Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)(29)

Ione’s eyes jumped between the two of them, and the Shepherd King stepped closer, his voice slithering between the bars. “Do you truly need it back, my dear?” he whispered. “Isn’t it better this way, your body safe from harm? Your soft, sentimental heart, finally guarded?”

Ione’s eyes narrowed. But the Shepherd King kept going. “Elspeth envied it—your heart. The ease of your laughter, the careless sincerity in everything you did. But I knew better. You were good, but never wary. It is why you hardly blinked when your father caged you like a canary on Equinox and left you in this cold, cavernous cage.” He stroked her hair with a listless finger. “The only reason you have not lost yourself to the despair of being shackled to Rowans is because the Maiden Card has kept you from feeling it.”

Ione was quiet a long moment. “I may not feel despair,” she finally said. “But I am still lost. I have disappeared into the Maiden, just as Elspeth has into you. And I want to be freed.”

Her words wove through Elm’s ribs, pressing into his chest.

The Shepherd King’s smile faltered. “I cannot free you.”

“But you can see Providence Cards by color,” Elm cut in.

He cocked his head to the side, predatory. “One of my many gifts.”

“My father keeps a Maiden Card in the vaults with the rest of his collection. Are there others in the castle?”

The Shepherd King shut his eyes—stayed silent a long moment—then laughed. A horrid, biting discord that echoed down the corridor. “Yes, dear boy. There are three Maiden Cards in Stone.”

“Where are they?”

He stepped back into shadow. “That, I cannot say. The castle is vast, the pink Cards scattered. You and my yellow girl must find the Maidens yourselves.”

Ione’s hands balled into fists. “Tell me where to look. Help me.”

But the monster was gone, retreated back into shadow.

Ione screamed against closed lips, then ripped away from the cell back down the corridor. Elm followed a pace behind.

“I look forward to when we meet again, Princeling,” the Shepherd King called after him. “I have plans for you yet.”

Elm turned, but he was gone, his farewell the same eerie knell as his greeting. Click, click, click.

The journey back to the antechamber felt even colder. When they reached it, Elm caught Ione by the arm. The ire she’d displayed at the Shepherd King’s cell was gone now. There was nothing on her face.

“It’s important to you?” Elm murmured. “Getting your Card back?”

She hardly seemed to hear him. “If you think this is about beauty—that I am opposed to what the Maiden has done—you are wrong. If I could still feel what it is to like something, I would tell you that I like being beautiful. I like being healed by magic and having no pain. I like who I was and how I looked before the Maiden Card as well. What I aim to get back, Prince, is my choice.”

When all Elm could do is stare at her, she sighed. “Go to bed—back to whatever it is you do with your time. I don’t want your help.”

“But you’ll need it, given that the castle is full of locks and I’m the one with the ring of keys.” He ran a hand down the back of his neck. “Actually Ravyn has the keys, but technically they’re mine—”

“If this is about what happened on the forest road, our debt is settled.”

“It’s not.”

“What, then?”

Elm bit the inside of his cheek. “I was a prick to Elspeth. Ravyn was falling in love with her, and I—” His eyes fell, his mouth turning with derision. “Let’s just say I’ve never had anything like that. I was too concerned with losing him to note that Elspeth was losing herself until it was far too late.”

He finally looked back at Ione. “I aim to be better. If you are disappearing like Elspeth did—and have little choice in the matter—I would like to help you.”

The lines and muscles of her face gave nothing away. But she startled Elm, raising herself to her toes to meet his eye. She hooked his chin with her thumb, and though Ione Hawthorn was so cold in all her expressions, her touch warmed him. “Why?” she asked. “Why do you aim to be better?”

“Because I have to be,” Elm said in one breath. “I care not what they say about me at court, even if it is that I’m a rotten Prince and a piss-poor Destrier.” He leaned closer. “But I do want it said, loud enough so everyone hears, that I am nothing like Hauth.”





Chapter Sixteen

Ravyn





Pressed up against the dungeon wall, cold in the clutch of his Mirror Card, Ravyn watched Elm and Ione disappear down the dungeon corridor. He didn’t miss the strain in his cousin’s shoulders, nor the way Elm shadowed Ione. Alert. Attentive.

It wasn’t just balance. Elm was...entangled with her. Unguarded in the darkness of the dungeon, his face had been an open book. What Ravyn had suspected before the inquest hit him now like a blow. Elm. Ione.

Spirit and trees.

The Nightmare’s laugh drifted like smoke up the stone walls. You don’t approve, Captain?

It’ll wreck him if the King decides to kill her.

I imagine he thinks the same thing about you and this body I currently occupy.