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September 25 - October 4, 2025
No. Ravyn wouldn’t accept it. “Tell me how to reach her.” “Why would I when it is such a delight, watching you unravel?” Ravyn’s hand fell to his belt and the ivory hilt upon it. “You will. When we leave this wretched castle, you will tell me how to reach Elspeth.” The Nightmare’s smile was a thinly veiled threat. “I know what I know. My secrets are deep. But long have I kept them. And long will they keep.”
GO TO WAR RAVYN
The Maiden hadn’t made her taller, hadn’t—thank the bloody trees—diminished any of her remarkable curves.
Elm you horny bastard
His eyes raked over her. Had Elm not noticed the dip in her throat, the swell of her breasts as she breathed—the shape of her thighs beneath her dress—he might have kept his eyes on the road. Had he kept his eyes to the road— He might have seen the highwaymen.
AGAIN
He ran a finger down Ione’s bare calf, his muddy glove leaving a mark upon her. “Trees, your skin is cold.” Ione’s entire body went still, her leg tensing under the highwayman’s touch. Elm’s voice came from the back of his throat. “Get your fucking hand off of her.”
SHIP SHIP SHIP
The world around Elm crumbled, and suddenly he wasn’t hitting a stranger in a mask anymore, but his own brother, his father—even Ravyn.
Omg angry redhead
“I need your help, Prince. The knots have tightened with rainwater.” “And you mistook me for your maid?” “Don’t tell me you’re uncomfortable undressing a woman.”
Elm be fr
Elm forced his eyes back to the fire.
Elm this is pitiful just bang her
“You wear a lot of black,” she murmured. “For a Prince.”
Hes a destrier girl
It was one of the garments he wore when he moonlit as a highwayman.
You just have that lying around the castle
He put a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. Don’t be turned by her beauty. We’ve enough on our plate already. Elm’s smile did not touch his eyes. He rolled his shoulder, and Ravyn’s hand fell. Because you’ve never been turned by a beautiful woman, have you, Captain?
Cousins bro wtf.
But his tolerance for stillness was less evolved than Ravyn’s. Even when he imagined himself perfectly still, his boot tapped.
Bro is adhd
“A dead man could have wielded the Scythe sooner than you.”
He was too busy worrying about ione
“Was she not staying at Castle Yew? Nested like a cuckoo under my Captain’s bloody nose?” “In his defense,” Elm said, “it’s a rather large nose.”
Elm be fr
The urge to scrape his teeth across her palm—to press her skin like clay and test her fortitude—was overwhelming.
HORNY
He kept his eyes forward the way Ravyn always did, determined not to look into the cells, knowing they were empty—and had not always been so.
Did they do a mass execution
“But I do want it said, loud enough so everyone hears, that I am nothing like Hauth.”
Yassssss elm
“You cut her hair?” The Nightmare jerked out of his grasp. “It was matted with blood.” Ravyn peered back through the cellar’s open door. A pair of scissors sat upon the old wooden table. There were chunks of dark hair on the floor. Whatever crossed his face stopped the Nightmare in his tracks. The monster peered through narrowed eyes, dropping his gaze to Ravyn’s knotted hands. “It will grow back,” he said slowly. Ravyn pushed ahead without another word. When he passed a Black Horse tapestry, he ripped it off the wall with a violent yank, dusting his shoulders with mortar. He threw it to the
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I love this whole scene. A rare humanish moment from the nightmare and ravyn continually grappling with elspeths possession
“I told you once before, stupid bird. You must come invited into her mind.”
The Shepherd King, if nothing else, is a man of consent
He said it would be easier, being his betrothed, if I didn’t feel things so keenly.”
Fucking ew
Wherever that unquiet ache was, he wanted to find it. Touch it. Put his mouth on it.
ReNELM!!!!
“Ione. Wait.” She didn’t.
Lmaoooo what a cockblock
“Are you with me, brother?” Something inside of Ravyn shattered. “I’m right behind you.”
OMG NOOOOOO
And it became so painfully clear what he needed to do.
They gon fuck
“When I bed you, Ione, I want you to feel it.”
To feed. And to fuel. What we consume, we pour back into the mist.
The mist is made of dead fucking bodies
“Blood is the price to unite the Deck. To lift the mist and heal the infection. Your price. And I will gladly pay it. Gladly die. I’ve been dying piece by piece since Emory grew sick.” His throat constricted. “I have died tenfold since Elspeth disappeared. And now your mist has claimed my sister. So do not speak to me of cost, Spirit.”
RAVYN
I’m nothing like you. But you are. More than you know. Ravyn met the Spirit of the Wood’s silver gaze. When he finally said the words, he knew, with every piece of himself, that they were true. “Taxus. My name is Taxus.”
RAVYNNNNNN
We were back in the alderwood. Only now— There was snow on the ground.
OH MY FUCKING GOD THEY TIME SKIPPED
Elm. Elm was alone, at Stone. With Hauth.
Bro is getting brutalized
The Destriers were not gentle. When the beating finished, someone shoved a crude cup into Elm’s hands. The wine was bitter, settling in all the dry places in his mouth.
Elm is a Christ figure
“Pray she forgives you for trading that Nightmare Card for a marriage to Hauth. Because I never will.”
Fight ur father in law elm
“But then I saw him on Market Day. Holding my daughter. Wrapping her in his arms the way I’d once held Iris in mine.
Im dying i think
He reached into his pocket—pulled out six Providence Cards. A Prophet. A Well. An Iron Gate. A Golden Egg. A White Eagle. A Chalice.
Oh my god there will be a war
And because he’d never said it when he first felt it, and never after she’d disappeared into the Shepherd King, he spoke one last time into Elspeth Spindle’s mind. I love you, too, Elspeth.
ONE LAST TIME???????!!!!!!!
Here we are, my darling girl, he whispered to me. The end of all things. The last page of our story.
sobbing rn
