Yvette had brown curly hair and wore a vibrant blue dress. But it was not the sharp cerulean hue of her attire that had snagged Elm’s eye.
It was the inhuman, ethereal quality of her face. She was too perfect—her glowing skin without flaw, her face so symmetrical it almost looked uncanny. So much beauty, it hardly seemed real.
Because it wasn’t.
Next to him, Ione leaned forward. She, too, was watching Yvette. Elm reached under the table, brushing his knuckles against Ione’s leg, an unspoken acknowledgment of the thing—the magic—that had joined them in the library.
Another Maiden Card.
The Shepherd King had said there were three in the castle. One Maiden was stowed deep in his father’s vaults. Another, it seemed, belonged to Yvette Laburnum.
Two down. One more to go.
The afternoon slipped away, tending to the King’s paperwork. Elm’s fingertips were ink stained for all the times he had signed his name, each Renelm less formal than the one before it.
Ione sat through it all, eyes vacant. Elm reached under the table more than once, pinched her leg, tugged her skirt—searched for a sign of life. Her eyes would flare a moment and the corners of her mouth twitch, but beyond that, nothing.
When the title was finally finished and Elm named heir to the throne of Blunder, the only observance was the snapping of Baldwyn’s ledger. He bowed. “I shall see you at the feast in an hour, sire.”
Ione and Elm lingered at the table. “How does it feel, knowing you will wear the crown?”
“Like falling off a horse.” Elm reached into his pocket and pulled out the three Providence Cards he’d taken from the vaults, anxious to be rid of the subject of kingship. He put the Cards on the table—Scythe, Mirror, Prophet.
Ione glanced down at them. “Why did you take the Mirror?”
“If the Prophet Card does nothing to help us find your Maiden, combing your mind with Nightmare Card is the next obvious choice.” He shifted in his seat. “And I have no intention of waltzing into Hauth’s room and asking for it.”
“You’d steal it?”
Elm’s eyes dropped to her mouth. He imagined whispering all sorts of things into it—telling Ione Hawthorn that it put him more at ease to be a highwayman thief than a Rowan Prince. “I think I can manage it.” He slid the Prophet Card in front of her. “Have you used one of these before?”
She nodded, tracing the image upon the Card—an old man obscured by a gray hood. “My mother has one.”
Had, Elm thought, a pinch in his gut. “They are not always literal, the visions of the future.”
“I’m aware.” Ione tapped the Prophet three times and shut her eyes.
Elm watched as she held still but for the rise and fall of her chest. A moment later Ione’s eyes snapped open, her fingers rigid as she tapped the Prophet, freeing herself from its magic. Had Elm not become a student of her face, he might have missed the faint line that drew between her brows. “Did you see your Maiden?”
“I don’t know. I—” She pulled her bottom lip into her mouth. “I don’t know what I saw.”
“Tell me.”
“I was in a meadow. There was snow on the ground outside a small stone chamber. The Yew family was there, carrying a frail boy in their arms.” Her voice quieted. “You were there too, Prince. As were my father and Uncle Erik.”
Elm went cold. “Was the boy Emory?”
“Yes. A tall man I’ve never seen before guarded me with a sword. He had yellow eyes, just as Elspeth does now. He took my hand, unfurled my fingers. There were three Cards, nestled in my palm. The Maiden, the Scythe—”
Her hazel eyes lifted. “And the Twin Alders.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Ravyn
They hurried through the wood, dusk on their heels. Above, crows cawed, their wings darkening the gaps between trees. Ravyn recalled what Hesis had said about her magic. I can see through the eyes of crows.
Jespyr glanced skyward. “Wolves, now crows. Just once, I’d like not to be stalked through these wretched woods.”
The Nightmare led them. He broke his pace to tap his sword thrice upon the earth, then placed a hand upon a gnarled aspen tree. He shut his eyes. Whispered.
Eyes shut like that, it could have so easily been Elspeth. Ravyn’s insides wrenched. “What are you doing?”
“Asking for the way.”
A great stillness came over the wood. No breeze touched them, no leaves crunched beneath their boots. The mist held them in its arms, salt and sting and a chill that went so deep, it reminded Ravyn of the dungeon at Stone.
Then, one by one, the aspen branches began to turn. Crooked, they bent, but never snapped.
All of them pointed east.
When the Nightmare opened his yellow eyes, they were bleary. “We’re almost there.”
The mist thickened, and the sky became dark. The Nightmare’s sword gleamed in the dim light as he led them through bramble and dense underbrush. There was no path. But his gait was fast, sure.
A pulsing pain cut across Ravyn’s face, radiating from his nose, which had begun to bleed again. When blood dripped into his mouth, he coughed—spat it out.
The Nightmare turned.
“I’m fine,” Ravyn snapped. “Keep going.”
The ground began to slope downward into a shallow valley, the mist so dense and the sky so dark Ravyn could hardly see an arm’s length ahead. A thud sounded behind him, followed by a flurry of curses. Ravyn found Petyr caught in a dogwood—freed him with a firm wrench to his collar.
“We need to stop,” Petyr said. “We’ll snap our ankles wading through bramble like this.” He made a face. “Your nose is a mess, lad.”
“This whole journey is a mess,” Jespyr muttered. One glance at Ravyn’s face made her stop short. “He’s right. We should break for the night.”
“Here,” came the Nightmare’s slippery voice from ahead. When they met him at the bottom of the valley, he was standing stone-still at the edge of a new wood.
The trees in front of him did not merely stand close to one another. They were a wall. Just like the lake, the wood stretched farther than the horizon. There were hundreds—thousands—of trees, all woven together.
Ravyn’s pulse thickened. He stepped forward, putting a calloused hand on a crooked trunk. “They’re alder trees.”
The Nightmare’s voice slipped between his teeth. “The second begins at the neck of a wood, where you cannot turn back, though truly, you should. Those here that enter are neither wary, clever, nor good. You know nothing of hell—
“Till you’ve crossed the alderwood.”
Wind whispered through the trees and on it, the biting scent of salt.
“The Twin Alders Card,” Jespyr said, her eyes cast skeptically down the endless row of trees. “It’s inside?”
“Yes.”
“How do we get in?”
“That is for tomorrow. For now—” The Nightmare turned, facing back the way they’d come. “Aspen,” he murmured.
The aspen trees began to move into the valley. Dirt upturned, and the ground rolled. Petyr lost his balance and fell, and Jespyr braced herself on Ravyn before she, too, caught a mouthful of dirt.