Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)

by Rachel Gillig

But he knew better now. And it humiliated him that he’d ever thought the women he’d bedded had seen the real him. They hadn’t. Mostly because he hadn’t let them. He’d reached into women to find himself, when all he really wanted was for someone to look at him. To admit they knew what had happened to him as a boy and still hold him, unflinching, in their gaze.

And all that rage, walled up deep inside him—Elm let it out. He yelled into the night and the night answered, his echo reaching over treetops and into valleys, a war cry. He yelled for that boy, small and brutalized, who’d needed saving. He yelled for his helplessness—the rope he’d corded around his own neck, tethering himself

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.