Broke.
He groaned, took Hauth by the throat, and slammed him onto snow. Pinning his cousin to the ground, Ravyn leveled him with a decade of malice. He’d saved it, praying a day would come when he could unleash it. Hit after hit he paid Hauth with a closed fist. One for killing the King. Two for telling Orithe Willow that Ravyn was infected as a boy. Three for doing the same when Emory got sick. Four for the Rowan bloodline and the heinous violence Brutus Rowan had commanded. Ten for Elm.
And for what Hauth had done to Elspeth, Ravyn took his ivory-hilted dagger and shoved it into his cousin’s gut.
Hauth coughed, his face marked only briefly by pain. He was a mess of blood and spit, but eyes were cold.
“You’re coming with me to the chamber,” Ravyn snarled. “Whole, or in pieces.”
“Says the man who can’t even wield a Scythe.” Hauth spat in his face. “You want to bring me to heel, Ravyn? Make me.”
Knuckles screaming, broken and bruising, Ravyn reached his hands into his cousin’s doublet. He felt velvet and wrenched it free.
All the Cards Hauth had stolen from the chamber scattered, falling upon snow. Golden Egg. Prophet. White Eagle. Iron Gate. Well. Chalice.
Ravyn ignored them. He was reaching only for Hauth’s Scythe. Blood red, he held it between his hands.
But Providence Cards are ageless, he’d said to the Spirit of the Wood. Their magic does not fade. They do not decay with time. They cannot be destroyed. The Shepherd King said so himself.
And he, like you, is certainly a liar.
“I may not be able to use the Scythe,” Ravyn said. “But I can undo it.” He hauled in a breath, clenched his jaw—
And tore the indomitable red Card in half.
Hauth’s mouth fell open, twin pieces of red fluttering above him. The Scythe fell to the ground, reduced to nothing more than paper and velvet.
A smile bloomed over Ravyn’s face. He laughed, triumph rearing in his veins.
Pain sank into his side.
Ravyn’s laugh fell away. When he looked down, a ceremonial dagger was lodged between his ribs. It struck him as strange, how easily the blade had slipped to the hilt into his skin. As if he, like the Scythe, were no more than paper—frail as the wings of a butterfly.
Stranger still that the wound should be in the same place Brutus Rowan had stabbed the Shepherd King, five hundred years ago.
Blood seeped into snow. Ravyn flinched. Fell.
Hauth shoved him aside and rose to his feet. The places he’d been injured were already healing. He leaned over, his fingers probing at Ravyn’s pockets. He withdrew Ravyn’s Cards—his Nightmare and Mirror. The corners of Hauth’s lips twitched, and he collected the rest of the Providence Cards, splayed out like pieces of stained glass upon the snow.
“Pity the Maiden will not work on you, cousin.” When Hauth stood over Ravyn, he was without blemish once again. Brutal, perfect. A true Rowan King. “I’d always hoped I’d be the one to kill you.” He tapped Ravyn’s Mirror Card three times.
And disappeared.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Elspeth
I could not yet see Ione—but her Cards were brilliant in the darkness of the wood. Pink and red and forest-green lights emanated, and I knew my cousin was out of the meadow and into the trees, retrieving Elm’s horse where she’d left it. Mounting. Riding this way—just as the Nightmare had planned.
He hunched low to the ground and cocked his head to both sides, cracking the joints in his neck. Grip lax around his sword, he’d stopped moving the trees after we’d spoken to Ravyn. His self-imposed task was one he’d honed for centuries.
He waited.
He’d waited, while Ione and Ravyn confronted Hauth. Waited, as Jespyr and Petyr crept through shadow undetected. Even as he’d guided the trees into the meadow, he’d been waiting. Waiting.
For the Destriers to come.
But I was not so practiced in the art of stillness. My mind ticked on a steady rhythm, not a chime, but a chant. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hush, the Nightmare admonished. I can feel your worry in my teeth.
It can’t be helped. I let out a long breath, which did nothing to ease me. You have so little time.
I heard them, then. Footsteps. Several pairs, all of them running.
Ione rode loudly, weaving through the wood. The Destriers behind her were far quieter—difficult to hone in on. But not impossible.
The Nightmare tightened his grip on his sword and tapped it upon the earth, his namesake tree slithering out of his mouth like a hiss. “Taxus.”
Shepherd King, came the chorus of their reply.
“How many Destriers are in the wood?”
The Black Horses arrive, eight in their rank. They verge near the Maiden—to chase and to flank. Mind all your circles, guide the wood as you please. To hunt the King’s guard—cut them down at the knees.
The Nightmare stood to full height. Veins dark with magic, he swept his sword into the air. The wood trembled, then began once more to move. Dirt and mist and snow shrouded his eyes, so he shut them, content to listen to the noises of the wood.
I listened with him. I heard the groaning of trees—the rumbling of roots as they ripped toward the Destriers. I could hear the beats of Ione’s horse. Then, above it, men’s voices echoed.
The Destriers were shouting. Screaming.
The Nightmare opened his eyes, and Ione cantered past, stirring mist and kicking up dirt. The horse whickered, dodging through shifting trees. Ione kept her seat, turning the animal in wide circles through the wood. For each pass, she drew more Destriers from shadow, and the Nightmare, with swings of his blade, cut them down with the trees.
When four Destriers were left, Ione turned the horse, hurtling once more toward the Nightmare. One Destrier was so close behind her the tip of his blade cut several strands of hair from the horse’s tail. He pulled a knife, flinging it at Ione. But with one swipe of his sword, the Nightmare bade the trees to knock it from the air—and the Destrier from his feet.
Ione rode until she was next to him, dismounting in a flurry. She dropped her hand into her pocket and seized the red light therein. “Be still,” she said, panting. “Be still, Destriers.”
Louder, Ione, I called in the dark.
“Louder,” the Nightmare echoed.
Ione clamped her eyes shut. When she commanded the Scythe a third time, her voice shifted to a thunder greater than the whickering horse or the rush of incoming Destriers—greater than the wood itself. “Be still!”
Salt touched everything. Even me, though the Scythe had no sway over the Nightmare. When I looked through my window, three Destriers stood paces away—arrested in utter stillness.
Darkness emanated from their Black Horse Cards. Unmoving, the Destriers looked upon my cousin, unmistakable disgust flashing over their eyes.
Ione came to stand next to the Nightmare. She measured the Destriers, taking in their frozen statures and hateful gazes. With the Scythe, and her thunderous command, she’d bent them to her will.
But it only took a needle-thin whisper to break them. Ione turned to the Nightmare, dropping her hazel eyes to his sword. “Go on, then.”
His mirth coated our shared darkness. When the Nightmare’s sword sang through the air, the yew trees answered its call. With an impact so great I heard nothing but a terrible snap, the Destriers were knocked from their feet, ground by roots into snow—into nothingness.