One Dark Window (The Shepherd King, #1)

by Rachel Gillig

It was the history of our kingdom—an ancient homage to the Spirit of the Wood—to take the name of the trees.

eyes. “No, Miss Spindle,” he said. “I’m not nice at all.”

You are more special than you know. And it pains me to think I might have hurt you. I’m—sorry.” He paused. “Trees, I’m sorry.”

“It is not they who bring the reckoning, Ravyn. It is you. It is us.”

I inhaled him, leather and smoke and cedar, settling into his arms like a rabbit in its warm, safe den.

I had not fit into anyone’s arms like that since childhood. And even then, no one had ever held me so tightly—as if they needed me in their arms as much as I needed to be held. As if nothing else mattered but to hold one another. As if we had all the time in the world.

draft. It struck a fire in me I had never tended, wild, unfettered. I wanted it to burn me to pieces—for him to burn me to pieces.

Just like the bird of his namesake, there was pronounced intelligence in Ravyn Yew’s gray eyes. When he looked at me, I felt seen, known. There was a line between us, drawn by fate and magic, that stretched out over space and time. Ravyn and I had walked that line our entire lives, unaware we were headed straight for each other. I saw myself in his cautious eyes and in the darkness that swam in my veins, and though I had not realized it until that very moment, there was magic between us that had nothing to do with blood or Providence Cards or anything in between.