Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King #2)

Wherever Ravyn was, it was far too loud to be the other side of the veil. Death was supposed to be peaceful, like slipping off to sleep. And this—

This was agony.

He’d dragged himself through snow toward Castle Yew, trailing blood. The pain in his side went white-hot, and for a moment his vision winked and he lost consciousness. When his eyes opened, there were hands on him, harsh voices calling somewhere above his head.

He was lifted—carried.

“Trees, you’re fuckin’ heavy.”

Ravyn’s neck flopped, his head dragging on snow, then stone floor. Hands caught it—yanked it up. Ravyn blinked, shadows dancing across his vision.

Petyr held him below his shoulders and walked backward, leading the others—Jon Thistle and Fenir and Morette—through the castle. “Don’t die on us,” he warned.

Hauth’s dagger was still in Ravyn’s side, jutting out of him like a dead, poisonous branch. His hand trembled over the hilt.

“Leave it,” Morette snapped, carrying the weight of his legs.

Ravyn tried to speak, but his jaw was an iron cage, his teeth gritted against pain. His words came out a muffled groan.

“Put him on the table,” Fenir said, heaving breaths.

Ravyn looked up at a ceiling. Vaulted, with stubborn spiderwebs in the corners. Castle Yew’s great hall.

All he could think was that he was bleeding on the table where his parents ate breakfast.

“Where does Filick keep his medical supplies?” Morette called.

“I’ll get them.” Jon Thistle knocked over chairs as he tumbled out of the great hall.

Ravyn’s siblings appeared at his side. Jespyr gasped when her eyes fell to his wound, her face losing whatever color it still held. “Oh no.”

Emory took a seat at the table—lay his head on Ravyn’s chest. “Not yet, Ravyn.” His breaths were slow, uneven. “Not yet.”

Ravyn closed his eyes, tears slipping out the corners.

Thistle returned, his booming voice echoing through the hall. “I’ve got linens and sutures and balms and—trees know what kind of tincture this is, it smells ripe.” He dropped the supplies on the table, the reverberation sending a shock of pain into Ravyn’s side.

Jespyr swore, her hands trembling as she unwrapped the linen. “What—what do we do? If we pull the knife—”

“He’ll bleed out in moments,” Morette answered, her voice hard.

They argued over how to save him. And while their voices grew louder, more panic-tipped, Ravyn weaved in and out of consciousness. He wanted to ask one of them to light the hearth. He was so terribly cold. But it hurt too much to speak—to breathe—to even blink. He kept his gaze fixed on the ceiling, and with each passing second, the great hall grew colder. Darker.

Shadows closed in around him, calling him by name.

Ravyn Yew.

Ravyn Yew.

“Ravyn Yew!”

Everyone went still. Again, the voice called, louder this time. “Ravyn Yew!”

The door to the great hall crashed open with enough violence to rip the wood off the top hinge. For a moment, Ravyn couldn’t see anything but a dark, menacing shape. The shape stepped forward—pushed Fenir aside—and bent over Ravyn.

Yellow eyes.

“Taxus,” Ravyn managed.

The Nightmare heaved a breath, nostrils flaring. “Still alive, then.”

“Just,” came Morette’s thinning voice.

“He’s lost too much blood,” Petyr whispered.

“He’s cold.” The Nightmare’s gaze flashed across the room. “Light a fire.”

Jespyr put a hand on Ravyn’s chest. “What are you going to do?”

The Nightmare ignored her. He was carrying on a separate conversation—with himself. “I’m aware, Elspeth. Shouting at me won’t help.” His eyes returned to Jespyr. “Did you lose your wits in the alderwood, Jespyr Yew? Light a fire.”

Jespyr dove for the hearth.

“You,” the Nightmare said, snapping his fingers at Jon Thistle. “Cut away his tunic.” He rolled up his sleeves. “I’m going to need the rest of you to help me hold him down.”

“What supplies do you need?”

“The only thing that can save him now is magic.”

Morette and Fenir exchanged a glance. “Ravyn can’t use most Providence Cards.”

“I’m very aware of that.”

“What magic, then?”

The Nightmare slammed his hands on the table, making Ravyn wince. “It’s hardly my fault, Elspeth,” he muttered under his breath, “that I am constantly surrounded by idiots.” He turned to Morette and Fenir. “Magic moves in families. You have two other children with the infection, do you not?”

Their gazes shot to Jespyr at the hearth.

“I don’t—” she stuttered, “I don’t know what magic I got in the alderwood.”

“You’re about to find out,” the Nightmare said.

A light chased away some of the shadows in the room. There was crackling wood, warmth. All the while, Thistle did his best not to touch Ravyn’s wound as he cut away the clothes above his waist.

Somehow, Ravyn’s hand found the Nightmare’s wrist. He looked up, firelight catching those eerie yellow eyes. “The Deck?”

The Nightmare’s face was unreadable. “We’ll know soon enough.”

“The fire is going,” Jespyr called from the hearth. “Now what?”

“Warm your hands. Then come stand by me.”

Jespyr hurried to the side of the table a moment later. “He’s so pale.”

“I’m going to wrench the knife out of him. And you, Tilly—” The Nightmare bit the inside of his cheek. “Jespyr. Put your hands on his open wound. The rest of you, hold him down. If a petty thing like a broken nose can make him thrash, this certainly will.”

Jespyr tensed at Ravyn’s side. “You want me to…put my hands on his wound?”

The shadows around Ravyn were deepening, despite the fire. He was cold again, shivering. More tired that he had ever felt.

“I can hear his heart stumbling,” Emory whispered, voice breaking. “He’s going.”

Ravyn made a low groan and flinched, sending a new wave of agony up his body. “I’m all right.”

“Trees, you stupid pretender.” The Nightmare gripped Jespyr’s wrists—brought her hands near the dagger in Ravyn’s side. His father and Thistle gripped Ravyn’s legs, and his mother and Petyr moved to his shoulders. “Ready,” Morette said.

“Ready,” Fenir and Thistle echoed.

The Nightmare’s gaze collided with Ravyn’s. “Elspeth says she’s utterly sick of you.”

His voice was weak. “She didn’t say that.”

“No. She didn’t.” The words slipped out of the Nightmare’s mouth on a fine thread. “Time to be strong, Ravyn Yew. Your ten minutes are up.”

He ripped the dagger out of Ravyn’s side, and Jespyr pressed her hands into his wound. A pain such as Ravyn had never known swept into him.

The world went black.

When Ravyn woke, he was no longer in the great hall but in his bedroom, sweating beneath several layers of quilted blankets. He tried to sit up, but a firm hand on his chest kept him down.

Ravyn raised his gaze and caught his breath, a lump rising in his throat. “Elm.”

His cousin looked down at him, auburn hair a tousled mess, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. “Now who’s the one who looks terrible?”

Ravyn started to laugh, but pain shot up his body, cutting it short. He put a hand to his side. He was shirtless, his entire abdomen wrapped in thickly padded linen.

He sat up too fast. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Two days.”

“Is the Deck—has the mist—”

Elm’s smile widened. He moved to Ravyn’s bedroom window. Drew back the curtains. “See for yourself.”

Blue sky met the smudged glass. Ravyn’s breath caught, sunlight pouring into his room. He’d never see the world in that color before. Yellow. Full of warmth. Of promise.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Ravyn felt dizzy—hollowed out. “Elm.”

His cousin raised his gaze.

“I’m sorry.”

Elm’s smile dropped. “What for?”

“I should never have left you at Stone.” Ravyn swallowed the lump in his throat. “I knew how much you hated it there, and I left you.”

Elm had barely opened his mouth to answer before the door burst open. Jespyr squealed, then hurtled toward Ravyn’s bedside. “Oh, thank the bloody trees, I’d thought I’d killed you.” She put her hand on his forehead—grabbed at his bandages. “Filick’s been to check on you. He said it was a miracle you didn’t bleed to death—”

“You’re elbowing his windpipe, nitwit,” Elm said, dragging her off. “Imagine how humiliated you’d be to kill him after bragging to everyone under the sun about saving his life.”

“That’s rich, seeing as you’ve been twirling that new Providence Card in everyone’s face for two days straight.”

They bickered—an old familiar song. Ravyn hardly heard it. His eyes were on another figure in the doorway. One who stood straight, with light in his gray eyes and warmth kissing his skin. Ravyn held out a hand. “Come here, Emory.”

A crooked smile slid over the boy’s mouth. He lunged for the bed—landing on Ravyn so hard it tossed the wind from his lungs. He groaned, mussing his brother’s dark hair. “You’re better.”

“I am. Three taps of that new Card, and look”—Emory reached out, pressed his bare palm against Ravyn’s cheek—“I can touch people. No visions. No magic. Blissful nothingness. Fit as a fucking fiddle.”

Jespyr feigned a gasp. “Emory. You can’t talk that way in front of the King.”

Emory jumped from Ravyn’s bed. Curtsied with an invisible skirt and bowed before Elm. “Apologies, Your Holiness.”

“It’s Highness, you little—”

Elm stopped short. Ione Hawthorn was passing the doorway, yellow hair tied over her shoulder in a white ribbon. She caught the doorframe—lingered at the threshold. “I’m happy you’re doing better, Ravyn.” Her eyes moved over Jespyr and Emory and Elm. “Don’t mind their teasing. They’ve been moping incessantly, waiting for you to wake.”

Elm slouched against the wall next to Ione, curling a finger in her hair. “Moping,” he said, “is a firm exaggeration.”

She smacked his hand away and continued down the corridor, but not before she shot Elm a lingering glace that, even half-dead, Ravyn knew the meaning of.

He waited for her to go before shooting his cousin a grin. “Well, then.”

Elm’s teeth tugged at his bottom lip. “Shut up.”

Emory and Jespyr snickered behind their hands, cackling as Elm shoved them out of the room. He closed the door. “As much as I enjoy your brooding, guilty conscience, Ravyn, it’s wasted on me. I was meant to stay at Stone. With Ione.” He stood straighter, pulled something out of his pocket. “This is the proof.”

Ravyn stared down at it—a Providence Card he’d never seen before. It was not one color, but twelve, iridescent as stained glass. Depicted upon it was a man—with brilliant yellow eyes and a gold crown of twisting yew branches resting upon his head. Above him were two words.

The Shepherd.

Ravyn’s eyes stung. “Where is he?”

“Retrieving something at Stone. He’ll be back soon.” Elm closed his fingers around the Shepherd Card. “He asked that you not use this to heal your infection until after you’ve spoken with him.”

Ravyn nodded. His eyelids began to droop. It hurt to stay awake. “You’re going to be a great King, Elm. We all think so. Even Taxus.”

“Who?”

Ravyn shut his eyes.

When he opened them again, it was night.

Moonlight streamed through his bedroom window. The pain where Jespyr had healed him was gone, but he was stiff all over. Ravyn sat up slowly, ran a hand over his face and coughed, his mouth dry.

“Here,” said a voice in the corner of his room.

Ravyn’s hand flew to his belt—which he was not wearing. “Trees. You might have said something sooner.”

The Nightmare handed him a cup of water. Ravyn drained it in three gulps. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you to wake. There is something I must show you.”

“What is it?”

The Nightmare paused, the only noise between them the clenching and unclenching of his jaw. Then, slowly, his hand slid out from behind his back. In it, limned with burgundy velvet, was a Nightmare Card.

Ravyn sat up.

The Nightmare bent his neck, observing the Card in his hand. “The twelve Cards that united the Deck disappeared. The rest, scattered through Blunder, remain. This is the only Nightmare Card left. It was hidden away at Stone, just as it had been in Tyrn Hawthorn’s library.” He ran a curled finger over the velvet—heaved a sigh. “It’s been a long time since I’ve touched a Providence Card.”

He closed his fingers around it and turned to the door, lingering at the threshold. “Will you follow me into the wood one last time, Ravyn Yew?”

It wasn’t far. Ravyn could have walked the path blindfolded. When they got to the meadow behind Castle Yew, the Shepherd King’s chamber was bathed in moonlight. Breeze caught yew tree branches—made them sway. Ravyn wondered if Tilly and the other children were there, just on the other side of the veil, watching for their father. Waiting, as they’d always done.

Ravyn needed help into the chamber’s window. He hissed out a breath, and the Nightmare lent him his strength, pulling him up by the arm.

They stood in darkness together, near the stone. Upon it rested the ancient adornments of Aemmory Percyval Taxus and Brutus Rowan. Gilded, bloodstained. Two twisted crowns.

The Nightmare cast his gaze upward to the rotted-out ceiling and the yew tree above it. “Will you tell your family who they really are? Who they are descendants of?”

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps you worry they will see themselves differently.”

“Perhaps.”

The Nightmare’s laugh was a hum. A minor tune. “That is what Elspeth thought. That no one would care for her if they saw her for who—what—she truly was.”

“I do,” Ravyn said without pause. “I care for her.”

“I know,” the Nightmare murmured. He rolled his jaw, as if it cost him something dear, telling Ravyn the truth. “I thought I was the father she deserved. That I could carry her through this terrible, violent world. I hadn’t done it well with my own children, and when I woke in her young mind, the first thing I felt, after five hundred years of fury”—his voice softened—“was wonder. Quiet and gentle. I remembered what it was to care for someone.”

“She gave me that, too.”

The Nightmare lowered his head, his spine hunching. “Elspeth will not heal if she touches the Shepherd Card.”

Ravyn froze. “She has to.”

“The thirteenth Card will heal anyone who wishes to be healed of the infection—permanently, just as the Maiden heals permanently. It will not be limited to one user at a time, nor will there be any ill effects for using it too long.” His jaw went hard, his words slipping through his lips. “But Elspeth’s magic is…strange. If she touches the Shepherd Card, she will absorb it. Every last barter—every payment I made. All twelve Providence Cards.” He shook his head. “She will not be healed.”

His words ripped into Ravyn. He bent, his breaths growing shallow.

A cold hand slid over his shoulder. Ravyn was too tired to shake it away. “Please. Have I not paid? Have I not lost pieces of myself, following you into the wood? It was for her.” He looked up into those ancient yellow eyes, tears threatening his own. “Tell me the truth. Is there a way Elspeth and I will meet again on this side of the veil?”

The answer was a cold, deafening silence.

Ravyn squeezed his eyes shut and bit down so hard his jaw seized. He felt like he was back at in the meadow, a knife in his side, bleeding out.

Then, soft as a shifting breeze through yew branches, the Nightmare answered. “Only one.”

Ravyn opened his eyes. The Nightmare stood before him like he had in his bedroom. Hand extended, palm open.

And the Nightmare Card therein.

“Destroy it,” he whispered. “With the final Nightmare Card gone, my soul will disappear. Her degeneration will have nothing to cling to. She will return. And I…” His voice faded. “I will finally rest.”

Ravyn reached for the Nightmare Card, hands shaking. “Destroy this, and Elspeth returns?”

“Yes.”

Something hot touched Ravyn’s relief. “You’re telling me I’ve had the means to free her all this time?”

The Nightmare grinned. “Yes.”

“You didn’t—why—” He pinched his nose, swallowing fury. “You make it so hard not to hate you.”

“I had my Deck to collect. History to revisit—and rewrite. A path to draw for you and the Princeling, both of you Kings in your own right.” The Nightmare clung only a moment longer to his namesake Card, then released it into Ravyn’s hand. “And I was not yet ready to bid Elspeth goodbye.”

Ravyn watched the monster closely. He didn’t pretend to understand their connection—Elspeth and the Shepherd King. He knew it was deeply forged. Ancient, terrifying magic. “But you’re ready now?”

The Nightmare nodded. “She’s clawed through hell with me.” His voice grew colder. “It’s time to let her out.”

Ravyn didn’t move.

The Nightmare turned, his mouth a hard line. “Do it now.”

“Don’t you want to say goodbye?”

“To you, stupid bird?”

Ravyn crossed his arms over his chest. “To her, parasite.”

Those yellow eyes flared, wicked, infinite. Ravyn held the Nightmare Card in a viselike grip and quit the chamber, wincing over the windowsill. “Goodbye, Taxus. Be wary. Be clever. Be good.”

He waited ten minutes in the meadow.

Then tore the Nightmare Card in two.