When she looked up, her eyes crashed into Elm’s. She managed to push away from her father. When she reached out, her fingers fell from Elm’s grasp, slick with blood.
“Come on,” he seethed. His muscles strained—shoulders sang in pain—every fiber of his strength spent reaching, reaching—
He caught the chain tethering Ione’s wrists. It was cold, heavy. Elm wrapped his swollen fingers around it and pulled, squeezing Ione between Destriers, freeing her from the bedlam.
She crashed into his chest and pressed her head against his sternum. It rose and fell with Elm’s torrid breaths. When he reached for her hands, a hiss slipped through his teeth. Erik Spindle had cut his niece palm to palm, a long, ugly valley of red—of flesh and muscle.
Elm pressed her hands against his chest and stanch the bleeding, then reached into his pocket. The moment velvet touched his fingertips and salt pinched his nose, the world around him faded.
He imagined a crisp winter breeze, a frozen statuary. All was silent, all was still. The statuary was a perfect rendering of the throne room. Only, in his imagination, it, and everyone in it, was enveloped by ice—frozen.
The smell of salt grew stronger, biting at his mind. He ignored it, twirling the Scythe between his fingers. Ice. Stone. Stillness. Silence. “Be still,” he said to himself. “Be still.” He kept saying the words, willing the world around him to yield to his Scythe. Be still, be still.
BE STILL.
When he opened his eyes, the throne room was frozen in place. Erik—Tyrn—Ione—the Destriers—the King—all frozen, their eyes wide and glassy. Everyone but Ravyn, who turned to look at Elm. There was blood on his face.
The chaos had ceased. All was silent, all was still.
All but for the blood that slid from Elm’s nose.
Chapter Ten
Elspeth
Water washed up my legs, the tide unrelenting, never high or low. I was not hungry or thirsty or tired. There was a new name that was giving me pause. Like all the others, it began as an image in my mind. But where Ione’s had been a bright yellow flower and my father’s a crimson-red leaf, this image was dark, difficult to discern. Almost as if it did not want to be seen.
A bird, black of wing. Dark, watchful, clever.
Something in my chest snapped, my lungs emptying of air.
New memories spilled into me. They were not like the others, softened by childhood or tethered by family. These were fresh—forged when I was a woman. A man, clad in a dark cloak, a mask obscuring all but his eyes. Purple and burgundy lights. Running in the mist. A hand on my leg, coarse with calluses, as I sat in a saddle. That same hand in my hair. A heartbeat in my ear—a false promise of forever.
His name slipped from my lips. “Ravyn.”
A giggle sounded in my ear.
My eyes jutted open. When I looked to my side, a girl sat next to me in the sand. A child. Her hair was woven in two perfect plaits, as if a woman who loved her had taken time to braid them with care.
But more than her hair, more than the tilting of her head, it was her eyes I noticed. Her brilliant, yellow eyes.
“Who are you?”
A grin cracked over her little mouth. “You know who I am. I’m your Tilly.”
My name unraveled itself from my mouth like a long piece of string. “I’m Elspeth Spindle.”
She giggled, and the sound carried up and down the beach. “Can we swing in the yew tree like you promised?”
I looked out onto the vast emptiness. “I see no tree, Tilly.”
Her smile faded. “All right.” She picked up her skirt—heaved a sigh. “I’ll wait in the meadow. In case you change your mind.”
She walked away on tiptoe, but none of her footprints appeared in the sand. I watched her go, prickles dancing up the back of my neck.
More voices sounded in the darkness, soft as waves upon the shore.
I looked up. From the far side of the beach, children emerged. Boys, all with yellow eyes—save the tallest. His eyes were gray.
None of them left footsteps in the sand.
The boy with gray eyes bent to one knee. Peered into my face. Sighed. “You’re with us, but you’re never really here, are you, Father?”
Chapter Eleven
Ravyn
Stop fidgeting!” Filick Willow snapped, his fingertips cold as he pressed the skin above Ravyn’s brow together. “I can’t sew properly when you move like that.”
Ravyn stopped tapping his foot and sat still on a stool in the King’s chambers. The enormous hearth burned, fueled by pine kindling. Filick leaned over him with needle and stitching, meticulously repairing the split above Ravyn’s left brow.
It was late. The Destriers were gone—sent to sleep. Dark shadows lingered beneath the King’s eyes as he paced in front of the hearth, drinking deeply from a silver goblet. Every so often his voice would hitch, snagged on rage.
“Some Captain of the Destriers,” he fumed. “Immune to Card magic. Unrivaled in combat.” He glowered at Ravyn over his shoulder. “Knocked senseless by Erik Spindle, a man who’s spent three days freezing in the dungeon.”
Ravyn shook his head, a knot already forming where Erik’s chains had collided with his temple. “It’s nothing.”
“What did I just say about holding still?” Filick said, yanking the needle and pulling seams of flesh together. “You’ll look like a common cutpurse if this doesn’t heal well.”
Elm snorted from the hearth.
“And you,” the King said, turning on his son. “A dead man could have wielded the Scythe sooner than you.”
Elm picked dried blood from beneath his fingernails. “You have a red Card in your own pocket, do you not?”
The King’s face mottled. “You stood at the right hand of the throne. The Scythe—and all the pain it brings—is your responsibility.” His voice lowered. “Hauth understood that.”
Elm’s eyes narrowed at his brother’s name. But before he could reply, the King’s doors pushed open. Jespyr stood in the doorway, her face drawn—her wavy hair shooting in every direction, flecks of dried blood splattered between her nose and upper lip.
“Well?” the King demanded.
“Spindle and Hawthorn have been returned to the dungeon, sire.”
“In separate cells, I hope,” Filick muttered.
The King exhaled. A moment later the entire tray of silver goblets clanged across the floor, wine spilling onto the stone at their feet. “Hauth does not stir. Orithe is dead. Erik, Tyrn—men in my closest circle—have spent over a decade in deceit, hiding Elspeth Spindle’s infection. And yet, until the Twin Alders is safe in my hands, it seems I am the one who must yield.” His gaze returned to Ravyn, his wide nostrils flaring. “This is all your fault.”
Ravyn knew enough of his uncle’s ire to keep a stern jaw and say nothing.
Elm had no such restraint. “How do you imagine that?”
The King began to shout. “Was she not staying at Castle Yew? Nested like a cuckoo under my Captain’s bloody nose?”
“In his defense,” Elm said, “it’s a rather large nose.”
The whites of the King’s eyes turned red. For a moment, he looked as if he might wrap his brutish fingers around his younger son’s throat. “I should purge all three of you from my guard for such abhorrent ineptitude.”