Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)

by Rachel Gillig

To anyone who’s ever felt lost in a wood. 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.

Time passed without mark. If there was a sun, it did not reach me at dawn. I passed minutes and hours and days afloat a tide of nothingness, my mind empty but for one thought. Let me out.

I was whole, swallowed by the water’s comfort. No pain, no memory, no fear, no hope.

I was the darkness and the darkness was me, and together we rolled with the tide, lulled toward a shore I could neither see nor hear. All was water—all was salt.

“Elspeth Spindle,” he said quietly, his eyes—so strange and yellow—ensnaring me. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Ravyn paid the mist no mind. He, too, was of salt. Sweat, blood, and magic.

It was his castle—the one in ruins, she’d told him, her charcoal eyes wet with tears as she spoke of the Shepherd King, the voice in her head. He’s buried beneath the stone in the chamber at Castle Yew.

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

“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.

“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 like the rest of us.”

That’s when I heard it—the songs my father used to hum as he wrote his book. But when I entered, he was not there. It was the woman who hummed as she raked her hands through the soil above Father’s grave.”

“Twice the maiden visited and dug at his headstone. She wandered through the meadow, the ruins.” Her lips drew into a tight line. “But when dawn came, her yellow eyes shifted to a charcoal color. So I came back here, to his grave. To watch. To wait.”

“We’ve waited a long time for Father,” Tilly said, her gaze turning upward, as if she were speaking now to only the yew tree. Her voice grew firm, her fingers curling like talons in her lap. “We will keep waiting, until his task is done.”

“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.”

Elm glanced down at her, wondering if she understood the fate that awaited her at Stone. If she knew this was likely the last time she’d leave her family’s home and travel the forest road. If she’d look back. She didn’t.

“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.”

Elspeth’s black eyes were gone. In their place, catlike irises, vivid and yellow, lit by a man five hundred years dead.

“You asked for the truth. Truth bends, Ravyn Yew. We must all bend along with it. If we do not, well…” His yellow eyes flared. “Then we will break.”

“The Twin Alders is the only Card of its kind,” the Nightmare continued. “It gives its user the power to speak to our deity, the Spirit of the Wood. And it is she who guards it. She will have a price for the last Card of the Deck. Nothing comes free.”

“Every look. Every word. You lived eleven years in Elspeth’s mind. There’s no knowing where she ended and you began.”

“For five hundred years, I fractured in the dark. A man, slowly twisting into something terrible. I saw no sun, no moon. All I could do was remember the terrible things that had happened. So I forged a place to put away the King who once lived—all his pain—all his memories. A place of rest.”

They stared at one another, two Kings with murder behind their eyes. Rowan green, Nightmare yellow—and five hundred years of imbalance between them.

“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.”

“I could have let him shoot you. I might have fled with the Scythe. But I didn’t.” “Out of the goodness of your heart.” Elm took another step forward. “If only you had any.” “I saved your life,” Ione said again, sharper this time. “Everything has a cost.”

“Neither you nor your red Card mean a thing to me, Prince. I only want balance. I saved your life.” Her hazel eyes burned into his. “Now it’s your turn to save mine.”

The boy with gray eyes bent to one knee. Peered into my face. Sighed. “You’re with us, but you’re never really here, are you, Father?”

I walked into the breaking waves. Swam with all my might. Screamed and swallowed brine. Kicked and clawed at the water until my muscles gave out. I fell beneath the waves— And sank deeper into darkness.

“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?”

“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 will, Renelm. You’ll resign as Destrier. And you and Ione Hawthorn will pretend all is as it ever was, until I am ready to announce your succession. And her execution.”

Ione’s grip on his arm tightened. So tight that when she stood, she pulled Elm with her. “Come, Prince. Let’s get drunk.”

“Yes.” Ravyn stripped off his gloves and threw them onto the floor. “The one and only Shepherd King. Save yourself the agony of speaking with him. He’s remarkably vile.” “I might be, too, after living five hundred years,” muttered Thistle.

“It won’t be like stalking the forest road and ambushing caravans,” Ravyn warned. “The wood we travel into—no one’s been there for centuries. I don’t know what awaits us.”

“It is injustice enough that the spirits of your children keep wait while you, monstrous, remain. But Elspeth is not a spirit you can ignore. She is not dead. Let. Her. Out.”

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.”

“My girlish fancies of marrying a Prince were quick to die. Your brother’s charm was skin-deep. The real Hauth beat and clawed his way through life.” Each word was the prick of a pin. “Sooner or later, someone was going to claw him back. And my dearest cousin, or what is left of her, was merciless in the task.”

Lords and ladies stood around me as I took my seat in my late father’s chair. The one forged of old, bent trees. “Long live Taxus,” came my court’s jubilant call. “Long live the Shepherd King.”

The journey to the Twin Alders will three barters take. The first comes at water—a dark, mirrored lake. The lake did indeed look like a silver mirror. It reflected the sky, the trees—their faces—upon its smooth, indifferent surface.

“The freedom you seek has always been here, behind the mask. Be who you like. Love the infected woman. Steal, betray. Flout the King’s law. Stay.”

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.

“Your stone veneer is crumbling, Ravyn Yew. Who will be waiting on the other side when the mask slips away? Captain? Highwayman? Or beast yet unknown?”

“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.”

“No. But I can read her well enough.” I tilted my head to the side, hawklike. “Perhaps one day I’ll make a Card to read your mind, too, Brutus Rowan.”

The wind stirred their branches. To enter a mind is a treacherous walk. There are doors that are meant to remain behind lock. If you wish for that nightmare, give yourself to her, whole. For an eleventh Providence Card— The Spirit demands your soul.

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.”

A muscle feathered in her jaw. “If you believe that you understand who I was before the Maiden, just because you once saw me ride through the wood with mud on my ankles, then you are not as clever as you think you are.”

“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.”

It wasn’t just Gorse who died in that courtyard today.” His yellow gaze reached into the darkest parts of Ravyn. “But the Captain of the Destriers as well.”