Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)

by Rachel Gillig

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.

“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.”

“Aemmory Percyval Taxus.” He dragged his gauntlets across the sand. “That’s my name.”

“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.”

“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 King’s eyes blazed. “You agreed to marry Hauth, knowing you’d be tethering him to a family that carried sickness? You disgust me.” “The disgust,” Ione said, her tone idle, “is mutual.”

“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.”

You cannot imagine the rage that comes with having no control over your own thoughts—your own body. You, traitorous thing, who have never truly ceded authority. Liar, thief—immune to the Chalice and Scythe—you know nothing of losing control.” His lips twisted, snarl letting to a smile. “But you will. You will learn, just as I did, what it feels like to lose yourself in the wood.”

“Developed a taste for removing my clothes, have you, Prince?”

“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.”

In the wood, the spindle is slight. A delicate tree against hail, wind, and might. But how the tree carries, and how the roots dig. She weathers all storms, no matter their bite.

“But, if you’d humor an old man just once more,” he said, “you’d let me tell you what a fine King you’d make—what a blessing you’d be to those of us who still hope to see a better future for this cold, unfeeling place.”

“I’d be your King, but always your servant. Never your keeper.”

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 think about how easy it would be to do horrible things if I felt I had a good reason.”

“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.”

“It’s hardly my fault, Elspeth,” he muttered under his breath, “that I am constantly surrounded by idiots.”

And though it had taken slow, painful time, I knew who I was without him. I was more than the girl, the King, and the monster of Blunder’s dark, twisted tale. I was its author.