Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)(56)

Then, there was a woman. With a kind face and gray eyes. Petra.

We stood together beneath the same stained-glass windows where I’d become King and embraced in front of Blunder’s lords and ladies. Ayris and Brutus stood from their seats, hands clasped, echoing a cheer of jubilation.

Wife. Queen. Petra looked up at me and I kissed her mouth. The softness of her lips reminded me of velvet.

Nine months later, Petra looked up at me once more. She was on a bed in a vast chamber, men with willow trees woven into their white robes tending to her. A newborn boy rested in her arms. He had her gray eyes.

“Bennett,” she murmured, her brow damp from labor. “I’d like to call him Bennett.”

She held the babe out to me, and I rocked him. But even as I did, my hands itched to hold something else. When I passed Bennett back to Petra, I slipped my fingers into my pocket for the Providence Cards I kept there. Only then did I smile.

I took Bennett to the wood. Asked the Spirit to bless him with her magic. A day later, his infant veins were dark as ink. His magic was the antithesis of mine, the trees told me. My heir, my counterweight.

But that was our secret, his and mine. Our fond, silent riddle.

More children were born. Boys—all yellow of eye like me. Lenor. Fenly. A pair of twins, Afton and Ilyc, so alike I could hardly tell them apart even when I took the time to try. I visited their nurseries, their rooms and tutor sessions, but often I was in another chamber, one I had built around the stone in the meadow.

I brought my sons to the wood—asked the Spirit to bless them with magic. But for all four, she kept her gifts to herself.

Then, a little girl was born. Tilly. Full of whim and a deviousness that reminded me of Ayris. Only, unlike my sister, the Spirit christened Tilly with the fever, and she was granted strange, wonderful magic.

She could heal. With a single touch of her little hand, Tilly could wipe away any wound—and often did so without intention. The cuts I’d dealt myself, bartering for Providence Cards, vanished whenever Tilly reached for me. It hurt, feeling her touch. But when the pain was gone, I was left with nary a scar.

But it cost her, little Tilly, to heal. Every time she did, her own body grew more frail. And so, for my next Providence Card, I asked the trees, the Spirit, for magic that healed. Magic that made its user as beautiful and unblemished as a pink rose—Tilly’s favorite flower.





Petra passed through the veil before Tilly’s fourth nameday. I buried her on the west side of the meadow, near the willow tree, not knowing I would dig her up soon enough to forge the Mirror.

But before that, I made a different Card. One that would make others bend their wills to me, just as I bent to the Spirit of the Wood.

Brutus Rowan came with me. He kept a hand on the pommel of his sword as I staggered into the chamber. “What was her price this time?”

“My sleep.”

His green eyes narrowed. “Do you ever wonder if the Spirit asks for too much for these Cards of yours, Taxus?”

Upon the edge of my sword, I split a seam in my palm. Droplets of red fell over the stone. “Providence Cards are a gift, Brutus. Their magic is measured. Neither they, nor those who wield them, risk degeneration.”

“Gifts are free, Taxus.”

My words came out a hiss. “Nothing is free.”

The stone opened to a chasm. My blood fell into it. I reached into my pocket—tapped the Maiden Card. By the time the cut in my palm began to knit, four Providence Cards rested within the stone, red as the blood I’d dropped. A scythe was fixed upon them.

I winked at Brutus and handed him one.

He stared down at it. “What would you have me do with this?”

“Keep my kingdom in order. My time is better spent here,” I said gesturing to the chamber. “Only be wary, Brutus. To command this Card is to command pain.”

Brutus turned the Scythe through lithe fingers. “It is you who should be wary, my clever friend. With Cards such as these, people will come to you, not the Spirit of the Wood, for magic. She will not thank you for it.”

“You sound like Ayris.”

“She’s rubbed off on me. Despite my best intentions.”

I shot him the same practiced smile I tended my children. Only lately, I wore it when the subject of Providence Cards came up with my sister. “It is the Spirit who gave me the means to forge Providence Cards.” I patted the stone. “She knows I use them for good.”

“Even so, be wary, Taxus. Be wary, clever, and good.”

“So says a Rowan, who is none of the three.”

Brutus shot me a grin. “Which is precisely why your sister married me.”

We traded false punches. When the chamber faded, it was to the sound of our laughter.





On a brisk autumn day, grass brown and dying, I walked through the wood I so often tarried in as a boy with Blunder’s reverent—where we had asked the Spirit of the Wood for her blessings. The wood was empty now. No prayers echoed, the air stagnant, bereft of salt, as if starved.

Behind me, I could hear the castle bells. My children were being called to dinner, where they’d sit at the table in my hall, waiting for me.

But I was not hungry for food or company, only for velvet. For more.

I crept into the chamber. Spoke to the trees. Asked for an eleventh Providence Card.