One Dark Window (The Shepherd King, #1)

by Rachel Gillig

We smiled, and when we stood, the world around us faded, time and space, Prince and King, child and spirit. All that remained was magic—black as ink.

“They came in the night,” we said, “the black and red horde. They burned down my castle, put my kin to the sword. The usurper was crowned, though my blood had not dried. But he did not account for the turn of the tide. For nothing is safe, and nothing is free. Debt follows all men, no matter their plea. When the Shepherd returns, a new day shall ring. Death to the Rowans… “Long live the King.”

looked down at him, pitiless. This is the end, isn’t it? I murmured, darkness creeping across my vision. I go now. And you—you remain. It was inevitable, the Nightmare said, his voice louder and louder. This is your degeneration, Elspeth Spindle. Nothing comes free.

The two were together, so the two were the same…” The last thing I heard before I was buried in darkness was the Nightmare’s silky laugh, wicked and absolute. The girl, the King… and the monster they became.

A long, unnerving grin parted her lips. “But kill me, usurper, and you will never collect the Deck, never heal the infection. The mist will continue to spread. The Spirit of the Wood will consume Blunder and everyone in it. I may be gone, my body mortified by violence and time, but in a hundred years, it is you, Rowan, who will be forgotten. Your castle will be reduced to dust. Destrier bones will clack in the wind, strewn by children between windows to frighten crows. Your name will turn to rot, your Providence Cards lost. I have seen it all before, Rowan. And I smell it upon us now. The salt of magic in the air… the turn of the tide.”

“The Twin Alders is hidden in a place with no time. A place of great sorrow and bloodshed and crime. Betwixt ancient trees, where the mist cuts bone-deep, the last Card remains, waiting, asleep. The wood knows no road—no path through the snare. Only I can find the Twin Alders… “For it was I who left it there.”