Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King #2)

A flash of red. “Don’t move,” came Hauth’s voice. “Don’t even speak.”

Salt stung Elm’s senses. His mind skittered to a halt, locking his muscles along with it. He was frozen, one hand in his pocket, the other laced with Ione’s.

Hauth stood before them. Tall, menacing, and entirely flawless. The scars—bruises and claw marks—were gone, his skin unblemished. He wore a gold tunic and a deep crimson doublet, his chest wide as he squared off with Elm. A pair of daggers was fastened to his belt.

He looked younger. But that was only because the deeply embedded frown lines in his brow had been smoothed over. Hauth glanced down, his green eyes tracing Elm and Ione’s clasped hands. “I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said, his tone idle. “You’ve always been a cocky little runt.”

The last time Elm had seen his brother, Hauth had been lying in a puddle of his own drool. There was no poultice, no medicine—no magic—in the world that could have healed him so well.

Save one.

Hauth lowered himself to a seat atop Elm’s chest of clothes. “I see you thinking, Renelm. Trying to work it all out in that weaselly little mind.” His eyes flickered to Ione. “Did she tell you? About that night at Spindle House? About what I did to her?”

Rage coated Elm’s throat. He tried to open his mouth, but his jaw was locked.

Hauth’s eyes raked over Ione’s body. “How different you look, my dear, from the bloody shell of a woman lying beneath my window at Spindle House. When I opened my eyes two nights ago and saw you, so perfectly whole, I knew. Even when I understood nothing else, I knew.” The words slid between his teeth. “The Maiden Card healed you, Ione.”

Ione’s hand was cold in Elm’s, slick with sweat.

“When Father tapped the Nightmare Card and entered my mind, I tried to tell him. But the fool was too drunk, too unfocused. He didn’t hear me.” A touch of satisfaction crossed Hauth’s face. “But a night later, Linden did.”

The door opened behind him. And then Linden was there. Only now, his face was clear, his skin unblemished—his scars gone.

“Take his Scythe,” Hauth said, nodding at Elm.

Brutish hands pushed into Elm’s pockets. Linden looked up at him with a sneer. He ripped Elm’s Scythe free. Then, for good measure, rammed a fist into his stomach.

Breath rushed out of him and nausea rolled. But he couldn’t even double over. The Scythe’s leash, holding him in place, was too tight.

The old panic Elm had shoved behind walls was back. It clawed out of his chest, up his throat, into his mouth, begging him to scream. He was a boy again, tethered by his brother’s Scythe.

Waiting for pain.

Hauth held out his hand, and Linden dropped Elm’s Scythe into it. “When you returned the Nightmare Card last night, Linden used it. He found me. And pieced together what Father couldn’t.”

“‘Maiden,’” Linden said, glowering at Elm, then Ione. “That’s what I heard him say into my mind. Over and over. ‘Maiden Card.’ Then, ‘Ione.’”

Linden stood in front of Elm. Looked him up and down with an unmasked leer. “Hauth told me some time ago where he’d made Miss Hawthorn place her Card. But when I went to the throne room, it was not under the hearthstone. I thought maybe she’d recovered it. I went to her room to search. Her door was locked.” He reached for his belt. “But yours, Prince Renelm, was not.”

There was a clang of iron. Linden pulled a ring of keys—Elm’s ring of keys—free and dangled it in front of him. “You should really take your duties more seriously, Prince. It took me less than five minutes to unlock her door and find her Maiden. I tapped it three times, and then—” He ran a hand over his face, where the skin had once been cleaved. “My scars vanished. I was healed.”

Elm had to do something. Or else he and Ione might never escape this room. But he couldn’t. Fucking. Move.

A smirk graced the corners of Hauth’s mouth. “Not so tough without Ravyn, are you, brother?” He stepped forward, took Elm by the throat. “Where are they—Ravyn and Jespyr? Tell me.”

Another wave of salt hit Elm’s senses. His jaw ached. When he opened it, venom pooled, his brother’s Scythe dragging the truth out of his mouth. “Gone for the Twin Alders.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

Hauth ripped the ring of keys out of Linden’s hand and hit Elm across the face with it. “When will they be back?”

“I don’t know.”

Another blow.

Ione made a noise in her throat.

“What’s the matter, Renelm?” Another blow. “Nothing clever to say?”

Elm’s mouth filled with blood. He spat, painting Hauth’s boots red. “You may be healed, but your time is marked, brother. I know who it is you woke when you bashed Elspeth Spindle’s head into the wall.” He looked deep in Hauth’s Rowan-green eyes. “And not even a Maiden Card can save you when he returns.”

Fear flickered over that perfect brutish face. Hauth’s fingers tightened around the ring of keys. Elm sucked in a breath, waiting for another blow.

It didn’t come.

Hauth reached into his pocket. “Linden,” he said, keeping his gaze locked with Elm’s. “Give Ione her Maiden Card back.”

Linden’s brow knit. But he did as he was told. When he touched the Maiden, releasing Hauth from its magic, the cruel, familiar lines of Elm’s brother’s face returned.

Linden slipping the pink Card into Ione’s hand.

“Tap it,” Hauth bade her.

The Scythe wouldn’t let him turn—Elm could only see Ione in his periphery. He heard the soft sound of her finger against the Maiden Card. Tap, tap, tap.

“Better.” Hauth stepped away from Elm, moving with menacing slowness until he stood opposite of Ione.

He pulled a dagger from his belt.

Elm’s insides seized. “What are you doing?”

“Conducting an experiment.”

He didn’t even afford Ione the ability to speak. Hauth merely dipped his head toward her, a mocking bow, and said, “Let’s try this once more, betrothed.” He raised his dagger.

And plunged it to the hilt into Ione’s chest.

Air washed out of her, a long, ragged breath. Ione’s hand went slack in Elm’s, then she was falling out of his line of sight, out of his grasp.

The world darkened at the edges. The scream welling in Elm ripped free. Linden hit him across the face, but he didn’t stop shouting. Lights burst behind his eyes, every last muscle spent fighting the red Card’s grasp.

In the end, it was Hauth’s brutal hand that turned Elm’s head. “Let us see how well the pink Card fares against a fatal blow.”

There was so much blood. Red like the rowan berry, like the Scythe. Red in Ione’s dress and skin and hair, red all over his bedroom floor.

She’d survived the fall from Spindle House. The Maiden had kept her alive then. She could survive this. Had to survive this.

But the blood—it was heart’s blood. Dark. Complete. The kind Elm saw on the hunt, when he made sure the stag had a quick, clean death.

The light in those hazel eyes was fading. Ione’s mouth parted, tears slipping over her cheeks, fear etched over her face. And Elm understood. This was what it was like when Hauth sent her falling the last time. When she was certain she would die. Only this time, Ione wasn’t looking up at the indifferent moon, waiting for the great stillness to claim her.

She was looking up at him.

Her hands were the color of snow, bloodless. They lifted to the dagger in her chest, ghosting over the hilt. Her lips, a sickly gray, moved, but no words came out.

“Let her speak,” Elm shouted—pleaded.

Hauth’s laugh cut through the room. “I don’t think I will.”

Ione’s gaze stayed on Elm, holding him in those hazel wells. She pulled the dagger out of her chest and dropped it on the floor. Closed her eyes.

And stopped moving.

Twenty seconds.

Forty.

One minute.

Hauth made an indifferent noise in his throat and looked down at the Maiden in Ione’s hand. “Seems there are limits to the pink Card after all.”

Two minutes, and Ione still did not stir. Elm was shouting so loud his brother flinched. Hauth shoved him to the floor—kicked him—then flinched again.

A bead of blood slid from Hauth’s nostril. He pulled his Scythe from his pocket and tapped it. “Stay down,” he told Elm. “Or you’ll regret it.”

When salt finally fled Elm’s senses, he didn’t hear what Hauth and Linden were saying to one another. He didn’t care. He was dragging himself through blood, all of his might spent keeping the last thread of hope he carried within himself from snapping.

He cradled Ione’s head in his hands. She was so pale, not a trace of pink anywhere. “Hawthorn?”

Nothing.

He pressed his forehead over hers. “Please, Ione.”

When she remained unmoving, Elm shut his eyes—slammed his teeth together. But no effort could restrain the tears burning down his cheeks.

Then, like a rush of wings—

“Elm.”

His head shot up.

Ione was moving. Just a finger. Then a hand, which came to rest over the wound on her chest. Then that chest rose with a deep, desperate breath. Her eyelids fluttered, then opened, and Elm looked into her eyes.

Hazel—heat and life.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest. When a sob finally cleaved itself from him, he wondered bitterly if it had been she who’d nearly died, or him.

Like poisonous clouds, Hauth and Linden loomed from above.

“Incredible,” Linden’s mused. “A blade through the heart and still the Maiden lets her live.”

Hauth’s voice was slow. Awestruck. Ravenous. “Invincibility.”

Darkness pooled in Elm. It didn’t matter that he was weaponless, naked without his Scythe. He still looked up into his brother’s face and said, without an ounce of doubt, “I’ll kill you for this.”

The door banged open.

Filick Willow stood at the threshold, with his books and his dogs, eyes wide as he took in the room. Hauth and Liden, standing over Elm and Ione. Blood on the floor. His gaze found Elm’s face, tracing the budding bruises, the tears in his eyes. “Forgive me, Prince,” he said. “I should have knocked louder.”

Elm could have kissed the ground. He nodded at Ione in his arms. “Take her,” he said, his voice breaking. “Help her.”

When Filick stepped into the room, Hauth straightened his spine. “You aren’t needed, Physician.”

The dogs growled. Filick stayed them with a firm hand. “Prince Hauth. You—you were missing from your chamber. We rang the bell.”

“I heard it.” Hauth shifted his Scythe Card between blunt fingers. “But, as you see, no one stole me from my bed. I am quite well. You may go.”

Filick didn’t move. His eyes were on Ione. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”

“I’m aware.”

Footsteps lumbered down the hall. Someone heavy was running, and then the King was there, pushing past Filick, tramping through Ione’s blood on his way to Hauth. When he wrapped his arms around his eldest son, his voice came out fractured. “My boy. You’re alive.”

Elm looked down at Ione’s chest. She was still covering her wound. “Let me see,” he whispered.

She was reticent, her hand pressed so hard over her chest her fingernails had left crescent indents. Slowly, she took it away.

The wound was shrinking, half the size of the blade that had made it. The Maiden—still clutched in Ione’s other hand—was healing her.

Elm raised his eyes to the ceiling and, with every part of himself, thanked the Shepherd King for his horrible, wonderful Maiden Card.

Ione’s hand grazed his sleeve. “I thought I’d slipped through the veil. I was riding in the wood, mud on my ankles.” A small smile graced her colorless lips. “With you.”

Elm buried his face in her neck. “Someday. But first, I want a hundred years with you.”

Above them, the King’s voice came in waves. “How?” he asked, his voice hitching as he put a calloused hand to Hauth’s cheek.

Hauth’s own voice was even. He patted his father’s shoulder. “I hear you’ve been hosting feasts. Host tonight’s in my honor, and I’ll tell you all about it.”