Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)

by Rachel Gillig

When the Destriers found him, Elm was looking up at the moon, bright and indifferent, worrying its way across the sky.

I get its for the story but this was uneccessary

No more riddles, my friend. What is it you truly want? To keep on rewriting things, he said. Eleven years I took from you, Elspeth Spindle. When I go, I aim to leave you a better Blunder than the one I forged as King. I turned my name over in my mouth. Elspeth Spindle. I’m not sure who that is without you. You will learn. You’ll meet yourself—without me—soon enough.

Why am i crying

Your inability to use the Cards—that, I did recognize.” Warmth stole over his mind. “Along with your nose.”

Ok im crying

I will take the throne of Blunder back. But not for you.” He straightened his spine, fixing Ravyn in his unflinching gaze. “For Elm.”

PERIOD

Your cousin Elm has done more than Brutus Rowan or I ever could. He has looked pain in the eye—and refused to let it make a monster of him.”

PER I OD

We were back in the alderwood. Only now— There was snow on the ground.

Oh shit

“You won’t win,” he said again. “For nothing is safe, and nothing is free. Debt follows all men, no matter their plea. When the Shepherd returns, a new day shall ring. Death to the Rowans.” His gray eyes focused, homing in on Elm. “Long live the King.”

After that, you can love me as thoroughly as you like.

Ive missed them

kill you to be civil? I’m already dead. But yes. Decidedly. He opened his eyes a sliver. Peeked at Ione. “Elspeth is lecturing me.”

Oh, give her a hug. Don’t be grotesque.

Lmaooooo i love him

When his hands were free, he shook them at his sides and looked down at my cousin, a flush sliding over his marred skin. “Hey, Hawthorn.”

Dont make me cry rn

The Nightmare and I stared. We seem to have missed something rather important, I said. Small mercies.

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.

“Neither Rowan nor Yew, but somewhere between. A pale tree in winter, neither red, gold, nor green. Black hides the bloodstain, but washes the realm. First of his name—King of the Elms.”

he became King of Blunder, Elm looked up into the night sky. Held Ione Hawthorn close. He knew, in all the rotten, broken pieces of himself, that everything in his life had led to that moment, as if written in the lines of the trees. A crooked, wonderful circle, with his name in the heart of it.

Upon it rested the ancient adornments of Aemmory Percyval Taxus and Brutus Rowan. Gilded, bloodstained. Two twisted crowns.

“I thought I was the father she deserved. That I could carry her through this terrible, violent world. I hadn’t done it well with my own children, and when I woke in her young mind, the first thing I felt, after five hundred years of fury”—his voice softened—“was wonder. Quiet and gentle. I remembered what it was to care for someone.” “She gave me that, too.”

“Destroy it,” he whispered. “With the final Nightmare Card gone, my soul will disappear. Her degeneration will have nothing to cling to. She will return. And I…” His voice faded. “I will finally rest.”

“And I was not yet ready to bid Elspeth goodbye.”

“She’s clawed through hell with me.” His voice grew colder. “It’s time to let her out.”

Here we are, my darling girl, he whispered to me. The end of all things. The last page of our story.

I don’t know what it will be like to finally slip through the veil, he whispered. I hope it is as it was, eleven years ago, when you freed me from the Nightmare Card, Elspeth Spindle. Quiet. Gentle. Full of wonder.

There once was a girl, 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— I couldn’t go on. Elspeth. No. I’m not ready. Not yet. Finish the story, dear one. My voice shook. The two were together— Together. So the two were the same. The girl, he whispered, honey and oil and silk. The King… We said the final words together, our voices echoing, listless, through the dark. A final note. An eternal farewell. And the monster they became.

Im crying

“They’re there,” he said, tucking the Mirror Card Elm had gifted him from Stone’s vault into his pocket. “All of them. Even Ayris this time. Even Bennett. All of them, with him.”

“A hundred years,” he said to her, as if she were the only one in the room. “I’ll love you for a hundred years—and an eternity after.”