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August 10 - August 24, 2025
“Aemmory Percyval Taxus.” He dragged his gauntlets across the sand. “That’s my name.”
All I could do was remember the terrible things that had happened. So I forged a place to put away the King who once lived—all his pain—all his memories. A place of rest.”
“Listen closely. The journey to the twelfth Card will three barters take. The first comes at water—a dark, mirrored lake. The second begins at the neck of a wood, where you cannot turn back, though truly, you should.” The Nightmare’s gaze shifted to Ravyn. His words came out sharp, as if to draw blood. “The last barter waits in a place with no time. A place of great sorrow and bloodshed and crime. No sword there can save you, no mask hide your face. You’ll return with the Twin Alders… “But you’ll never leave that place.”
The Black Horse. Elm tapped it three times, harnessing an old weapon he always kept with him. He may have been less powerful without Ravyn and Jespyr—but he had enough rage for the three of them.
Like the fox carved above his chamber door, Elm was cunning, and slow to trust. With only a few glances, he could map body language—hear the shift of breath just before a lie—sense a person’s energy without having to speak to them.
Ice. Stone. Stillness. Silence. “Be still,” he said to himself. “Be still.” He kept saying the words, willing the world around him to yield to his Scythe. Be still, be still. BE STILL. When he opened his eyes, the throne room was frozen in place.
He’d known from the start that this wasn’t the real Ione Hawthorn. This was how the Maiden Card had remade her, masking her in unearthly beauty. Caging her. Protecting her. Healing her.
My father never let me touch his Providence Cards. But the Maiden—the Maiden I was gifted freely, like a horse a lump of sugar. Something sweet to distract me from the bit they shoved in my mouth.” She lowered her chin, hair spilling over her shoulder. “Is it any wonder, if women discovered the Maiden’s true potential, its healing power, that they kept it a secret?”
“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?”
Above rowan and yew, the elm tree stands tall. It waits along borders, a sentry at call. Quiet and guarded and windblown and marred, its bark whispers stories of a boy-Prince once scarred. His voice in Ravyn’s mind went eerily soft. 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.”
after this, there was no going back. 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.
Something felt wrong. Very wrong. Like Elm had opened a door he shouldn’t have. A door that kept dark, unspoken things tucked away. He had a door of his own just like it.
“Your brother seemed to understand, better than I’d realized, that he was cruel, and that I, his future wife, carried my heart upon my sleeve. He decided, without hesitation, that I should be the one to change and not him. That life would be infinitely better for the both of us if I simply felt nothing at all.”
“I’ve been looking for Hauth in your face. For temper or cruelty or indifference.” She leaned forward. “But I can’t find any. I see guile, tiredness, fear. Anger, without a trace of violence.” She drew in a breath. “You are both Rowans—and less similar than I ever imagined.”
“There you are.” He wrapped me in his arms, holding me against his armored chest like a father would a child. “One day, you will be nothing more than memory, Elspeth Spindle. But not yet.”
It made Elm feel powerful, watching the brute cower. It made him feel like Ravyn.
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.
“You think you’re special—that the hurt Hauth dealt you was personal. It wasn’t.” His words were ragged. “What happened to you has happened to Rowan Princes for centuries. It takes an understanding of pain to wield the Scythe. When you have a son, he will learn as well.”
Elm didn’t believe the Spirit of the Wood took note of the fleeting lives of men. But if she did, he swore she’d mapped his future in the twisted rings of the trees. That she’d designed his every failure, his every fear, to get to this moment. He’d needed Ravyn to leave him behind. Needed to face the throne, his father, the Rowan in him, alone.
“Aren’t you meant to be wooing Blunder’s daughters?” “I intend to. One, in particular.”
No one who feels nothing would work so tirelessly to get their feelings back.
“I’d be your King, but always your servant. Never your keeper.”
Ahead, Jespyr’s voice grew more frenzied. “The voices of the trees are clever. Isn’t that right, Shepherd King? It is they who spoke the words you penned in your precious book. They who warned you against magic. They whom you did not heed.”
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.
You wrote Blunder’s history, Aemmory Percyval Taxus. Now rewrite it.
There were not enough pages in all the books Elm had read, in all the libraries he’d wandered, in all the notebooks he’d scrawled, that could measure—denote or describe—just how beautiful she was. “There you are.”
“I can guess what it is you want from me, Taxus. But I am not the dark bird of your revenge.
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.”
“For mercy’s sake.” The Nightmare spat phlegm onto roots. “Shut the fuck up.”
Then he heard it. The thing he’d waited for around every corner, listened for in every pause. Ravyn’s voice.
Hauth’s eyes went wide and he took a step back, the only man he’d ever feared standing in front of him—marking him.
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.”
“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.”
The Nightmare clung only a moment longer to his namesake Card, then released it into Ravyn’s hand. “And I was not yet ready to bid Elspeth goodbye.”
“Don’t you want to say goodbye?” “To you, stupid bird?” Ravyn crossed his arms over his chest. “To her, parasite.”
Here we are, my darling girl, he whispered to me. The end of all things. The last page of our story. I tried to reach out for him like I used to, but it was me, not him, trapped in the darkness. This time, he reached for me. Just know that I am sorry, Elspeth. His presence was a hand against my cheek. I was too long in the dark. And I am sorry for that, too. For I dragged you in with me. It was well worth it, I said. To unite the Deck and lift the mist. To watch you right old wrongs. I’d do it all again, just to know you a little better, Taxus. He said nothing to that, reticent to accept, even
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