Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)

by Rachel Gillig

There is a strange sort of finding in losing.

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.

I did not know his face. But he knew mine. “Elspeth Spindle,” he said quietly, his eyes—so strange and yellow—ensnaring me. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

He was truly dead. But his soul carried on, buried deep in Elspeth Spindle, the only woman Ravyn had ever loved.

“Aemmory Percyval Taxus.”

“Not far. Yet it is farther than you’ve ever gone before.”

“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.”

You’ll return with the Twin Alders… “But you’ll never leave that place.”

She smelled of outside—of rain and fields. A heady, wistful smell.

Ten minutes, he said to himself for the hundredth time in four days. It all might have been different had I gotten to Spindle House ten minutes sooner.

“Five hundred years have been wasted on women, is that it, Prince?”

“Men have no use for the Maiden. What is beauty to real power?

If he ever grew old enough to do so, he would tell this story to his children, with the firm lesson being don’t ever strike bargains with beautiful women.

“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?”

Elm loved games. The playing, the cheating, the winning. Mostly, he loved the measuring of his opponent, the unearthing of their limitations.

Elspeth. Shepherd King. Nightmare.

They looked like mirrors of each other—if one of the two had been dipped in ink.

“I am the root and the tree. I am balance.”

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.”

“Life is fragile. The line of kings, fragile.”

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.

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.”

It was as if the Nightmare had called out in the language of the wood. And the wood had stopped to listen.

he was strong. He’d never had a choice but to be strong.

my first words on that darkened shore became my last. “Let. Me. Out.”

The relief was like stepping indoors after a winter night’s watch—so warm, it hurt.

There is no weakness in pain, Ravyn.

“There can be no stony facade—no pretending—after this. Death demands to be felt.

“I don’t do well with long silences. I tend to overthink.”

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.

“The more time I spend with you, Prince, the less I seem to know you.”

He liked hearing his name on her lips far too well.

Hope. Delicate and thread-thin.

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

The yew tree is cunning, its shadow unknown. It bends without breaking, its secrets its own.

He had given his time, his focus, his love, for magic. He’d wielded it with great authority. But it was magic that had taken his kingdom, his family, his body, his soul.

It was balance, but it was not fair. And now he was full of agony, whittled down to something jagged—a tooth, a claw.

It happened because, five hundred years ago, a boy wore a crown—had every abundance in the world—but always asked for MORE.

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.

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.

“Human life is short. You are not as a tree, stoic and unyielding, but a butterfly. Delicate, fleeting. Inconsequential.”

‘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.’”

“For even dead, I will not die. I am the shepherd of shadow. The phantom of the fright. The demon in the daydream. The nightmare in the night.”

Like the gilded crown he’d once worn atop his head, time was a circle.

He has looked pain in the eye—and refused to let it make a monster of him.”

He’d pretended so long to be strong—but he wasn’t pretending now.

Every bit of skin, every hair follicle, felt like a rotten tooth—a raw nerve exposed. He was cold in ways that felt physically impossible.

Clever men died on their own terms. And if they were wary, clever, and good, they perhaps died in peace.

“I’ve never said any of it out loud. I wanted to see what it tasted like, being honest.”