“Incredible,” Linden’s mused. “A blade through the heart and still the Maiden lets her live.”
Hauth’s voice was slow. Awestruck. Ravenous. “Invincibility.”
Darkness pooled in Elm. It didn’t matter that he was weaponless, naked without his Scythe. He still looked up into his brother’s face and said, without an ounce of doubt, “I’ll kill you for this.”
The door banged open.
Filick Willow stood at the threshold, with his books and his dogs, eyes wide as he took in the room. Hauth and Liden, standing over Elm and Ione. Blood on the floor. His gaze found Elm’s face, tracing the budding bruises, the tears in his eyes. “Forgive me, Prince,” he said. “I should have knocked louder.”
Elm could have kissed the ground. He nodded at Ione in his arms. “Take her,” he said, his voice breaking. “Help her.”
When Filick stepped into the room, Hauth straightened his spine. “You aren’t needed, Physician.”
The dogs growled. Filick stayed them with a firm hand. “Prince Hauth. You—you were missing from your chamber. We rang the bell.”
“I heard it.” Hauth shifted his Scythe Card between blunt fingers. “But, as you see, no one stole me from my bed. I am quite well. You may go.”
Filick didn’t move. His eyes were on Ione. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”
“I’m aware.”
Footsteps lumbered down the hall. Someone heavy was running, and then the King was there, pushing past Filick, tramping through Ione’s blood on his way to Hauth. When he wrapped his arms around his eldest son, his voice came out fractured. “My boy. You’re alive.”
Elm looked down at Ione’s chest. She was still covering her wound. “Let me see,” he whispered.
She was reticent, her hand pressed so hard over her chest her fingernails had left crescent indents. Slowly, she took it away.
The wound was shrinking, half the size of the blade that had made it. The Maiden—still clutched in Ione’s other hand—was healing her.
Elm raised his eyes to the ceiling and, with every part of himself, thanked the Shepherd King for his horrible, wonderful Maiden Card.
Ione’s hand grazed his sleeve. “I thought I’d slipped through the veil. I was riding in the wood, mud on my ankles.” A small smile graced her colorless lips. “With you.”
Elm buried his face in her neck. “Someday. But first, I want a hundred years with you.”
Above them, the King’s voice came in waves. “How?” he asked, his voice hitching as he put a calloused hand to Hauth’s cheek.
Hauth’s own voice was even. He patted his father’s shoulder. “I hear you’ve been hosting feasts. Host tonight’s in my honor, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Chapter Forty-One
Ravyn
The last barter waits in a place with no time. A place of great sorrow and bloodshed and crime. No sword there can save you, no mask hide your face. You’ll return with the Twin Alders…
But you’ll never leave that place.
Ravyn heard the crack of bones. The Spirit of the Wood rolled her jagged shoulders, whipped her tail through the air, dug her claws into sand. Her ears were long and pointed, and when she smiled, short, jagged fang-like teeth peeked out from behind her lips.
She was not human or beast, but something in between, like the monster depicted on the Nightmare Card—only her eyes were silver. She marked Ravyn with them, unblinking. Then she aimed the tips of her claws at her own torso—
And buried them in her stomach.
Silver blood poured down her fur and fell into sand. The sea lapped it up, ravenous.
Ravyn stared, wide-eyed in horror.
The Spirit heaved a sigh and the bleeding stopped. She dug into her own stomach, as if all that blood had dislodged something deep within her. When her hand came back, coated in silver, something was wrapped in her claws. Small, rectangular, with an emerald-green trim.
The twelfth Providence Card. The Twin Alders.
The Spirit’s talons unfurled.
“She wants you to use it,” the Nightmare said behind Ravyn.
Ravyn set Jespyr, who had not stirred, into the sand and dragged himself to his feet. “What will happen when I tap it?”
“A meeting of minds.”
“Like the Nightmare Card?”
“I cannot say. I have never used the Twin Alders.”
“And if I use it too long?”
The Nightmare’s voice quieted. “You will lose all sense of time.”
Ravyn met the Spirit’s eyes. Silver, unblinking, and without pupils. He shivered, reaching forward, grasping the velvet edge of the Twin Alders Card. But when he tried to pull it out of her clutch, the Spirit’s claws closed in a vise over his hand.
Ravyn cried out. When he met that eerie silver gaze again, he understood. She hadn’t been offering it for him to take—only to use.
There was still a final barter to make.
Ravyn relaxed his grip on the velvet edge. “I won’t steal it.”
Her claws retracted, Ravyn’s skin scored red. When he reached into her hand a second time, it was only with a single, trembling finger. It hovered over the Providence Card five hundred years lost. He closed his eyes, took in a breath of salt, and tapped the Twin Alders.
Once.
Twice.
“Measure your words carefully with her,” the Nightmare warned. “They may be your last.”
Thrice.
Wind ripped over the sea’s salted lip. It blew into Ravyn’s face, blinding him. The Spirit spoke once more in her vast, stormy voice. “I watched you in the mist, Ravyn Yew. Tasted your blood. Stripped away your stony armor.” Her gaze shifted between him and the Nightmare. “You have traveled to the heart of my wood at the edge of Taxus’s crook, like a lamb to slaughter.”
Ravyn’s jaw set. “I’m not a lamb.”
Her silver eyes traced him—knew him. “Yet you are determined to die like one, come Solstice.”
Behind them, the Nightmare let out a sharp hiss. “What does she mean?”
When Ravyn looked back into the Nightmare’s yellow eyes, he knew, somehow, he was looking into Elspeth’s as well. “You must know,” he said, “that I was never going to allow the King to spill her blood to unite the Deck.”
The Nightmare was still a long while. Then, so quiet it might have been waves upon the shore, he said, “You would bleed in Elspeth’s place? In my place?”
Ravyn straightened his shoulders and spoke with enough conviction to reach every one of the Nightmare’s five hundred years. “Yes.”
He turned to the Spirit of the Wood. “Blood is the price to unite the Deck. To lift the mist and heal the infection. Your price. And I will gladly pay it. Gladly die. I’ve been dying piece by piece since Emory grew sick.” His throat constricted. “I have died tenfold since Elspeth disappeared. And now your mist has claimed my sister. So do not speak to me of cost, Spirit.” His eyes fell to the Twin Alders in her claw. “I am leaving here with that Card. Or I am not leaving at all.”
Her lips peeled over jagged teeth. She breathed in, and the sound of water upon the shore disappeared, as if sucked into her mouth.
All was silent.