Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)(116)

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.”