Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)

by Rachel Gillig

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

This was the Shepherd King’s body. He was truly dead. But his soul carried on, buried deep in Elspeth Spindle, the only woman Ravyn had ever loved.

“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.”

“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.”

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.”

“Careful with that finger, Hawthorn. I told you, I’m delicate.”

“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?”

Elspeth. Shepherd King. Nightmare.

Ione was quiet a long moment. “I may not feel despair,” she finally said, “but I am still lost. I have disappeared into the Maiden, just as Elspeth has into you. And I want to be freed.”

“Because I have to be,” Elm said in one breath. “I care not what they say about me at court, even if it is that I’m a rotten Prince and a piss-poor Destrier.” He leaned closer. “But I do want it said, loud enough so everyone hears, that I am nothing like Hauth.”

Above rowan and yew, the elm tree stands tall. It waits along borders, a sentry at call. Quiet and guarded and windblown and marred, its bark whispers stories of a boy-Prince once scarred. His voice in Ravyn’s mind went eerily soft. 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.”

“Does that make me wicked?” “If it does, you and I are the same kind of wicked.”

“What,” Jespyr called, incredulous, “is a Taxus?” “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.”

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.

And yet Ayris was still the sun to me. Even in the wood, cold and gray with mist, her presence was a light, a warmth. I wanted her near me, for there are some things not even magic can erase.

You are the Shepherd King—the author of everything I have ever known. You wrote Blunder’s history, Aemmory Percyval Taxus. Now rewrite it.

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

Don’t die. I won’t. Because if you do, and we never get the time we’re owed, I’ll hate you, Ravyn Yew. I’ll love you and hate you forever.

For he was the Nightmare, and the Nightmare was the King, and I was both of them.

“It’s hardly my fault, Elspeth,” he muttered under his breath, “that I am constantly surrounded by idiots.”

Upon it rested the ancient adornments of Aemmory Percyval Taxus and Brutus Rowan. Gilded, bloodstained. Two twisted crowns.

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

Elspeth Spindle. Quiet. Gentle. Full of wonder.

We said the final words together, our voices echoing, listless, through the dark. A final note. An eternal farewell. And the monster they became.

I knew who I was without him. I was more than the girl, the King, and the monster of Blunder’s dark, twisted tale. I was its author.