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Get up, called the voice in my head. Get up, Elspeth.
Ooh interesting name
Still, it was the first time I stopped fearing the Nightmare—the voice in my head, the creature with strange yellow eyes and an eerie, smooth voice. Eleven years later, and I don’t fear him at all. Even if I should.
The nightmare was a he.. Assuming an older man? And he had helped her to a good degree to escape..
I felt him watching Ione through my eyes. When he spoke, his voice was slick with oil. Yellow girl, soft and clean. Yellow girl, plain—unseen. Yellow girl, overlooked. Yellow girl, won’t be Queen. Hush, I said, turning my back to my cousin.
??? There's Someone within her watching through her eyes!??
There were always irises in the parlor. “Such a lackluster flower,” Nerium said, watching me, her eyes narrowing as they slid over the irises. “I can’t understand what your father sees in them.”
Oh she a rude type
My father kept irises in the house for a simple reason. Iris had been my mother’s name.
Awwww
Most grievous of all, he had once been Captain of the very men called to hunt down those who carried magic—like myself.
... So in this world they use magical artifacts but purge those who inherit a natural affinity after what seems like an awakening?
Even after all these years—the death of my mother, my infection—he always gave me yarrow on my nameday. “The fairest of all yarrow”—that’s what he called me as a child.
Is this a retelling of beauty and the beast or cinderella or snow white??
“We have a happy arrangement, Elspeth. You stay away from court, quiet and out of sight, and your father pays the Hawthorns—handsomely, I might add—to keep you.” Keep me. Like I was a horse at my uncle’s stable.
Tf is this situation exactly?
You’d have me stay after that? I bit back. Yes. Because running, dear one, is exactly what she wants from you.
He clocked it. That's precisely why you should have spite her wishes
Some small hope told me Ione might leave my father’s house early to follow me—that we might walk the forest road together—but the bell chimed seven times and she had not come.
Girlie your cousin isn't a real one at the end of the day.
I waited for them to leave, my uncle fool enough not to lock the Card away, and I stole into the heart of the room.
... Was it really left unguarded like that by accident or was it a trap for her.. ?
unbelievable softness along the ridges of the Nightmare Card as my finger slipped across it.
Ah she cooked.. First thing you don't fing do is touch what isnt yours
At first, I thought I had absorbed the Card itself—its magic. But despite all my efforts, I could not speak into the minds of others. I could speak to only the voice—the monster, the Nightmare.
Ah.. I guess in a way she was spared by the Nightmare Card.. She did not manifest any harsher or more prominent symptoms of magic due to the card being around
But no matter how often I asked, he would not tell me who he was or how he had come to exist in the Nightmare Card. Eleven years, we’ve been together. Eleven years, and I’ve never told a soul.
This is strange but ok a cool companion stuck together due to circumstances
“Where are you going, Jayne?” Tell him you have nothing of value. So they might take their gain in flesh? I don’t think so.
... Ugh creepy men.. either want your money or your body but they will not let you go
“Don’t come here again,” I said, my voice not entirely my own.
They will 100% come back proclaiming she's infected or whatever like its a witch hunt and her family will 1000% betray her
Do you think they realized I’m infected? They’re Card thieves. Report you, and they report themselves.
... Hmm ok ok
My magic moves, he said. My magic bites. My magic soothes. My magic frights. You are young and not so bold. I am unflinching—five hundred years old.
Goddamn he old asf.. Atp he's a better gaurdian than her actual guardians
My uncle cast his wife a weary look. “I’ve been saving it.” His eyes flickered to Ione. “For a rainy day.”
Ah.. Marriage dowry for his girl
“The Spirit tricked him, telling him how to lift the mist only after he’d bartered his Twin Alders Card. Without his final Card, the Shepherd King could not unite the Deck. And so he never lifted the mist. No King ever has.” “No King ever will,” my mother had mused. “Not until someone finds the Twin Alders Card and the Deck is completed. Until then…”
The lore is fantastic
I groaned. Lord Laburnum’s second son, the one with eyes the color of river rocks. The boy who’d sat next to me at the King’s table and made me laugh when I was seventeen—the last time I’d attended Equinox. The boy I’d been foolish enough, bored enough, to kiss. “Alyx. Alyx Laburnum.”
Side eye just out of boredom nahh fam you won't catch me lacking like that
“And we no longer like Alyx, is that it?” I waved my hand through the air, a dismissal. “Maybe I never liked him. Maybe he was just… there.”
She's matured in her understanding of the situation unlike for other book characters (looking at you Emmy from 'Payback's a Witch' by Lana Harper
Or perhaps I would grow sick and, no matter how I tried to hide it, waste away to nothingness. Like my mother had.
Oh.. That's how she passed.. That's really tragic that she got the same thing her mother did..
do not let a fever eleven years past keep you from living your life, Elspeth. You’re young. You still have so much ahead of you.” She wrinkled her nose and lowered her gaze back to her work. “If not for your own enjoyment, go for mine. I would pay good money to watch Nerium Spindle squirm.”
Aunt is really sweet and one of my favorite characters so far
“There once was a girl,” he murmured, “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.”
Ooh this story about to be deep
The Shepherd King had made seventy-eight Providence Cards in descending order. There were twelve Black Horses, held exclusively by the King’s elite guard—the Destriers. Eleven Golden Eggs. Ten Prophets. Nine White Eagles. Eight Maidens. Seven Chalices. Six Wells. Five Iron Gates. Four Scythes. Three Mirrors. Two Nightmares. And one Twin Alders.
No wonder no king could unite the deck that's too many damn cards tf
The Hawthorn tree carries few seeds. Its branches are weary, it’s lost all its leaves. Be wary the man who bargains and thieves. He’ll offer your soul to get what he needs.
.... That's Ominous asf
“Father asked, when he presents the Nightmare Card to the King, that I come with him.”
......... Oh god. He's Selling his daughter to the Throne to be either become the next queen or a mistress in exchange for the card.. This uncle is looking more and more like a creep
Too slowly, I began to understand. “Wait, is Uncle trading the Nightmare Card… so that you and the High Prince may become acquainted?” Ione shrugged, kicking a loose stone out ahead of her. “Would that be a horrible thing?”
... These poor babies
“That Hauth Rowan does not exist, Ione. You’ve made him up in your mind.”
This conversation sounds too much like adults talking than kids.. How old are they???
My laughter was hollow. “Better distrustful than delusional.” There was redness in Ione’s cheeks—rarely displayed anger in her hazel eyes. “Having hope does not make me delusional, Elspeth,” she said.
That literally is what delulu is gal.. At least in current day
Most faces I had not seen in years, but I knew them by the tree insignias sewn into their tunics and gowns. Spindle, Hawthorn, Juniper, Beech, Gorse, Ash, and so on. It was the history of our kingdom—an ancient homage to the Spirit of the Wood—to take the name of the trees.
Kind of ironic considering how no one takes homage toward the Wood Spirit anymore bc of the mist and plague like infections that come from it
