Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King #2)

I could not yet see Ione—but her Cards were brilliant in the darkness of the wood. Pink and red and forest-green lights emanated, and I knew my cousin was out of the meadow and into the trees, retrieving Elm’s horse where she’d left it. Mounting. Riding this way—just as the Nightmare had planned.

He hunched low to the ground and cocked his head to both sides, cracking the joints in his neck. Grip lax around his sword, he’d stopped moving the trees after we’d spoken to Ravyn. His self-imposed task was one he’d honed for centuries.

He waited.

He’d waited, while Ione and Ravyn confronted Hauth. Waited, as Jespyr and Petyr crept through shadow undetected. Even as he’d guided the trees into the meadow, he’d been waiting. Waiting.

For the Destriers to come.

But I was not so practiced in the art of stillness. My mind ticked on a steady rhythm, not a chime, but a chant. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.

Hush, the Nightmare admonished. I can feel your worry in my teeth.

It can’t be helped. I let out a long breath, which did nothing to ease me. You have so little time.

I heard them, then. Footsteps. Several pairs, all of them running.

Ione rode loudly, weaving through the wood. The Destriers behind her were far quieter—difficult to hone in on. But not impossible.

The Nightmare tightened his grip on his sword and tapped it upon the earth, his namesake tree slithering out of his mouth like a hiss. “Taxus.”

Shepherd King, came the chorus of their reply.

“How many Destriers are in the wood?”

The Black Horses arrive, eight in their rank. They verge near the Maiden—to chase and to flank. Mind all your circles, guide the wood as you please. To hunt the King’s guard—cut them down at the knees.

The Nightmare stood to full height. Veins dark with magic, he swept his sword into the air. The wood trembled, then began once more to move. Dirt and mist and snow shrouded his eyes, so he shut them, content to listen to the noises of the wood.

I listened with him. I heard the groaning of trees—the rumbling of roots as they ripped toward the Destriers. I could hear the beats of Ione’s horse. Then, above it, men’s voices echoed.

The Destriers were shouting. Screaming.

The Nightmare opened his eyes, and Ione cantered past, stirring mist and kicking up dirt. The horse whickered, dodging through shifting trees. Ione kept her seat, turning the animal in wide circles through the wood. For each pass, she drew more Destriers from shadow, and the Nightmare, with swings of his blade, cut them down with the trees.

When four Destriers were left, Ione turned the horse, hurtling once more toward the Nightmare. One Destrier was so close behind her the tip of his blade cut several strands of hair from the horse’s tail. He pulled a knife, flinging it at Ione. But with one swipe of his sword, the Nightmare bade the trees to knock it from the air—and the Destrier from his feet.

Ione rode until she was next to him, dismounting in a flurry. She dropped her hand into her pocket and seized the red light therein. “Be still,” she said, panting. “Be still, Destriers.”

Louder, Ione, I called in the dark.

“Louder,” the Nightmare echoed.

Ione clamped her eyes shut. When she commanded the Scythe a third time, her voice shifted to a thunder greater than the whickering horse or the rush of incoming Destriers—greater than the wood itself. “Be still!”

Salt touched everything. Even me, though the Scythe had no sway over the Nightmare. When I looked through my window, three Destriers stood paces away—arrested in utter stillness.

Darkness emanated from their Black Horse Cards. Unmoving, the Destriers looked upon my cousin, unmistakable disgust flashing over their eyes.

Ione came to stand next to the Nightmare. She measured the Destriers, taking in their frozen statures and hateful gazes. With the Scythe, and her thunderous command, she’d bent them to her will.

But it only took a needle-thin whisper to break them. Ione turned to the Nightmare, dropping her hazel eyes to his sword. “Go on, then.”

His mirth coated our shared darkness. When the Nightmare’s sword sang through the air, the yew trees answered its call. With an impact so great I heard nothing but a terrible snap, the Destriers were knocked from their feet, ground by roots into snow—into nothingness.

I let out a shaking breath, and Ione winced. A drop of blood fell from her nose. She reached into her pocket—released the Scythe. “Is that all of them?”

The Nightmare closed his eyes, listening to the wood.

“Is Bess—Did she see all of that? That must have been terrible to watch.”

The Nightmare ignored her, clearing his throat to speak once more to the trees.

“Will you tell her I’m sorry about Equinox?” Ione scrubbed a hand over her face. “I feel sick, thinking we fought over Hauth bloody Rowan—”

“You know, yellow girl, I’ve always liked you best. But if you do not be quiet and let me listen, I’m going tell the trees to press their branches over your mouth.”

Ione balked, and I swatted at darkness. Would it kill you to be civil?

I’m already dead. But yes. Decidedly. He opened his eyes a sliver. Peeked at Ione. “Elspeth is lecturing me.”

Hesitant at first, then blossoming, a smile spread over my cousin’s mouth. She could not see it, but I answered with my own. Oh, give her a hug.

Don’t be grotesque.

A moment later the Nightmare’s spine straightened. He put a finger to his mouth, warning Ione to remain silent. There were voices in the wood again. Men, shouting.

“For fuck’s sake, Tyrn,” a booming voice called. “Stop cowering. They’re only trees.”

I jolted forward in the Nightmare’s mind. That’s my father’s voice.

A second answered, pointed and snide. “Only trees? When was the last time that wiry shrub in your courtyard ripped itself free and wrapped branches around your neck, Spindle?”

My smile widened. Elm.

The third voice was my uncle’s. “At least the wood doesn’t seem angry with us, that’s someth—oh, Spirit, another one.” Wet coughs echoed through the trees. “I can’t look at another dead Destrier.”

“Huh,” Elm said. “I don’t feel that way at all.”

The Nightmare rolled his eyes. He tapped his sword upon the ground. The wood went still, dirt and snow settling.

Three figures stumbled into view, like ships upon stormy seas. Wrecked ships, by the look of them. Their shoulders were slumped—their hands tied behind their backs. Their skin was bleeding and bruised and blackened with frostbite. None of them walked without a limp.

Ione’s breath caught. She ran forward.

Don’t be shy, I chided. Go say hello.

When Elm and my father and uncle saw the Nightmare and Ione coming, their mouths fell open.

Tyrn stumbled forward first. With his hands tied, he could do little besides push his broad chest at Ione and the Nightmare. He smelled of sweat—grime and filth. “Ione,” he sobbed. “Elspeth. I’m so sorry.”

The Nightmare hissed and wrenched away. “Get away from me, you traitorous scab.”

At least untie him.

Grumbling, he passed Ione his sword, discontentment sliding over his mind. I might stab him if I do it.

Ione cut her father’s restraints, then my father’s. Erik Spindle had more poise than Tyrn—he didn’t try to hug the Nightmare. But he stared into his yellow eyes. “What’s happened to you, Elspeth?”

“I’ll explain later,” Elm said, breathless as Ione cut his binds. When his hands were free, he shook them at his sides and looked down at my cousin, a flush sliding over his marred skin. “Hey, Hawthorn.”

The Nightmare took his sword back and snapped a finger in Elm’s face. “Focus, Princeling. Time is running out. Heal yourself with the Maiden—then we must get to the stone chamber. How many fallen Destriers did you count in the wood?”

Elm dragged his gaze from Ione. “What?”

The Nightmare ground his molars. “How many—”

“Four,” my father said. “We passed four dead Destriers.”

Ione met the Nightmare’s eyes, her face stricken. I knew what she was thinking. Eight Destriers had chased her from the meadow into the wood. Four were dead on the forest floor, three crushed by the trees behind us. Seven. Seven had fallen.

Which meant the eighth—

There! I shouted.

He was paces away, walking on silent step, fitted with a shortbow. Even behind the darkness emanating from his Black Horse, I recognized him. He was the same Destrier who’d chased me through the mist on Market Day—the one whose face the Nightmare had cleaved. Royce Linden.

The Nightmare slammed his sword back against soil. But before he could command the trees, Linden’s arrow flew. It grazed Elm’s arm, then lodged itself into the muscle of Ione’s shoulder.

She faltered back a step.

The Nightmare sprang forward at the same time as Elm. Linden pivoted—let loose a second arrow. The Nightmare cut it from the air and kept running. Linden threw down his bow and drew two knives. But the Nightmare’s gait was so fast, so trained and full of fury, that when he reached Linden—limbs and blades colliding—the unflinching force of him knocked the Destrier onto his back.

Linden’s skull collided with roots. He looked up, awash with loathing. The Nightmare drew in a breath, lifted his blade once more—

“Give me that,” Elm said, ripping the sword out of his hands. Auburn hair in his eyes, he placed the blade over Linden’s chest and spoke through his teeth. “You know how this goes, asshole. Be wary. Be clever. Be good.”

I shut my eyes. When I opened them, a fatal blow had been dealt through Linden’s heart. Blood wept from it onto the forest floor. The Destrier shut his eyes, gasping only a moment before the great, final sleep called him through the veil.

Elm stared down at him a second longer, then turned away. He handed the Nightmare back his sword and had the good sense to look contrite. “I was keeping a promise.”

By the time he and the Nightmare got back to Ione, the arrow from her shoulder was on the ground—her wound already healed. She held her Maiden Card in her hand and tapped her foot, hazel eyes narrowing over Elm. “That was excessive.”

He let out a broken laugh, then surged forward. Catching Ione’s face between his palms, Elm leaned over, crashed his mouth against hers, kissed her feverishly. “I’m sorry. I should have gone with you. I’m not clever at all. I’m sorry—I’m sorry.”

The Nightmare and I stared. We seem to have missed something rather important, I said.

Small mercies.

My uncle and father turned away, scarlet. When Ione managed to pull herself from Elm, slightly dazed, she passed him the Maiden Card. Elm tapped it, letting out a sigh of relief when his wounds—his cuts and bruises and blackened bits of frostbitten flesh—healed until he was without blemish.

My father and uncle did the same. I felt my own relief, seeing them restored. But the chant in my mind returned, louder than before. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. I cleared my throat and spoke to the Nightmare. Thank you. They are alive because of you. And now—

We must take the Cards and meet Ravyn in the chamber. But just as he said the words, the line of his shoulders went rigid. The Nightmare looked out into the wood, and I saw what he sensed. Light, flickering in our shared vision. A flurry of color.

There were Providence Cards in the wood. Only, they weren’t headed in the direction of the stone chamber, but the opposite. And fast.

I called out into nothingness. Ravyn?

No answer.

My heart bottomed out. Something’s wrong.

The Nightmare clasped his hand over Ione’s shoulder. “Bring the Maiden and Scythe and Twin Alders to the stone chamber.” His gaze found Elm. “I have plans for you yet.”

He ran. Not after the lights, but toward Castle Yew. Faster, I called over the drumming of his heart. Run faster.

He ripped through the tree line and faced the meadow. Snow decorated every blade of grass, but it was not pale.

It was red.

Ravyn was on his back, a hand pressed against his side, his copper skin the color of ash. His eyes were open, glassy, his breath coming in quick, halting breaths.

Blood. In the snow, in his clothes, upon his face and hands. So much blood.

The Nightmare let out an inhuman snarl. And I saw what he was focused on. The hilt of a dagger—lodged between Ravyn’s ribs.

I screamed.

The Nightmare dropped to his knees at Ravyn’s side. “No,” he said, stilling Ravyn’s trembling hand. “Do not pull the blade out. It stanches the blood.”

Ravyn blinked and looked up with unfocused eyes. He said my name, a whisper, just between us. “Elspeth.”

I thrashed against darkness—against nothingness—trying to get to him. My consciousness rattled so greatly the Nightmare began to shake. “Hauth Rowan?” came his venomous question.

Ravyn managed a nod. “My Mirror, the Cards—he—”

“I will find him.”

Ravyn winced—tried to focus. “Elspeth,” he said again. “Tell Elspeth not to hate me.”

Something fractured in the dark room I inhabited.

The Nightmare’s hands shook on his sword. Unflinching, five hundred years old, he looked down at Ravyn, his lost descendant, and trembled. “I wanted a better Blunder for her. If you perish, that Blunder will never exist.”

“It cannot exist unless the Deck is united,” Ravyn growled, blood on his lips. “Only you can see my Cards. Find Hauth. End it the way you wanted to, Taxus. I’ll be fine.”

The sound of snapping—teeth and bones—filled my dark room. And I realized that the thing that was fracturing—breaking in a thousand razor-edged pieces—was me. It can’t end like this.

The Nightmare clenched his jaw. “I’ll come back,” he said, to me, to Ravyn, to himself. “How long can you last?”

“I was ten minutes late to Spindle House.” An invisible thread pulled the corner of Ravyn’s lips before pain stole it away. “I’ll be ten minutes late through the veil.”

I wouldn’t let him go. I could not. No, no, no—

But the Nightmare was already running. Faster than I’d ever felt him go. His sword sang as it cut through the cold Solstice air. He ripped through the meadow, flinging us back into the wood.

It didn’t take long to find Hauth. He was bright with color—nearly the entire Deck tucked in his pocket. He released himself from the Mirror Card—no longer invisible. I could see his broad back, his pumping arms.

The Nightmare stopped running and lowered to a crouch, holding his sword above the earth. He tapped it three times on hardened soil, click, click, click. His eyes rolled back, darkness eclipsing our shared vision. The space around me widened, as if the Nightmare and I were expanding. I could not see him, but I knew the Shepherd King with golden armor was with us. For he was the Nightmare, and the Nightmare was the King, and I was both of them.

Magic burned up our arms, powerful, vengeful, and full of fury.

We looked out onto the wood, marking Hauth Rowan, and spoke the name of our flock. “Taxus,” we said in a long, scraping call.

The earth answered on a thunderous boom, the yew trees awake once more—and moving. Their roots ripped from the ground, cleaving the wood as they hurtled toward Hauth.

He looked back, eyes wide. With another clamorous roll of earth, Hauth shouted and fell. The yew trees encircled him. We guided our sword in intricate arcs through the air, casting nets, moving branches and roots to cut him off at every turn.

The trees caught Hauth at his middle. He shouted, swore, swinging his sword. But the branches tightened their hold, knotting around his ankles and wrists until, pressed with his back against a gnarled trunk, Hauth could no longer move.

We raised ourselves to full height, Shepherd King—Nightmare—I. When we stepped forward, the forest stood still for us.

“You should have known better than to flee into my wood, Hauth Rowan,” the Nightmare seethed. “Your Destriers met their end here. So, too, shall you.”

Hauth’s green eyes narrowed with recognition. He spat my name like a curse. “Spindle. Or do you go by a different title now?” The thin line of his mouth twitched. “How’s Ravyn?”

The Nightmare’s hand found Hauth’s throat, just at it had at Spindle House. Only now it was not just he who was ravenous for blood, but me as well.

I screamed into the dark. The Nightmare opened his mouth, and my scream became his, a horrid sound of despair and hate and rage so complete it shook the trees, dousing the arrogance in Hauth’s face and painting dread upon him.

And suddenly it was not Hauth that we were looking at—but another man with cunning green eyes. Brutus Rowan.

The Nightmare—Taxus—I spoke in a low, menacing whisper. “There was a time, once,” we said, “when rowan and yew trees grew together in the wood. They spoke in delicate rhymes—whispered tales of balance, of the Spirit of the Wood. Of magic. But time is as corrosive as salt. As rot. And now the rowan’s roots are bloodstained, and the yew tree twisted beyond all recognition. We are monsters, the pair of us.”

Brutus Rowan’s brow lowered. When I blinked, it was Hauth’s face once more. “That is what it takes,” came his acidic reply, “to be King of Blunder.”

The Nightmare let go of his throat. With a swing of his sword, the trees holding Hauth began to move. They dragged him through the wood, following the pull of the Nightmare’s sword as he walked ahead.

The trees reached the edge of the wood. Loomed over the stone chamber the Shepherd King had built for the Spirit of the Wood. They dangled Hauth a moment over the rotted-out ceiling—

Then dropped him.

He crashed into the chamber. When his back collided with the stone below, Hauth let out an ugly groan and thrashed, draped over the stone like an offering.

The Nightmare entered the chamber through its window. Midnight? he asked the yew trees.

Minutes away.

Salt coated the air and mist slipped over us, a cool, silver wave—a turning tide. Hauth struggled to his feet, nine Providence Cards slipping from his pocket onto the chamber floor, a mural of vivid color in the darkened room. Nightmare. Mirror. Iron Gate. Well. Chalice. White Eagle. Prophet. Golden Egg. Black Horse.

Hauth backed against the far wall of the chamber. His crown had fallen. He picked it up and placed it back on his head, his foot knocking against another crown upon the earthen floor. One with twisting yew branches instead of rowan.

The Shepherd King’s crown.

The Nightmare picked it up—placed it on the stone where he had forged his Cards, where his children had died—the place that become his grave. There was no time, no time at all. Still, guarding the window to the chamber, trapping Hauth inside, he waited.

Midnight, I urged him. Ravyn!

And yet, he waited.

Waited.

Waited.

Then, like spider silk, his voice strung itself around the chamber. “You are the final Rowan,” he said. “The last of your kind. Know that, before the Spirit takes you to rot.”

“You are wrong,” Hauth answered, his voice dripping distain. The trees had stripped him of weapons, but his hands knotted to fists at his sides. “You may have an easy enough time killing my brother—but you’ll find this Rowan difficult to dispatch, Shepherd King.”

The Nightmare laughed, wicked and infinite. “Fool. I’m not going to kill your brother.” He opened his arms, a beckoning—and a promise. “I’m going to crown him.”

He looked over his shoulder, waiting once more. “Neither Rowan nor Yew, but somewhere between. A pale tree in winter, neither red, gold, nor green. Black hides the bloodstain, but washes the realm. First of his name—King of the Elms.”

I saw them, then. Out of darkness, three lights shone. Red, pink, and forest green. The Nightmare stepped aside, and the lights drew closer.

Elm and Ione climbed into the chamber, the final Cards of the Deck—Scythe, Maiden, and Twin Alders—cradled in Ione’s hand. Neither of them wielded the Maiden. But to me, they seemed so beautiful they were terrifying. Elm glanced between Hauth and the Nightmare, his green eyes narrowing.

“You know what you must do?” the Nightmare asked him.

Elm nodded.

The Nightmare caught Elm’s hand and pressed the hilt of his sword into it. “Then it’s yours. All of it.”

Elm took the sword. Searched the Nightmare’s eyes. “You won’t stay?”

“I’ve got to get back.” He glanced one last time at the glowing lights of the Providence Cards he had lived—bled—died for. “They’re waiting for me.”

He turned out of the chamber.