Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)(7)

The walk was littered with blackened torches, this part of the dungeon rarely patrolled. Ravyn continued until he was at the end—the last cell.

The monster waited.

Flat on the floor, eyes on the ceiling—as if stargazing—what had once been Elspeth Spindle’s body lay still. Air plumed out of her—now the Shepherd King’s—mouth like dragon smoke. When Ravyn’s footsteps stilled at the foot of the cell, the Shepherd King did not turn to look, the sound of his teeth clicking together the only greeting he tendered.

A knot in Ravyn’s throat swelled. Before he could stop himself, his eyes traveled the length of Elspeth’s body.

What had once been Elspeth’s body.

“Are you awake?”

There was no answer.

Ravyn stepped forward, the cell’s iron bars like icicles beneath his hands. “I know you can hear me.”

Laughter echoed in the dark. The figure in the cell sat up slowly and turned. It took all of Ravyn not to wince. Elspeth’s black eyes were gone. In their place, catlike irises, vivid and yellow, lit by a man five hundred years dead.

The Shepherd King did not move but for his eyes. “You’re alone, Captain,” he said. It was still Elspeth’s voice. Only now, it sounded slick, oily. Wrong. “Is that wise?”

Ravyn stiffened. “Would you hurt me?”

His answer was a twisted, jagged smile. “I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t played with the idea.”

There was no one there to overhear them. Still, Ravyn pulled his Nightmare Card from his pocket and tapped it three times.

Salt burned up his throat into his nose. Closing his eyes, Ravyn let the salt swallow him, then pushed it outward, entering the Shepherd King’s mind. He combed through darkness, searching for any hint of Elspeth.

He did not find her.

When he opened his eyes, the Shepherd King was watching him. A voice, masculine, slippery—poisonous—spoke into Ravyn’s mind. What do you want, Ravyn Yew?

Ravyn ran the back of his hand over his mouth, hiding his flinch. He was still looking at Elspeth’s body. It was her skin—lips—hands. Her tangled hair, long and black, that spilled over her shoulder. Her chest that rose with the swell of her lungs.

But just like her voice, there was something undeniably wrong about Elspeth’s body. Her fingers were rigid, curled like talons, and her posture was twisted—her shoulders too high, her back too curved.

“The King wishes to see you,” Ravyn said. “But before I bring you to him, I want two things.”

The Shepherd King unfolded himself from the ground and stood in the center of the cell. Then—too fast—he crept in front of Ravyn. “I’m listening.”

Ravyn’s grip on the bars tightened. “I want the truth. No riddles, no games. Are you truly the Shepherd King?”

Yellow eyes roved over his hands—his broken fingernails, dirt still embedded in the dry cracks of Ravyn’s skin. Elspeth’s body bent, vulturelike. “They called me that name, once.”

“What did she call you?”

For a moment, there was nothing. No movement. Not even air turned to steam from the Shepherd King’s nostrils. Then, when he seemed to have frosted over entirely, his pale fingers began to trill, as if plucking the strings of an invisible harp. “She saw me for what I truly am.” He drew the word out, whispering it into Ravyn’s mind. Nightmare.

“And you know where the Twin Alders Card is, Nightmare?”

“I do.”

“Will you take me to it?”

His voice was near and far. “I will.”

“How far is the journey?”

The Nightmare lowered his head and smiled. “Not far. Yet it is farther than you’ve ever gone before.”

Ravyn slammed his hand on the bars. “I said no goddamn games.”

“You asked for the truth. Truth bends, Ravyn Yew. We must all bend along with it. If we do not, well...” His yellow eyes flared. “Then we will break.”

He spoke with his own voice into Ravyn’s mind once more. Before your lifetime, he said, before the story of the girl, the King, and the monster, I told an older tale. One of magic, mist, and Providence Cards. Of infection and degeneration. His smile fell away. Of barters made.

“I’m familiar with The Old Book of Alders.”

“Good. For you’re about to step into it.”

Ravyn drew in a breath, the ice in the air nesting in his lungs.

“The Twin Alders is the only Card of its kind,” the Nightmare continued. “It gives its user the power to speak to our deity, the Spirit of the Wood. And it is she who guards it. She will have a price for the last Card of the Deck. Nothing comes free.”

“I’m prepared to pay whatever price she asks.” Ravyn pressed against the bars, his voice lowering. “And when I do pay, Nightmare, the Twin Alders Card will be mine. Not the King’s, not yours. Mine.”

Something shifted in those yellow eyes. “What is the second thing you wish of me, Ravyn Yew?” the Nightmare murmured.

Even with frost all around them, Ravyn could smell blood on Elspeth’s clothes. He took a step back, but it was too late. A light tremor had begun in his left hand. He knotted it into a fist. “When I bring you to the King’s chamber, you are not to harm him. You are not to do anything that might jeopardize me taking you out of Stone in search of the Twin Alders Card.”