One Dark Window (The Shepherd King, #1)

by Rachel Gillig

She carried an ease with her wherever she went, attracting people and animals. Even the trees seemed to sway in accordance with her step. Everyone loved her. And she loved them back. Even to her own detriment.

It was a trick I had spent years perfecting in the looking glass—molding my face like clay until it bore the vague, demure look of someone who had nothing to hide.

“We were going to meet you in the hall,” my stepmother said to my father, a pinch in her voice. “Is something the matter?” My father’s expression gave nothing away. “I came to say hello to my own daughter in my own house, Nerium. Is that all right with you?”

And will you scurry off with your tail tucked beneath you once more? You’d have me stay after that? I bit back. Yes. Because running, dear one, is exactly what she wants from you.

Why does it burn every time? I asked. But the Nightmare had already begun to vanish into the dark chasm of my mind. 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.

“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.”

Be wary the man who bargains and thieves. He’ll offer your soul to get what he needs.

Desperate times, he said. No Card is worth a formal introduction to Hauth Rowan. Says the girl who talks to the monster in her head. Not exactly Princess material, are we, my dear?

Still, even as rest took me, I could not help but wonder just how Ravyn Yew had been warned of Emory’s ill manners—had come to corral his brother—despite being nowhere near the great hall that evening.

In the end, the Nightmare continued, it does not matter how and why the Cards are used. Nothing is free, nothing is safe. Magic always comes at a cost.

“Bless the trees!” my aunt cried. “Are none of my children right in the head?”

“He gave his consent.” He paused. “So long as you’re agreeable, that is.” I know no one’s going to ask me what I want, the Nightmare said, snide to his bones, but just in case you were wondering, the answer is no. No, I am decidedly NOT agreeable. A surprise to no one, I muttered.

We’d only been apart an hour. Still, I couldn’t help but feel every time I saw Ravyn Yew, I was looking at a different man.

Alyx pressed his hand over mine, trapping it against his arm. “I have your father’s permission, Elspeth.” “But not mine,” I said, more forceful this time. “Now, if you please—”

“What about you, Captain? Are you too nice for your own good?” He watched me, something I could not read flashing in his gray eyes. “No, Miss Spindle,” he said. “I’m not nice at all.”

For the Scythe I wanted power, and her price was quite steep. I gave her my rest—she claimed all my sleep.

After all, dear one, there were only two Nightmare Cards ever forged. Long have the Rowans sought one, only for it to be here—hidden neatly in the King’s castle—under his very nose.

So much dread, the Nightmare said. So much might. To see beyond the veil—what wicked delight. There’s nothing delightful about being invisible, I said. Or seeing the dead.

“I wanted answers.” “And I wanted a night of drunken debauchery,” called Elm from the table, the Scythe slipping in and out of his long, narrow fingers. “Yet I’m back in this broom closet for the second time today. So, if it’s not too much trouble, Miss Spindle, have a bloody seat so we might get on with it.”

Ravyn approached, kneeling beside my chair. He rested his arms on his bent knee. Had he not been clad in all black, severe as a crow, I might have thought him a knight kneeling before a maiden, slipped from the pages of a book.

I know what I know. My secrets are deep. But long have I kept them, and long will they keep.

Why didn’t you tell me? Tell you what? That the Scythe doesn’t work on you. A vile scraping sound echoed through my mind. The Nightmare was picking at his teeth. None of them work on me, dear one. I gaped. Something you casually forgot to mention? For ELEVEN years?

But I have mentioned it, my clueless little companion. His claws grated against his teeth. I cannot, however, be held responsible for your feeble comprehension.

“We don’t have time to play guardian to a timid girl.” “Timid?” Jespyr chuckled. “That’s not what you said when you came limping back from the forest road.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Jespyr said, her voice slow, gentle, as if to soothe an angry animal. “But you’re not going to like it.” “Because everything up until this point has been so enjoyable.”

“What if we tell Erik Spindle and the Hawthorns that we’ve invited Elspeth to stay at Castle Yew… so that you might court her?”

The Captain’s adamant refusal to court me—not even court me, pretend to court me—felt like a dozen wasp stings, leaving me wounded, hot with anger.

I had sensed it on the stairs. There was something strange about Emory Yew. Now I understood what it really was. The infection—it was eating at him, ripping away his sanity.

It felt as if a hundred bees had flooded my lungs, their wings fluttering in a torrid panic. I struggled to breathe, heat climbing out of my chest and wrapping around my throat. Ravyn Yew. Infected.

What creature is he, with mask made of stone? the Nightmare said once more. Captain? Highwayman? Or beast yet unknown?

Ravyn’s hand slid from the small of my back up my spine, slower than it should have. When he leaned in, his jaw scraped against my ear. “I’d call an admission of treason exceptionally forthright for one day, Miss Spindle,” he whispered.

I had not looked at him since we’d left the King’s gardens. But that did nothing to erase the anger I felt, unbidden and unexplained, toward the Captain of the Destriers and his heavily warded secrets. Neither could it erase the memory of his fingers laced with mine—the way the tepid garden air caught in my throat when he pulled me close.

I wanted to shout, to break the glass of his control. But I could not find the words. The day had stolen them. And the night had buried them.

“And what are we, Miss Spindle?” The intensity of his gaze sent me back a step. “Nothing,” I said. Then, for spite, “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

I find myself wishing I could set the clocks back—that we had decided not to attend Equinox and everything had remained the same. But those are just the ramblings of an old woman, set in her ways.

“The last room left standing.” The stone chamber—enveloped by moss and vines—stood tall at the edge of the mist. How strange it looked, alone in the ruins, unmarked but for one dark window situated on its southernmost wall.

“Did everyone see?” “No,” Elm said. “Just the servants, the fletcher, the groomsmen, the blacksmith—”

But a Prince is a man, and a man may be bled. He came for the girl… And got the monster instead.

“We couldn’t have done it without you.” I gave a mock sweeping bow. “I risk my neck for a chance at your gratitude, Captain.”

“Of all the things I pretend at,” he said, his thumb drawing small, gentle circles along my waist, “courting you has proven the easiest.”

When her gaze landed on Hauth, I thought I caught a glimpse of something in her narrowed hazel eyes—something more than coldness. Something that looked a great deal like hatred.

“What just happened?” The Prince shrugged, his green eyes lingering on Ione’s shape in the distance. “Hauth broke your wrist, Ravyn mangled his hand. Balance.”

The Scythe cannot control me.” He paused. “That is why he made me Captain.”

shrug. “Magic comes at a cost. If we do not collect the Deck and heal my infection, I will not be able to use Providence Cards at all.”

“We Willows have been Physicians for hundreds of years. Ages ago,” he said, “we knew the mist was full of salt—full of magic. But we did not fear it. We venerated the Spirit of the Wood and the gifts she gave. Those who suffered the fever and the degeneration that followed were treated—not hunted.”

He was trying to reassure me. And while I was sure Filick Willow was one of the cleverest men in Blunder, there was one thing he was terribly, terribly wrong about. What happened five hundred years ago mattered. Far more than I had ever realized.

“Card magic is the only true magic. Everything else is sickness.”

“You can have your own opinion,” Ravyn said. “But just know, without all the facts, you sound like an idiot.”

“And when were you planning on telling me this?” Elm shouted. “Whenever it suited you, I suppose.” “I love when they argue,” Emory said into his soup. “Keeps my weak little heart beating.”

You cannot undo what already begins. He paused, his voice serpentine as it flickered past my ears. You cannot erase the salt from the din. But if you won’t let me out… you must let him in.