Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)(46)

The odor came next—putrid as an animal carcass left to rot.

“What the hell is that smell?” Gorse said, his pallor going a sickly green.

“It’s his leg,” Jespyr whispered, hand covering her nose as she leaned over Petyr.

Two boots squelched in the mud at Ravyn’s side. The Nightmare lowered himself to a crouch, peered at the wound—the sludging, fetid blood. “How unfortunate,” he said with a sigh. “There is poison in the water.”





Chapter Twenty-Three

Elspeth





In the end, he reached me the way he’d reached me as a child, just as the trees had once reached him.

On a rhyme.

In the wood, the spindle is slight. A delicate tree against hail, wind, and might. But how the tree carries, and how the roots dig. She weathers all storms, no matter their bite.

I managed to move. A small but incontestable ripple in those dark waters. I opened my mouth—called out his true name. “Taxus.”

A cold hand found my arm—wrenched me to the surface. I looked up into yellow eyes.

“There you are.” He wrapped me in his arms, holding me against his armored chest like a father would a child. “One day, you will be nothing more than memory, Elspeth Spindle. But not yet.” His yellow eyes rose to the blackened sky. “Don’t leave me alone with these fools.”

Voices rolled through the air like thunder. Far away at first, then closer. A man’s voice. “No—no! Don’t move Petyr.”

Coughs, shouts.

“Tie it off below his knee. Jes—light a fire. Wik—help me move him.”

I knew that voice. Deep. Turbulent, like the lines of a calloused hand. Rich, smoke and wool and cloves. “Do something,” the voice called. “Nightmare!”

Ravyn.

“If I take you away from this place, Elspeth,” Taxus said, “you will see what I see. But you will have no control of what used to be your body. You will live in my mind as I once lived in yours.” He looked down at me, the lines of his face drawn. “Only my mind is monstrous.”

“Are you trying to frighten me?”

“No, dear one. Only warn you.”

Ravyn’s voice sounded from above once more, louder. “Damn it, help us.”

Taxus kept those strange yellow eyes on me, waiting for my answer.

I reached out for his hand. When I pulled in a breath, my first words on that darkened shore became my last. “Let. Me. Out.”





Chapter Twenty-Four

Ravyn





Petyr’s blood was everywhere. And that smell, the putrid odor that wafted from the wound—impossible to stomach.

Gorse staggered away and was sick in the lake. Jespyr put a hand to her nose and stacked the dry brush she’d scrounged at the edge of forest. Her hand shook on the flint. When a spark lit to flame and the brush was alight, she pulled a knife from her belt and held it to the fire. “How does it look?”

Ravyn’s stomach rolled as he peered down at Petyr’s leg. His blood was frothing, the flesh around it turning a bloodless gray. “Hurry, Jes.”

Wik’s belt was fastened around Petyr’s leg in a tourniquet above the wound. “That’s not an ordinary wound,” he said to Ravyn.

Petyr thrashed in the mud. “Just cut the damn thing off and be done with it!”

“We’re not cutting your leg off,” Ravyn snapped. He jerked his gaze to the Nightmare. “What do you know about this poison?”

The Nightmare said nothing—did nothing. He stood eerily still, eyes glazed over, his gaze lost somewhere out over the lake.

Ravyn smelled hot steel, and then Jespyr was crouching next to Petyr. Her knife was red—smoking. When she looked down at the wound, she blanched. “You sure this will work?”

“Poison or not,” Wik said, putting an arm over his brother’s chest, “we need to stop the bleeding.”

Jespyr looked at Petyr. Tried to smile. “Don’t knee me. I like my teeth.”

The rot in the air went acrid as she pressed the molten blade over Petyr’s wound. He screamed, flailed. The flesh blackened and the wound sealed shut. Jespyr pulled the blade away—

And the wound pried itself open, blood sludging out of Petyr’s leg faster than before.

Ravyn slammed his hands against it. “Tighten that belt!” he barked at Wik.

But no matter how hard he pressed into the wound, no matter how tight Wik tugged, they couldn’t stop the bleeding.

Petyr was screaming—shaking. His eyes rolled back and the muscles in his neck and jaw bulged. Wik clung to him, muttering something that sounded like a bitter plea, and the two of them shook.

Ravyn looked up at the Nightmare. “Do something,” he said, his voice breaking. “Please.”

But those yellow eyes were unfocused. The Nightmare seemed a hundred miles away.

A cry crawled out of Ravyn, vicious and desperate. “Damn it, help us.”

Those words seemed to wrench the Nightmare back. He looked down, his gaze homing in on Petyr. “The Maiden Card,” he murmured. “Give him the Maiden.”

Ravyn fumbled in his pockets, throwing his Mirror and Nightmare Cards into the mud, digging until his fingertips snagged the third Card. He wrenched the Maiden free. “Now what?”