“Why—”
“My turn, Hawthorn.” This time, he chose his words well. “What can you remember from Equinox?”
Ione’s expression remained smooth, though her shoulders stiffened. “I remember sitting on the dais, just as I did tonight. Everyone was coming up to offer Hauth and me congratulations on the engagement. There was talk of my father’s Nightmare Card. I was trying to speak to Hauth—trying to know him. But for every question I asked him, every bit of exuberance or enthusiasm I tended, I gained a bit of his scorn.”
Her voice quieted. “I saw it, plain on his face, that he didn’t know how to talk to me, merely look at me—and only after I was using the Maiden Card. He said, like I’d surprised him in an unpleasant way, ‘You are very animated, Miss Hawthorn.’”
“He’s a bloody idiot.”
Ione didn’t seem to hear him. “I was nervous, and Hauth kept signaling servants to fill my goblet. I drank, and the rest of the night is fuzzy, measured only in glimpses. I remember I was cold—that there was cracked stone beneath my hand.” Her voice softened. “Mostly, I remember the sharp feeling of salt in my nose.”
Elm’s gaze snapped to her face. “From the mist? Or something else?”
Ione lifted an idle finger to her torn collar, tracing the frayed edge. Just like in the corridor last night, when the subject of losing her Maiden Card on Equinox was broached, she didn’t meet Elm’s eye.
He’d assumed she’d misplaced it in a state of celebratory folly. But the salt, and this—this reluctance to look at him—
Something felt wrong. Very wrong. Like Elm had opened a door he shouldn’t have. A door that kept dark, unspoken things tucked away.
He had a door of his own just like it.
“Hauth,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “Hauth used his Scythe on you, didn’t he?”
Slowly, Ione nodded. “He made sure I was drunk first.” She refilled the cup and took a deep drink. “I woke the next morning in his room, still wearing my Equinox dress. And the Maiden your father gave me—I was still under its influence. But the Card itself,” she opened an empty palm, “was gone.”
Elm’s jaw ached with strain. “Did he—”
“He didn’t touch me. He made a point to tell me he hadn’t. Not to show restraint or respect—merely to let me know he could have, had he wanted to. And would, whenever he liked.” Ione drew in a long, tired breath. “He wouldn’t tell me where he’d made me hide my Maiden Card. I pleaded, but he didn’t relent. He said it would be easier, being his betrothed, if I didn’t feel things so keenly.”
Her eyes returned to Elm. “Your brother seemed to understand, better than I’d realized, that he was a brute, and that I, his future wife, carried my heart upon my sleeve. He decided, without hesitation, that I should be the one to change and not him. That life would be infinitely better for the both of us if I simply felt nothing at all.”
Every word came out a curse. “He’s a brute,” Elm said. “He does whatever it takes to make a brute of everyone he comes across. That’s what he likes.” He thought about touching her but held back. He didn’t think she’d want to be comforted by a Rowan.
He held her gaze instead, reaching into the ice behind her eyes. “I’m sorry he did that to you. I’m sorry no one stopped him. I’m sorry you didn’t feel safe enough to say anything.” His voice softened. “Trees, Hawthorn, I’m sorry.”
Ione’s eyes widened. She went completely still but for her thumb, which ran in slow circles along the rim of the cup. “Is that what happened to you?” she said, her voice hardly a whisper. “No one stopped him—no one was safe enough to tell?”
And there it was. The coal deep within Elm. The beginning of his inferno, his rage. Anger, a lifetime in the making. “You’ve heard the rumors, then.”
She nodded.
He dragged a hand over his face and heaved a long, rattling breath. “Ravyn,” he managed. “Eventually, I told Ravyn what Hauth was doing to me.”
“And he took you away?”
Elm nodded, slipping his hand into his pocket, his fingers dragging against velvet. His eyes stung, anger licking up his throat. “When my mother died, I inherited her Scythe. Suddenly, I wasn’t just a boy Hauth could beat and break and use his own Scythe on. I could protect myself. So I did. I became better with the red Card than he’d ever been.” His smile was derisive. “And he hated me all the more for it.”
Ione’s thumb had stopped moving on the rim of the cup. Elm forced himself to look at her, daring her to feel sorry for him.
But there was no pity in her hazel eyes. She handed Elm the wine. “My girlish fancies of marrying a Prince were quick to die. Your brother’s charm was skin-deep. The real Hauth beat and clawed his way through life.” Each word was the prick of a pin. “Sooner or later, someone was going to claw him back. And my dearest cousin, or what is left of her, was merciless in the task.”
“I’m not sorry he’s broken—only that it was not me doing the breaking.” Elm took a deep drink. “Does that make me wicked?”
“If it does, you and I are the same kind of wicked.”
The tangled mess in Elm’s chest eased. It surprised him to note that the hourglass was over halfway empty—that he had held a candle to the darkest part of himself, and not once had he tried to lie about it.
Ione’s brow furrowed. “Why did it take you so long to inherit a Scythe?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you inherited your mother’s Scythe. But there are four Scythe Cards. And the Rowans own them all.”
“An old lie.”
Her brows perked. “You don’t own all four Scythes?”
Elm shook his head. “We only carry three. One for the King, one for my brother, and one for me. Wherever the fourth Scythe rests, it is not with us. We make like it’s in the vault, but it isn’t.” He took a swill of wine. “I had a lot of catching up to do when I finally inherited the red Card.”
“But you did catch up,” Ione said, watching him intently. “Quickly.”
Hair fell into Elm’s eyes. He pushed it back. Cleared his throat. “I’ve forgotten whose turn it is to ask a question.”
Ione grabbed the wine out of his hand. “Yours.”
“If Hauth was hell-bent on keeping you under the Maiden’s magic, he’d likely make you hide your Card somewhere no one else might touch it. Do you remember going anywhere secluded? Somewhere in the gardens—the vaults—away from the crowd?”
“It’s no use, Prince. The only clear thing I remember is salt, and cracked stone beneath my hand.” She paused, her tongue passing back and forth over her inner bottom lip. “I have a blurry memory of spinning torchlight. I was dancing in the garden with Hauth. There were other male voices nearby. When Hauth dropped my hand and I fell, they laughed. Grasped at me.”
Venom pooled in Elm’s mouth. Whatever Ione saw in his face, it was enough to make her pause. “I am unharmed, Prince. All in one piece. One icy, heartless piece.”