Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)(71)

My gaze wrenched to the window. Ayris was there, standing hand in hand with Tilly. My sister’s usual warmth was guarded, her yellow eyes hard. But when she spoke to my daughter, her voice was gentle. “Go on, Tilly. Ask him.”

Tilly curled a finger at the end of one of her dark plaits. Smiled sheepishly. “Can we swing in the yew tree like you promised?”

I looked at her, indifferent. It was easier, now I had fashioned the Nightmare Card—my soul lost to velvet—telling the children no. “Not now, my darling girl,” I said in a voice smooth as silk. “I have work yet to do.”

Her smile faded. “All right.” She let go of Ayris’s hand, picked up her skirt—heaved a sigh. “I’ll wait in the meadow. In case you change your mind.”

When she looked at me, Ayris, my sunshine sister, was full of frost. “Your work,” she said, “has made a stranger of you.”

She hurried after Tilly.

A moment later, the chorus of tree voices rattled through my mind.

Eleven Cards the Spirit has given you, Taxus. Do you still ask for more?

“This mist,” I said, the word a hiss on my tongue. “It makes my people lose their way. Draws them into the wood. Its magic is not a blessing, but a curse.”

That is the way of magic, the trees whispered.

“I want another Card. One that will lift the mist.”

The Spirit will not give you a Card to undo the very thing she has created to lure people back into her woods.

“Then I want a way to heal the fever and the infection it brings. You told me, after barters were made, a day would come when I could heal it.”

That day has not yet arrived, Shepherd King.

I ground my molars together. “I grow weary of your riddles, trees. If I cannot get answers from you”—my gaze narrowed—“then I would speak to the Spirit herself. Give me a Card to do so.”

Their pause was deafening. Very well, they whispered. But of price, she will not say.

“I don’t care. I’ll pay anything.”

Anything?

“Anything.”

Salt filled the chamber, stronger than I’d ever smelled it. My vision buckled and I fell. My head hit the earth with a brutal thud, eleven Providence Cards falling from my pocket and scattering around me.

When I woke, a twelfth Card was atop the stone. Forest green, with two trees depicted upon it—one pale, the other dark. In script above them was writ The Twin Alders.

I tapped it three times. Waited. Nothing. A curse formed on my lips. I tapped the Maiden Card to heal my head—

But the Card did not work.

My throat tightened. I tapped the Mirror—tried to go invisible. Nothing.

The Well showed me no enemies—the Iron Gate gave no serenity. I screamed myself raw and tapped the Cards until my fingers ached. Still, I could not wield them.

I crumpled to the foot of the stone, surrounded by the Cards’ colorful lights. I’d found a way to speak to the Spirit of the Wood. I’d bled, bartered, and bent for twelve Providence Cards.

And I could not use a single one.





The pages of memory turned faster.

A town crier read a royal decree, warning all of Blunder to stay out of the mist.

Then, a woman, screaming in pain, veins the color of ink. She’d made it past castle guards into my throne room, begging for an audience with my Physicians. My Captain of the Guard, Brutus Rowan, tapped his Scythe three times, forcing her out.

“Blunder is in grave danger,” he said to me in the privacy of my library. “This mist is a blight. And it spreads.”

I was seated at a wide desk surrounded by stacks of inky parchment. I leaned over a notebook, scribbling madly. With my other hand, I twirled the Twin Alders Card between my fingers. “I’ve told you a hundred times already,” I said, not bothering to look up, “I will find a way to lift the mist.”

“People have lost their way in it. Trade routes have been disrupted. People are not asking for the fever any longer—the Spirit is forcing it upon them.” He paused. “I’ve seen mere children with magic powerful enough to give my men pause.”

“And that frightens you, Brutus? Unfettered magic?”

He said nothing.

“My orders go unchanged. Stay your hand. Neither you, nor your ponies, are to arrest or harm anyone who catches the fever in the mist.”

“Destriers, not ponies,” Brutus said, his voice hard as iron. “You named them so yourself.”

I flipped through my notebook, landing on a page somewhere in the middle. “The King’s Guard wears no seal. The Black Horse is their emblem, their duty, their creed. With it, they uphold Blunder’s laws. They are the shadows in the room—the eyes on your back—the footsteps upon your streets. The King’s Guard wears no seal.” I snapped the notebook shut. “Not a single mention of a Destrier.” My eyes lifted to Brutus. “I believe it was you, Captain, not I, who saddled them with that ridiculous name.”

A muscle along Brutus’s jaw flexed. “I’m in no mood to laugh, Taxus.”

“Just as well. I’ve forgotten the sound.”

“There was nothing to laugh at when the mist arrived. Nothing to laugh at when you bartered away every part of yourself for the Cards.”

I glanced at the red light coming from his tunic pocket. “You have benefitted from my barters, have you not? You have made a ruthless name for yourself at the edge of my Scythe.”