Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)

by Rachel Gillig

Mist seeped into the chamber through the window. It slipped through the cracks of the rotted-out ceiling, salt clawing at Ravyn’s eyes.

“Every look. Every word. You lived eleven years in Elspeth’s mind. There’s no knowing where she ended and you began.” A smile snaked across the Nightmare’s mouth. “No knowing at all.”

“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.”

For a kicked pup grows teeth, and teeth sink to bone. I will need him, one day, when I harvest the throne.

The forest was moving, yew trees rearranging themselves. Roots wrenched from the earth, clouding the air with dirt. Branches snapped and leaves whirled all around them, caught in the windstorm of shifting trees.

When I looked up, evening light was smothered behind grayness. It cloistered around the chamber like a wool blanket, seeping into the meadow, reeking of salt. Mist.

Elspeth—her voice was everywhere. A thousand rose petals falling over him.

Ayris and I stepped into the alderwood, and the mist homed in on my sister. It shot into her nose, her mouth. She gasped—breathed it in— And the warmth of the sun snuffed out.

seemed the trees were not the only ones who wanted a pound of flesh. Animals with sharp shoulder blades and silver eyes stalked forward. Wolves, wildcats. Above, birds of prey darted between trees, far away and then—too close. A falcon dove, screeching as it swiped razor talons at the Nightmare. His sword flashed through the air. There was another terrible screech, then feathers and blood rained.

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.

“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.”

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