More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The Twin Alders is hidden in a place with no time. A place of great sorrow and bloodshed and crime. Betwixt ancient trees, where the mist cuts bone-deep, the last Card remains, waiting, asleep. The wood knows no road—no path through the snare. Only I can find the Twin Alders… For it was I who left it there.
“Elspeth Spindle,” he said quietly, his eyes—so strange and yellow—ensnaring me. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
But his soul carried on, buried deep in Elspeth Spindle, the only woman Ravyn had ever loved.
He’d kissed her deeply and she’d kissed him back. Every part of him had wanted every part of her.
“Balance,” she answered, head tilting like a bird of prey. “To right terrible wrongs. To free Blunder from the Rowans.” Her yellow eyes narrowed, wicked and absolute. “To collect his due.”
“There once was a girl,” he said, his voice slick, “clever and good, who tarried in shadow in the depths of the wood. There also was a King—a shepherd by his crook, who reigned over magic and wrote the old book. The two were together, so the two were the same: “The girl, the King, and the monster they became.”
All he knew of time was that he always seemed to be running out of it.
It was surprisingly heavy, her hair. Dense. Long enough to wrap around his fist and tug.
But it had become so, all because of Ione bloody Hawthorn and her Maiden Card. If he ever grew old enough to do so, he would tell this story to his children, with the firm lesson being don’t ever strike bargains with beautiful women.
Emory, who had once bloomed like a garden in spring, was wilted, frozen to his depth by chill and aggressive degeneration.
“The dark bird has three heads,” Emory said, his voice strangled, an invisible rope around his neck. “Highwayman, Destrier, and another. One of age, of birthright. Tell me, Ravyn Yew, after your long walk in my wood—do you finally know your name?”
“Because I have to be,” Elm said in one breath. “I care not what they say about me at court, even if it is that I’m a rotten Prince and a piss-poor Destrier.” He leaned closer. “But I do want it said, loud enough so everyone hears, that I am nothing like Hauth.”
And so, Ravyn Yew, your Elm I won’t touch. His life strays beyond my ravenous clutch. For a kicked pup grows teeth, and teeth sink to bone. I will need him, one day, when I harvest the throne.
“Neither Rowan nor Yew, but somewhere between. A pale tree in winter, neither red, gold, nor green. Black hides the bloodstain, forever his mark. Alone in the castle, Prince of the dark.”
“Though I fear, with so many idiots around me, that I must do everything myself.”
“The pink Providence Card with a rose upon it. You know the one. Or maybe you don’t. Your observational skills have proven abysmal—”
Wagers, barters, games. That’s what it boiled down to with Ione Hawthorn. Every look was a challenge, every question a test, a measurement. To what end, Elm wasn’t certain. But it made him tighten, chest to groin, knowing he wanted to play her games. And maybe it was the wine, or the way those hazel eyes pinned him in place, but he wasn’t ashamed to admit he’d do terrible, terrible things to win.
“Not before the Maiden. Men like you do not take pleasure in yellow flowers when there are roses in your garden.”
Once laid bare to Ione Hawthorn, he would forever be laid bare, just as Ravyn had laid himself bare to Elspeth. And look where that had gotten him.
“Sooner or later, someone was going to claw him back. And my dearest cousin, or what is left of her, was merciless in the task.”
“The smile lines, I was fond of.” His gaze traced the corners of her mouth, her eyes. “Your eyelashes were blonder. You had freckles and red patches of skin. A gap between your front teeth. Your eyes are the only thing the Maiden hasn’t altered too much.
“You were the strangest girl I’d ever seen. Because no one at Stone is happy. They pretend at it, or drink, but the performance has its tells. But not you. You were… painfully real.”
“All that talk of pleasure and warmth and that terrible, unquiet ache between your legs,” he murmured. “You painted such a pretty picture for me. And wouldn’t it be fun, denying me a kiss, had I lost our bet? To take my Scythe and render me helpless?” His top lip brushed hers. “Tell me, Hawthorn—does it make you feel something, toying with me like this?”
It undid him.
“We keep going.” Forward. Always forward.
“I don’t have to forgive a thing,” he said to Filick Willow, ripping the paper from the binding and balling it into his fist. “I live off of my grudges.”
But that wasn’t exactly true. Because, when Elm looked down at his sketchbook, he realized the face he’s spent half an hour drawing was hers.
And because he was a rotten Prince, and a piss-poor Destrier at that, Elm didn’t lock the door behind him.
Ravyn’s eyes narrowed. He was looking into the Nightmare’s yellow eyes. Looking for me. And I was not above pleading so that he might find what was left of me. I had eleven years’ practice, begging the Nightmare to be tolerable.
“You’d like me to tell you all the things we might have done?” she asked. “Yes.” “In sordid detail?” “Absolutely.” Ione ran the stem of the stylus down the center of her lips—looked him in the eye. “Beg me to.”
A curse slipped from Elm’s lips. He ran a hand through his unkempt hair. “You are so lucky we aren’t alone right now.”
“I’ll only be in the way.” “Right where I like you. We need a witness, do we not, Baldwyn?”
Had Elm not become a student of her face,
Ravyn pressed the back of his head against the aspen tree. The Nightmare bent over him. “Don’t you understand?” he whispered. “There can be no stony facade—no pretending—after this. Death demands to be felt. It wasn’t just Gorse who died in that courtyard today.” His yellow gaze reached into the darkest parts of Ravyn. “But the Captain of the Destriers as well.”
It was difficult to look at her. Beneath the ache that existed between them was a thin, fragile thread. One Ione had slipped through the eye of a needle and plunged into Elm’s chest, past all his bricks and barbs, though she didn’t yet realize it. It was uncomfortable, pretending she was not sewn into him—that it had not become vital to him, helping her find her Maiden Card. That he was not in some kind of pain every moment he was with her. It was all so terribly, wonderfully uncomfortable.
Elm was already taking off his boots. “No stone left unturned, Hawthorn.” He shrugged out of his doublet and lifted his tunic and silk undershirt over his head. When he caught Ione tracing the bare skin along his back, he smiled. “Sorry.” He nodded at his discarded clothes. “I should have asked if you wanted to help with that.”
“Thank you.” His eyes dropped to her mouth. “I owe you.” Ione’s breath quickened. “You’re helping me find my Card. Call it balance.” He didn’t. He wanted to call it something else entirely.
“It has not been like that for many years. There are twelve versions of you, brother, each more distant than the last.”
And yet Ayris was still the sun to me. Even in the wood, cold and gray with mist, her presence was a light, a warmth. I wanted her near me, for there are some things not even magic can erase.
He wanted to lock his fist in her skirt and keep her with him like he had in the library.
And Elm—no one was afraid of him. His Scythe, maybe, but not him. He was a rotted-out tree, and Ravyn the impenetrable, untouchable vines that held the pieces of him together.
Christening. Reclaiming. Fashioning a new King. Maybe a new Queen as well. “Changing things.”
“Queen,” Elm said. “We’ll find your mother and brothers—release your uncle and father, if you wish it. You can be the ruler you were supposed to be. Wanted to be.”
“You think I don’t care for you?” 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.
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.”
Yews do not break, came the Nightmare’s menacing rebuttal. They bend.
The Nightmare hissed. His thoughts swaddled me in darkness. Five hundred years became nothing, Jespyr shifting to a visage of Ayris, lying unmoving between the twin alders. And I understood, better than I ever had, how he had become a monster. His life had been a never-ending barter. He had given his time, his focus, his love, for magic. He’d wielded it with great authority. But it was magic that had taken his kingdom, his family, his body, his soul. It was balance, but it was not fair. And now he was full of agony, whittled down to something jagged—a tooth, a claw.
Do you? It’s the same thing you’ve thought for centuries, isn’t it? That this pain might never have occurred if you had simply played in the wood with Ayris as a child and never asked the Spirit for her blessings. You’d have never gotten the sword. Never bled onto the stone. You might have held your children as dearly as you did your Cards.
I softened my voice. For if you had, there would have never been any Cards at all. And none of this would have happened. He laughed, a bitter sound. And now you know that every terrible thing that happened in Blunder took place long before I handed Brutus Rowan a Scythe. It happened because, five hundred years ago, a boy wore a crown—had every abundance in the world—but always asked for MORE.
There’s a reason you are here a second time, I said to
