Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)

by Rachel Gillig

“You’ve heard of him, I suppose.” Her lips curled in a smile. “He’s a strange man, my father. Wary. Clever. Good.” Ravyn’s breath faltered. “The Shepherd King is your father?” Her smile faded, her yellow eyes growing distant. “They did not give him a King’s burial. Perhaps that is why he does not…” Her gaze returned to Ravyn. “You haven’t seen him with your Mirror Card, have you? He promised he would find us when he passed through the veil. But he has not come.”

The girl turned, her eyes tracing the woods on the other side of the meadow. “Mother is over there, somewhere. She does not come as often as she did. Ilyc and Afton linger near the statuary. Fenly and Lenor keep to your castle.” Her brow furrowed.

“Bennett is often somewhere else. He did not die here. Not li...

“How did he die?” She looked away, her fingers dancing a silent rhythm on the yew branch. “I don’t know. They caught me first.” Her voice quieted. “I passed through the veil before my father and brothers.”

“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.”

“That’s impossible.” The Nightmare merely grinned. “Is it? Magic is a strange, fickle thing.”

Even saying Elspeth Spindle was alive felt less than true. “I don’t know.” Elm gritted his teeth. “Does it bother you that she tore your betrothed limb from limb?” Ione kept her eyes ahead. “As much as it bothers you, I imagine.”

“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.”

“Is it any wonder, if women discovered the Maiden’s true potential, its healing power, that they kept it a secret?”

“You gave Bennett Providence Cards. I want one as well.”

“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?”

My claws would find no purchase in a Rowan who is already broken.

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.

“What Prince Renelm means,” Ione said, her voice easy, “is that, while he merely warms Prince Hauth’s seat, that seat,” she said, gesturing to the chair under Beech’s narrow bottom, “belongs to me, your future Queen.” She threw her gaze over her shoulder at Elm. “Unless you’d like to see me take my seat atop the Prince’s lap.”

Elm hesitated only a moment, partially because the Chalice always turned the wine sour, partially because of the low, hot twinge in his gut that told him, 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.

I was cold—that there was cracked stone beneath my hand.”

“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.”

“Keep your cut shallow,” he said. “Don’t give her a scar.”

“The sword the Spirit gave me has been my crook. I have moved forests to make a bountiful kingdom—shepherded the land. Now it’s time for me to shepherd Blunder’s people. You are the Spirit’s eyes—her ears and mouth. You know her mind. Tell me, what must I do to make magic safer?”

I swallowed. “I want a way to keep magic from degenerating. To heal the fever.” The trees swayed. There will be a way. But there are many barters to make before that day comes. I paused. “Then I want to be strong. Give me great strength.” The wind picked up, smelling of salt. Bring a black horse from your stable, young Taxus.

I took Bennett to the wood. Asked the Spirit to bless him with her magic. A day later, his infant veins were dark as ink. His magic was the antithesis of mine, the trees told me. My heir, my counterweight.

the Spirit christened Tilly with the fever, and she was granted strange, wonderful magic. She could heal. With a single touch of her little hand, Tilly could wipe away any wound—and often did so without intention.

“It is you who should be wary, my clever friend. With Cards such as these, people will come to you, not the Spirit of the Wood, for magic. She will not thank you for it.”

“Another century would have been too soon,” Ravyn bit back. “At least then I might have had more than a single moment with the woman you stole from me.”

“I don’t know what happened to your children. But I know you would not want to see Elspeth harmed. It is perhaps the only thing I understand about you.”

“Nightmare,” he said through his teeth. The monster laughed as he slipped out of the fort. “She’ll live. All I did was pay her back for breaking your nose.” “I didn’t ask you to do that.” “No. But Elspeth did.”

“I imagine there is an Ione,” he said, “buried somewhere in there, who might appreciate a little niceness from a Rowan.”

“I was in a meadow. There was snow on the ground outside a small stone chamber. The Yew family was there, carrying a frail boy in their arms.” Her voice quieted. “You were there, too, Prince. As were my father and Uncle Erik.” Elm went cold. “Was the boy Emory?” “Yes. A tall man I’ve never seen before guarded me with a sword. He had yellow eyes, just as Elspeth does now. He took my hand, unfurled my fingers. There were three Cards, nestled in my palm. The Maiden, the Scythe—” Her hazel eyes lifted. “And the Twin Alders.”

“There are many circles that draw through time,” he said. “Many mirrored events, many woods that inevitably lead us to the same place. Much of what happened five hundred years ago has happened again.” His eyes narrowed. “But not this. You will not make a monster out of him as you did me, forcing him to give up a sister. Let go of Jespyr Yew. Or I will cleave your roots from this earth.”

The Shepherd King had described the Spirit of the Wood in The Old Book of Alders as neither kin, foe, nor friend. He might have saved ink and called her what she truly was. A proper asshole.

“You said to her, ‘Magic sways, like salt water on a tide. I believe the Spirit is the moon, commanding the tide. She pulls us in, but also sets us free. She is neither good nor evil. She is magic—balance. Eternal.’”

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.”

Follow Ione into the wood, he said. Get to her—then meet me in the stone chamber. We’re going to end this, Elm. All of it.

“I wanted a better Blunder for her. If you perish, that Blunder will never exist.”