Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)

by Rachel Gillig

My thoughts festered until my mind turned septic.

“I’m not sorry he’s broken—only that it was not me doing the breaking.” Elm took a deep drink. “Does that make me wicked?” “If it does, you and I are the same kind of wicked.”

The relief was like stepping indoors after a winter night’s watch—so warm, it hurt.

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.

One the hunter, and the other the fox who had grown so tired of being hunted, he’d forged his own snare.