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.

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

“Shall I tell you the story?” “What story?” “Ours, dear one.” I sat up straighter. “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.”

“Tear it off,” she said. “Now.” Elm brought her bottom lip into his mouth. Pressed it with the tips of his teeth. “Beg me to.”

“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.” “She gave me that, too.”

I AM CRYING OMG😭🥹

“And I was not yet ready to bid Elspeth goodbye.”

😭😭😭

“Goodbye, Taxus. Be wary. Be clever. Be good.”

Cried my eyes out

A final note. An eternal farewell. And the monster they became.

😢

“A hundred years,” he said to her, as if she were the only one in the room. “I’ll love you for a hundred years—and an eternity after.”