Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)

by Rachel Gillig

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

threat. “I know what I know. My secrets are deep. But long have I kept them. And long will they keep.”

When the King wrenched his chamber door open, the Nightmare was perched like a gargoyle in an ornate high-back chair. They stared at one another, two Kings with murder behind their eyes. Rowan green, Nightmare yellow—and five hundred years of imbalance between them.

Her hair was woven in two perfect plaits, as if a woman who loved her had taken time to braid them with care.

“Blunder’s reckoning.” The Shepherd King’s grin was worse than any snarl. “I am the root and the tree. I am balance.”

“An old name, for an old, twisted tree.” When he caught Ravyn’s gaze lingering at his sword, he traced a pale finger over the hilt. “Surely you didn’t think it was sheep I shepherded.”

There were some things not even magic could erase.

There is no weakness in pain, Ravyn.

That he was not in some kind of pain every moment he was with her. It was all so terribly, wonderfully uncomfortable.

Everyone was afraid of Ravyn. Even, though he’d never admit it, the King.

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

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 Shepherd King had described the Spirit of the Wood in The Old Book of Alders as neither kin, foe, nor friend. He might have saved ink and called her what she truly was. A proper asshole.

“You stand here, hundreds of years in the past, and speak to me of power?” The smell of salt was everywhere. “The Shepherd King was born with the fever because I deemed it so. His children were gifted magic by me. Brutus Rowan took the throne because I did not intervene. Kings and monsters can be made, and butterflies can be crushed. All that you know, I have created. I am Blunder—her infection, her trees, her mist. I am brimming with magic.”

“Neither Rowan nor Yew, but somewhere between. A pale tree in winter, neither red, gold, nor green. Black hides the bloodstain, but washes the realm. First of his name—King of the Elms.”

“None of this might have happened without you, Elspeth,” Ione whispered. “And isn’t that such a beautiful thing.”