His breath stole away from him. He looked into her eyes. “Do you?”
There was no reading her face. But in that moment, Elm was certain Ione was warring with something. Maybe it was the Maiden’s chill. Or maybe—just maybe—it was the same thing he was warring with.
Hope. Delicate and thread-thin.
Ione lowered her head, brushed her mouth over his. “I’d like to try.”
Tightness fisted Elm’s chest. “I’d be your King, but always your servant. Never your keeper.” He arched up, dragging his knuckles down her chin, making her lips part for him. “Think about it, Hawthorn.”
When she spoke, her voice was full of air. “I don’t want to think right now, Elm.”
He reached into her hair and pulled the pin out. Yellow gold, it fell down her back. Elm wrapped it around his fist like a bandage. “Then don’t.”
He kissed her, without pageantry. Ione sighed into this mouth, and Elm hauled her onto his lap, marveling once more how she utterly filled his hands. Her knees pinned his sides, and when she thrust her hips forward, her soft against his hard, she pushed Elm deeper into the throne.
“You look good in this chair.” She glanced down through her lashes at him, the corner of her mouth twitching. “Under me.”
Elm tugged her hair, baring her throat to him. He dragged his bottom lip up the warm column—took in a full breath of her. “That’s the idea,” he murmured into her skin.
Ione pressed harder into him. Rolled her pelvis over his lap.
Muscles spasmed everywhere. “Ione.”
“Is this what you want?” Both of them were breathing hard. “Me? Here?”
It took all of Elm’s fraying self-restraint to pull back. His body was pleading to the point of pain to be inside her. But he couldn’t. Not with the part of her he wanted most still locked away. He shook his head. “When I bed you, Ione, I want you to feel it.”
A flush blossomed from the torturous neckline of her dress, floating up her throat into her face. But her expression was blank.
“I’d like to know the real you,” Elm said again. He kissed her slowly, intently. “I’ve wanted to know you since I saw you all those years ago, riding in the wood, mud on your ankles.”
Ione pulled back. Whatever she saw on Elm’s face made her eyes widen. She sat up, finding his hand, lacing their fingers. “Come with me.”
She led the way out of the throne room. The King’s court was still in the great hall, drinking and dancing, unaware that their new High Prince, moments ago, might have gladly debased himself atop the throne.
Ione pulled him up the stairs. When they got to her room, she shut the door and latched it, pushing Elm up against the wood. She kissed him once, hard, then pulled back.
“It’s going to hurt,” she said, “when the Maiden lets me go. When all the feelings I haven’t felt come rushing in. Are you sure you want to see that?”
The moment held Elm in place. Even his breath had gone shallow. Ione dipped her hand into her bodice. When she pulled it back, the Maiden was between her fingers. “Do you?”
He managed only one word. “Please.”
Never breaking their gaze, Ione held a finger up to her Maiden Card. With three taps, she released herself from its magic.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Elspeth
The moment Petyr sought to enter the alderwood, the trees barred his way. It seemed the Spirit of the Wood would not let anyone who was not already infected into her lair.
He tried nonetheless. “I’ll wait for you—” he called.
The trees slammed shut, locking him out and Ravyn, Jespyr—the Nightmare and me—in.
Ahead, Jespyr’s laughter cut through the mist. “This way.”
The Nightmare had known all along that, to enter the alderwood, someone needed to get lost in the mist. His own sister had done it. He’d known this was coming—
And said nothing. I didn’t have claws or jagged teeth, but I had enough anger to turn the dark chamber we shared into a battering cacophony of fury. I screamed until I earned a flinch, then screamed again.
Enough, Elspeth! he snarled, hurtling after Jespyr through a bramble of thorns so sharp they cut through the sleeves of his cloak. He shielded his face with his arms, and the thorns bit into them, scoring his skin red.
I felt neither pain nor pity for the marks upon him, screaming all the louder. Ravyn is moving heaven and earth to find the Twin Alders Card—to save Emory. If he loses a sister in the process, it will break him.
Yews do not break, came the Nightmare’s menacing rebuttal. They bend.
I looked out my window into the alderwood. The hour was distinctly day. But the wood was so dense, the mist so oppressive, it felt like the blackest part of night.
The wood was alive—and voracious. Trees and roots skittered forward at terrifying speeds, grasping at Ravyn and the Nightmare. They snagged at hair and skin and clothes, as if they wanted a taste of the trespassers who had breached their terrifying haunt.
Worse, the alderwood spoke, and not into just the Nightmare’s mind. From the way he jumped, gray eyes going wide, I could tell Ravyn could hear the trees too.
Their voices were like a swarm of wasps.
Be wary the green, be wary the trees. Be wary the song of the wood on your sleeves. You’ll step off the path—to blessing and wrath. Be wary the song of the wood on your sleeves.
Ahead, Jespyr’s gait quickened to a sprint. She ripped through branches and brambles and vines thick as her forearm. Her laughter swam in the dense air, unnatural—both calm and frantic. “Can you hear the Spirit? She’s calling my name. Calling me home.”
Ravyn tripped, then bent over himself, gasping for air. “Keep going,” the Nightmare hissed, wrenching him up by his hood. “If we lose her, we too will be lost.”
They ran without respite, hunted by the alderwood.
Brush rustled from behind. The Nightmare whipped his gaze back—huffed air out his nostrils. It seemed the trees were not the only ones who wanted a pound of flesh. Animals with sharp shoulder blades and silver eyes stalked forward. Wolves, wildcats. Above, birds of prey darted between trees, far away and then—too close.
A falcon dove, screeching as it swiped razor talons at the Nightmare.
His sword flashed through the air. There was another terrible screech, then feathers and blood rained.
Nearby, a tree with thin branches and crimson leaves whipped Ravyn across the face. A thousand dissonant voices ricocheted in the salt-riddled air. Mind the mist, it does not lift. The Spirit doth hunt, ever adrift. Stay out of the wood, be wary, be good. The Spirit doth hunt, ever adrift.
Ravyn reeled, wiping blood from his cheek. He ducked, barely avoiding an errant branch as it swung for his neck—but not the next. Jagged, the branch caught his hand, tearing the skin at his knuckles.
There is no escape from the salt, the alderwood called. Magic is everywhere—ageless. To the Spirit of the Wood, the exactor of balance, our lives are but of a butterfly—fleeting.
Ahead, Jespyr’s voice grew more frenzied. “The voices of the trees are clever. Isn’t that right, Shepherd King? It is they who spoke the words you penned in your precious book. They who warned you against magic. They whom you did not heed.”