Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)

by Rachel Gillig

But her eyes were burning. Vibrant hazel, they were the color of a green field, punctuated by autumn leaves. Amber sap, slipping over moss. Heat and life and anger—so much anger they flared, even in the darkness of his shadow.

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.

For a kicked pup grows teeth, and teeth sink to bone. I will need him, one day, when I harvest the throne.

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.

He has looked pain in the eye—and refused to let it make a monster of him.”

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.”