the sleeves of his cloak. He shielded his face with his arms, and the thorns bit into them, scoring his skin red.

I felt neither pain nor pity for the marks upon him, screaming all the louder. Ravyn is moving heaven and earth to find the Twin Alders Card—to save Emory. If he loses a sister in the process, it will break him.

Yews do not break, came the Nightmare’s menacing rebuttal. They bend.

I looked out my window into the alderwood. The hour was distinctly day. But the wood was so dense, the mist so oppressive, it felt like the blackest part of night.

The wood was alive—and voracious. Trees and roots skittered forward at terrifying speeds, grasping at Ravyn and the Nightmare. They snagged at hair and skin and clothes, as if they wanted a taste of the trespassers who had breached their terrifying haunt.

Worse, the alderwood spoke, and not into just the Nightmare’s mind. From the way he jumped, gray eyes going wide, I could tell Ravyn could hear the trees too.

Their voices were like a swarm of wasps.

Be wary the green, be wary the trees. Be wary the song of the wood on your sleeves. You’ll step off the path—to blessing and wrath. Be wary the song of the wood on your sleeves.

Ahead, Jespyr’s gait quickened to a sprint. She ripped through branches and brambles and vines thick as her forearm. Her laughter swam in the dense air, unnatural—both calm and frantic. “Can you hear the Spirit? She’s calling my name. Calling me home.”

Ravyn tripped, then bent over himself, gasping for air. “Keep going,” the Nightmare hissed, wrenching him up by his hood. “If we lose her, we too will be lost.”

They ran without respite, hunted by the alderwood.

Brush rustled from behind. The Nightmare whipped his gaze back—huffed air out his nostrils. It seemed the trees were not the only ones who wanted a pound of flesh. Animals with sharp shoulder blades and silver eyes stalked forward. Wolves, wildcats. Above, birds of prey darted between trees, far away and then—too close.

A falcon dove, screeching as it swiped razor talons at the Nightmare.

His sword flashed through the air. There was another terrible screech, then feathers and blood rained.

Nearby, a tree with thin branches and crimson leaves whipped Ravyn across the face. A thousand dissonant voices ricocheted in the salt-riddled air. Mind the mist, it does not lift. The Spirit doth hunt, ever adrift. Stay out of the wood, be wary, be good. The Spirit doth hunt, ever adrift.

Ravyn reeled, wiping blood from his cheek. He ducked, barely avoiding an errant branch as it swung for his neck—but not the next. Jagged, the branch caught his hand, tearing the skin at his knuckles.

There is no escape from the salt, the alderwood called. Magic is everywhere—ageless. To the Spirit of the Wood, the exactor of balance, our lives are but of a butterfly—fleeting.

Ahead, Jespyr’s voice grew more frenzied. “The voices of the trees are clever. Isn’t that right, Shepherd King? It is they who spoke the words you penned in your precious book. They who warned you against magic. They whom you did not heed.”

The Nightmare’s vision went wide—then instantly narrow. Time fell away, his memory knotting around me like a noose until it wasn’t Jespyr I was trailing in the alderwood—

But Ayris.

“Come, brother,” she laughed, her voice horrible and wrong. Lines of inky darkness chased up her arms. “The Spirit of the Wood awaits. New beginnings—new ends!” She turned, her yellow eyes cold, as if she no longer knew me. “But nothing comes free.”

An animal snarl shattered the memory.

On your left! I shouted.

Fangs and hot, rancid breath. The Nightmare swore, veering as a wolf sprang at us. He cut the animal down with his blade. But a second was waiting on his other side, so close I could see the white of saliva strung between its jaws. It lunged, and would have caught the Nightmare’s arm and ripped it open—

Had an ivory-hilted dagger not sang through the air, hitting the beast in its wide silver eye.

The wolf fell, and Ravyn was at our side, ripping his dagger free. He afforded the Nightmare a brief, disgusted glance, then hurried back onto the path Jespyr’s erratic steps had cleaved.

The apology you owe him, I seethed, is beyond measure. He just saved your life. OUR life.

A humiliation neither of us should attempt to recover from.

Jespyr’s laughter had grown distant. It sounded from not only ahead, but below. A moment later, I knew why. Not ten paces away, the forest floor opened into a deep, jagged valley.

Dirt flew as Ravyn skittered to an abrupt halt. He teetered a moment at the valley’s lip. The Nightmare, trailing too close, slammed into his back. “You bloody imbecile.”

They stumbled, staggered—fell.

The Nightmare’s vision winked, limbs tangling with Ravyn’s as the two of them rolled over root and rock into the valley. They met the bottom with a flurry of curses, smashing through something brittle.

Brittle—and white. The Nightmare stiffened. When he pushed up onto his hands and looked around, I stifled a scream.

Coated in mist, the valley floor was a field of bodies.

Some were skeletons. Others only partially decomposed. Earth, flesh, bone. The smell broke through the salt in the air. It wafted across the Nightmare’s sinuses, putrid—rot and decay. Death.

Every soul who’d gotten lost in the mist had come here to die. To rot.

Ravyn choked back a cry, a skull shattering beneath his knee as he scrambled to his feet. His eyes went wide, then he heaved his meager breakfast onto the ground.

Bleary, the Nightmare’s gaze was hard to see through. Still, I could discern what awaited of us on the other side of the valley. A looming hill. Jespyr was on it—climbing on all fours like a spider, her words garbled, her cries guttural.

Don’t lose her, I urged him.

He didn’t move, flashes of Ayris passing through his mind.

Nightmare. I drew in a breath. Spoke the words he had so often tendered me, when it felt impossible to drag myself forward. Get up. You must get up.

He let out a breath of fire and unfolded himself from the ground, facing the ominous hill. “Eyes forward, Yew,” he murmured. “We’re nearly there.”

The incline of the hill was treacherously steep. The Nightmare let Ravyn go ahead of him, though I could tell by the gnashing of his teeth that their pace was not fast enough for his liking. Still, he kept his arms strained the entire way, as if he was preparing himself to catch Ravyn, should he fall.

He didn’t. Calloused fingers found purchase in the earth, and Ravyn hauled himself up, foot by foot, up that tall, monstrous hill. When the incline crested to a flat crown, he fell onto grass. His hands were tattered, slick with blood. Welting bruises decorated every bit of skin I could see. His breaths were gasps. It seemed to take all of his remaining strength just to lay there and breathe.

My voice came out in broken pieces. Help him.

The Nightmare paused, looming over Ravyn like a shadow. Slowly, he knelt. “Look at me.”

Ravyn’s gaze seemed far and near. It crashed into my window.

“A King’s reign is wrought with burden. Weighty decisions ripple through centuries. Still, decisions must be made.” The Nightmare’s whisper was like wind in the trees. “You are strong, Ravyn Yew. I have known that since the moment I clasped eyes on you. And you must keep being strong—” He turned and faced the hilltop. “For what comes next.”

The hill’s crown was mist and rock. In its center were two trees, their roots woven together like serpents. Tall with long, reaching branches, one tree was pale—white as bone. The other was black, as if charred.

I recognized them as if they’d been scrawled over my skin. The same image lived on the cover of The Old Book of Alders. Two trees, woven together at the roots. One light, the other dark.

The twin alders.

Jespyr lay supine beneath them. Her eyes were closed.

Ravyn ripped himself off the ground and ran to her, crouching at his sister’s side, tearing the fabric along her sleeve. Long fingers of inky darkness swept up Jespyr’s arm. A tributary of magic, settling into its new host.

The infection.

Ravyn swore, clawing at himself for his spare charm. He placed the viper head in Jespyr’s hand and closed her fingers around it. He held his breath, waiting.

She did not stir.

His voice broke. “The Maiden?”

The Nightmare came up behind him. “Not for this. No Card can stop the infection, nor heal degeneration.”

Yet, came a harsh, rattling voice from above.

The hill shook, knocking Ravyn off-balance. He fell, and the alders wrapped their roots around him, catching him at the wrists—the ankles—tethering him to the ground.

What are they doing to him? I shouted into the Nightmare’s mind.

He didn’t answer. His eyes were on Jespyr’s unmoving form.

The trees bent over Ravyn. They had no eyes—no mouths—no faces. But they saw. Spoke. Who is it? called the rattling voice of the dark alder.

Higher, more dissonant, the pale alder spoke. Taste his blood.

The roots around Ravyn’s wrists tightened. When blood dripped from the cuts in his hands, the hilltop shuddered. Yew, the trees said together.

The pale alder shifted closer to Ravyn. The yew tree is cunning, its shadow unknown. It bends without breaking, its secrets its own.

Look past twisting branches, the dark alder called, dig deep to its bones. Is it the Twin Alders you seek—or is it the throne?

The Nightmares hands were rigid, clawlike, at his sides. “Answer them,” he told Ravyn.

Ravyn pulled in ragged breaths. “I seek the Twin Alders Card to unite the Deck.”

To lift the mist, said the dark alder.

To heal the infection, said the other.

Ravyn nodded.

Then you must ask the Spirit herself for it.

The roots around Ravyn’s wrists loosened, and another thunderous roll shuddered through the hill. The alder trees twitched. Slowly, they began to move farther apart, dragging their roots with them. When they were at a distance from one another they stopped.

I stared at the space between them. Blinked—then blinked again. I was not looking through the trees at the other end of the hilltop. I was looking through a doorway. An opening to another place, between the alders.

A long, pale shore.

Ravyn pulled himself to his feet. “Is that where the Twin Alders Card is?”

It is where the Spirit of the Wood will speak to you.

Ravyn knelt—tugged on Jespyr’s arm.

The alder tree’s roots jutted over her, caging her to the ground. She stays with us. If she does not feed us with her rot, we will feed her with our magic.

Ravyn’s voice trembled with loathing. “That is why people flock here when the Spirit snares them in the mist? To feed you?”

The dark alder extended a branch. To feed. And to fuel. What we consume, we pour back into the mist. What you call an infection, we declare a gift. The branch traced Ravyn’s brow. I would think you, of all people, would understand that.

Ravyn recoiled. “My magic is not a gift. It’s hardly anything at all.”

The tree pulled back. And while it had no eyes, I was certain it had turned its glare to the Nightmare. Seems you have much to learn yet. Now go. The Spirit will not wait forever.

Ravyn looked between the trees at that pale shore. Roots no longer held him place, but his legs did not move.

Forward, always forward, the pale alder mocked. Isn’t that your creed, Ravyn Yew?

A frown drew across Ravyn’s brows. He looked down at his sister, then back at the Nightmare—at me. “I’m not going anywhere without them.”

Then your journey was for naught.

The Nightmare hissed. His thoughts swaddled me in darkness. Five hundred years became nothing, Jespyr shifting to a visage of Ayris, lying unmoving between the twin alders.

And I understood, better than I ever had, how he had become a monster.

His life had been a never-ending barter. He had given his time, his focus, his love, for magic. He’d wielded it with great authority. But it was magic that had taken his kingdom, his family, his body, his soul.

It was balance, but it was not fair. And now he was full of agony, whittled down to something jagged—a tooth, a claw.

I know what you’re thinking, I told him.

Do you?

It’s the same thing you’ve thought for centuries, isn’t it? That none of this would have happened if you had simply played in the wood with Ayris as a child and never asked the Spirit for her blessings. You’d have never gotten the sword. Never bled onto the stone. You might have held your children as dearly as you did your Cards.

I softened my voice. For if you had, there would have never been any Cards at all. And none of this would have happened.

He laughed, a bitter sound. And now you know that every terrible thing that happened in Blunder took place long before I handed Brutus Rowan a Scythe. It happened because, five hundred years ago, a boy wore a crown—had every abundance in the world—but always asked for MORE.

Ahead, the alder trees stirred. They shifted toward each other. The doorway between them to the pale shore—to the Twin Alders Card—was beginning to close.

Ravyn’s voice was taut. “Please. I will speak to the Spirit, meet any price.” He grasped Jespyr’s arm, trying to pry her from her cage of roots. “But not my sister.”

The trees didn’t heed him, the gap between them closing farther still.

There’s a reason you are here a second time, I said to the Nightmare, my voice urgent. You may have lost a sister to magic, but you must not resign Ravyn to the same fate. You are the Shepherd King—the author of everything I have ever known. You wrote Blunder’s history, Aemmory Percyval Taxus. Now rewrite it.

The alders were closing, the pale shore disappearing, our one shot at the Twin Alders Card—disappearing.

Ravyn wrenched at roots with bloody hands. But he couldn’t get Jespyr out. He turned to the Nightmare. Shouted a broken plea. “Help me.”

Our shared vision snapped forward. And though I had no control over my body, I’d swear it was me that tightened the Nightmare’s grip on his sword.

He drew his blade over his hand, cut a thin slice in his palm, and stalked toward the twin alders. When he slapped a bloody handprint onto the pale alder, the hill did not merely shudder. It quaked.

The trees spoke as one, their voices a dissonant, wretched harmony. Taxus.

The Nightmare fixed the alders in his gaze—addressed them with a malice so ancient it coated my mind in brimstone. “There are many circles that draw through time,” he said. “Many mirrored events, many woods that inevitably lead us to the same place. Much of what happened five hundred years ago has happened again.” His eyes narrowed. “But not this. You will not make a monster out of him as you did me, forcing him to give up a sister. Let go of Jespyr Yew. Or I will cleave your roots from this earth.”

The alders went rigid, their slithering roots and twisting branches halting to an eerie stillness. Then, so abruptly I’d no time to scream, they seized Ravyn, ripping him away from Jespyr. He shouted, thrashed, but was tossed with abandon through the doorway onto the pale shore. The trees turned their vicious branches on the Nightmare.

But his sword found them first.

He took to the roots, cutting Jespyr free with furious precision. The hill trembled, the opening between the alders as narrow as my bedroom door at Spindle House.

Keep going, I urged him.

He pried Jespyr’s limp body off the earth and slung her over his shoulders. The two of them were struck over and over by flailing branches. Ravyn reached out, the space between the alders now so narrow he could not get back out. “Take my hand!”

The Nightmare took it. When Ravyn yanked him forward, the doorway between the twin alders slammed shut. The trees and the hilltop were gone. All that remained now was a pale shore, accompanied by the sound of waves.

And the oppressive smell of salt.