A frown ghosted over Ione’s brow. She didn’t look at him. Not in the way she normally didn’t look at him—too indifferent to bother. This time, she seemed intent not to meet his eye.
“What happened? Celebrate a little too hard on Equinox? Put your Maiden Card in a flowerpot and waltz away?”
“Something like that.”
Elm chuckled to himself. “No shame in it. Spirit knows I haven’t spent an Equinox sober in”—he counted on his fingers—“some years.”
Ione kept her eyes forward. “Just get us to the dungeon. After that, you can go back to being the cantankerous, wayward Prince you were born to be. Trees know I’ll be pleased to be rid of you.”
Elm trailed her down the corridor to the stairs. He didn’t have to tell her which turns to make. All they had to do was go down. “Is that what people call me? Wayward?”
“I’ve heard the word prick thrown around.”
“Naturally.”
Ione’s shoulders rose, half the effort of a shrug. “It’s said you like your freedom too well—that you’re an unruly, rotten Prince. Unmatched with the Scythe, but a poor Destrier. That’s what the men say, at least.”
Rotten. Elm shoved the word down and schooled his features to a lazy smirk. “What do the women say about me?”
Ione kept her gaze decidedly upon the stairs. “Nothing of note.”
“But with far less disappointment in their voices, I should think.”
A faint blush rose up her neck into her cheeks. “Perhaps.”
Elm’s smirk budded to a smile. He traced Ione’s blush with a curiosity he decided was purely scientific. It felt like a game of discovery, watching her face, seeing what sliver of emotion the Maiden would allow her to show—noting what had brought it on. Elm loved games. The playing, the cheating, the winning. Mostly, he loved the measuring of his opponent, the unearthing of their limitations.
Only now, he wasn’t sure who his opponent was. Ione Hawthorn—or the Maiden Card.
He quickened his pace, matching Ione’s step as they took the east stairs. “And what do you think of that, Hawthorn? My reputation with women?”
“I don’t think of it.”
He laughed, a low, rumbling timbre, and Ione turned at the sound. Her eyes narrowed. “You said you didn’t have time for women.”
“When?”
“In your chamber. When I was getting dressed.”
He’d been paying attention to other things, in that moment. “I used to have time.” Elm cleared his throat. “I’ve been busy of late.”
Ione’s voice hummed in her chest. “For a Prince who doesn’t mind the King, and a piss-poor Destrier at that, one would think you had all the time in the world. Only, whenever I see you, you look as if you haven’t stopped to catch your breath. Which begs the question—” Her eyes were dark in the dim light. “What, Prince Renelm, have you been doing with all your time?”
Moonlighting as a highwayman. Stealing Providence Cards to unite the Deck without the King knowing. Using the Scythe until it makes me bleed. Worrying about Emory. Arguing with Ravyn. Bickering with my brother’s betrothed on our way to the dungeon to see a monster—
“You should know. You’ve taken up every moment of my time today.” Elm leaned down, his mouth close to Ione’s ear—testing to see if her blush would return. “And I can’t say it hasn’t been…interesting.”
She pulled away, her expression a stone wall. “Don’t.”
There it was again. Even in the dim light of the stairwell—pink in her cheeks. “Don’t what?”
“Pretend to flatter me.”
“Who’s pretending?”
Ione shook her head. A quick, dispassionate dismissal.
“Why, Ione Hawthorn.” Elm scraped his teeth over his bottom lip. “Don’t tell me it makes you feel something when I flatter you.”
“It doesn’t.” Her face was unreadable. Unreachable. “I can’t feel anything anymore.”
The dungeon stairs had always been deadly. Now that it was autumn, frost already making its home across Blunder’s fields, the steps were nigh unnavigable, slick with ice. Twice, Elm had to brace himself against the wall. When Ione slipped and crashed into him, her fingers flexed like cat claws, digging into the muscles along his abdomen. Elm wrapped an arm around her shoulders, steadying her.
“How far down does this go?” she said into his chest.
He gripped her tighter. “Far.”
By the time they got to the bottom, Elm was stiff all over. Given the tension in her shoulders, the fine line of her mouth, Ione was no better. She released him with a breath, stepping into the antechamber. Only then did Elm realize, with a bitter curse, that he’d forgotten the dungeon keys.
It didn’t matter. The door was already open.
A giant mouth of darkness greeted them, a bitter wind from deep within the dungeon snapping at their faces. “Where are my father and uncle kept?”
“On the south side. Your cousin is on the north.”
Ione’s back straightened, as if she was trying to force the shivers that racked up her spine into submission. She pushed into the dungeon on silent step, darkness swallowing her whole. Elm groaned and hurried after her, catching her at the shoulder and spinning her toward the first of many passages north.
They walked in silence down rows of empty cells.
A chill sank into Elm. This wretched castle. He hated it to its last scrap of mortar, of stone, of wood and iron. He kept his eyes forward the way Ravyn always did, determined not to look into the cells, knowing they were empty—and had not always been so.
He didn’t realize Ione had spoken until her hand grazed his arm.
He jumped. “Trees—what?”
“Anxious, are we?”
“Just cold.”
“I might have thought you didn’t mind the cold. What with you freezing us all into statues with your Scythe, back in the throne room.”
“What’s the matter, Hawthorn? Disheartened I cut the violence short?”
She ignored the quip. “Ending violence isn’t exactly a Rowan thing to do, is it?”
Elm didn’t bother masking his annoyance at being compared to his father and brother. “I try not to use the Scythe for violence.”
“Why not?”
“To disappoint the hell out of them.”
Ione, who often seemed to give her attention only by half, was watching him. She searched his face like she had in his chamber, still looking for something she couldn’t seem to find.
A noise, like the snapping of teeth, echoed down the corridor. Elm jerked to a halt, catching Ione’s arm, stopping her. They were near the end of the corridor. Ahead was the last cell. Elspeth Spindle’s cell.
Or what used to be Elspeth Spindle.
“Listen,” he said. “I should tell you—”
The noise echoed again, this time with the low, oily notes of a laugh. Elm swallowed. “Your cousin. She’s not the same.”
Ione said nothing. Her brows lowered. She pulled away from Elm, marching toward the cell. “Because of Hauth?”
“Not Hauth. Not this time.”