I called out into nothingness. Ravyn?
No answer.
My heart bottomed out. Something’s wrong.
The Nightmare clasped his hand over Ione’s shoulder. “Bring the Maiden and Scythe and Twin Alders to the stone chamber.” His gaze found Elm. “I have plans for you yet.”
He ran. Not after the lights, but toward Castle Yew. Faster, I called over the drumming of his heart. Run faster.
He ripped through the tree line and faced the meadow. Snow decorated every blade of grass, but it was not pale.
It was red.
Ravyn was on his back, a hand pressed against his side, his copper skin the color of ash. His eyes were open, glassy, his breath coming in quick, halting breaths.
Blood. In the snow, in his clothes, upon his face and hands. So much blood.
The Nightmare let out an inhuman snarl. And I saw what he was focused on. The hilt of a dagger—lodged between Ravyn’s ribs.
I screamed.
The Nightmare dropped to his knees at Ravyn’s side. “No,” he said, stilling Ravyn’s trembling hand. “Do not pull the blade out. It stanches the blood.”
Ravyn blinked and looked up with unfocused eyes. He said my name, a whisper, just between us. “Elspeth.”
I thrashed against darkness—against nothingness—trying to get to him. My consciousness rattled so greatly the Nightmare began to shake. “Hauth Rowan?” came his venomous question.
Ravyn managed a nod. “My Mirror, the Cards—he—”
“I will find him.”
Ravyn winced—tried to focus. “Elspeth,” he said again. “Tell Elspeth not to hate me.”
Something fractured in the dark room I inhabited.
The Nightmare’s hands shook on his sword. Unflinching, five hundred years old, he looked down at Ravyn, his lost descendant, and trembled. “I wanted a better Blunder for her. If you perish, that Blunder will never exist.”
“It cannot exist unless the Deck is united,” Ravyn growled, blood on his lips. “Only you can see my Cards. Find Hauth. End it the way you wanted to, Taxus. I’ll be fine.”
The sound of snapping—teeth and bones—filled my dark room. And I realized that the thing that was fracturing—breaking in a thousand razor-edged pieces—was me. It can’t end like this.
The Nightmare clenched his jaw. “I’ll come back,” he said, to me, to Ravyn, to himself. “How long can you last?”
“I was ten minutes late to Spindle House.” An invisible thread pulled the corner of Ravyn’s lips before pain stole it away. “I’ll be ten minutes late through the veil.”
I wouldn’t let him go. I could not. No, no, no—
But the Nightmare was already running. Faster than I’d ever felt him go. His sword sang as it cut through the cold Solstice air. He ripped through the meadow, flinging us back into the wood.
It didn’t take long to find Hauth. He was bright with color—nearly the entire Deck tucked in his pocket. He released himself from the Mirror Card—no longer invisible. I could see his broad back, his pumping arms.
The Nightmare stopped running and lowered to a crouch, holding his sword above the earth. He tapped it three times on hardened soil, click, click, click. His eyes rolled back, darkness eclipsing our shared vision. The space around me widened, as if the Nightmare and I were expanding. I could not see him, but I knew the Shepherd King with golden armor was with us. For he was the Nightmare, and the Nightmare was the King, and I was both of them.
Magic burned up our arms, powerful, vengeful, and full of fury.
We looked out onto the wood, marking Hauth Rowan, and spoke the name of our flock. “Taxus,” we said in a long, scraping call.
The earth answered on a thunderous boom, the yew trees awake once more—and moving. Their roots ripped from the ground, cleaving the wood as they hurtled toward Hauth.
He looked back, eyes wide. With another clamorous roll of earth, Hauth shouted and fell. The yew trees encircled him. We guided our sword in intricate arcs through the air, casting nets, moving branches and roots to cut him off at every turn.
The trees caught Hauth at his middle. He shouted, swore, swinging his sword. But the branches tightened their hold, knotting around his ankles and wrists until, pressed with his back against a gnarled trunk, Hauth could no longer move.
We raised ourselves to full height, Shepherd King—Nightmare—I. When we stepped forward, the forest stood still for us.
“You should have known better than to flee into my wood, Hauth Rowan,” the Nightmare seethed. “Your Destriers met their end here. So, too, shall you.”
Hauth’s green eyes narrowed with recognition. He spat my name like a curse. “Spindle. Or do you go by a different title now?” The thin line of his mouth twitched. “How’s Ravyn?”
The Nightmare’s hand found Hauth’s throat, just at it had at Spindle House. Only now it was not just he who was ravenous for blood, but me as well.
I screamed into the dark. The Nightmare opened his mouth, and my scream became his, a horrid sound of despair and hate and rage so complete it shook the trees, dousing the arrogance in Hauth’s face and painting dread upon him.
And suddenly it was not Hauth that we were looking at—but another man with cunning green eyes. Brutus Rowan.
The Nightmare—Taxus—I spoke in a low, menacing whisper. “There was a time, once,” we said, “when rowan and yew trees grew together in the wood. They spoke in delicate rhymes—whispered tales of balance, of the Spirit of the Wood. Of magic. But time is as corrosive as salt. As rot. And now the rowan’s roots are bloodstained, and the yew tree twisted beyond all recognition. We are monsters, the pair of us.”
Brutus Rowan’s brow lowered. When I blinked, it was Hauth’s face once more. “That is what it takes,” came his acidic reply, “to be King of Blunder.”
The Nightmare let go of his throat. With a swing of his sword, the trees holding Hauth began to move. They dragged him through the wood, following the pull of the Nightmare’s sword as he walked ahead.
The trees reached the edge of the wood. Loomed over the stone chamber the Shepherd King had built for the Spirit of the Wood. They dangled Hauth a moment over the rotted-out ceiling—
Then dropped him.
He crashed into the chamber. When his back collided with the stone below, Hauth let out an ugly groan and thrashed, draped over the stone like an offering.
The Nightmare entered the chamber through its window. Midnight? he asked the yew trees.
Minutes away.
Salt coated the air and mist slipped over us, a cool, silver wave—a turning tide. Hauth struggled to his feet, nine Providence Cards slipping from his pocket onto the chamber floor, a mural of vivid color in the darkened room. Nightmare. Mirror. Iron Gate. Well. Chalice. White Eagle. Prophet. Golden Egg. Black Horse.
Hauth backed against the far wall of the chamber. His crown had fallen. He picked it up and placed it back on his head, his foot knocking against another crown upon the earthen floor. One with twisting yew branches instead of rowan.
The Shepherd King’s crown.
The Nightmare picked it up—placed it on the stone where he had forged his Cards, where his children had died—the place that become his grave. There was no time, no time at all. Still, guarding the window to the chamber, trapping Hauth inside, he waited.