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I was the darkness and the darkness was me, and together we rolled with the tide, lulled toward a shore I could neither see nor hear. All was water—all was salt.
“Elspeth Spindle,” he said quietly, his eyes—so strange and yellow—ensnaring me. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
But his soul carried on, buried deep in Elspeth Spindle, the only woman Ravyn had ever loved.
“Balance,” she answered, head tilting like a bird of prey. “To right terrible wrongs. To free Blunder from the Rowans.” Her yellow eyes narrowed, wicked and absolute. “To collect his due.”
“There once was a girl,” he said, his voice slick, “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.”
“There is a place in the darkness she and I share. Think of it as a secluded shore along dark waters. A place I forged to hide things I’d rather forget. I went there from time to time in our eleven years together. To give Elspeth reprieve. And,
most recently,” he added, tapping his fingernails on the wall, “to spare myself the particulars of her rather incomprehensible attachment to you.”
“The last barter waits in a place with no time. A place of great sorrow and bloodshed and crime. No sword there can save you, no mask hide your face. You’ll return with the Twin Alders … “But you’ll never leave that place.”
“The dark bird has three heads,” Emory said, his voice strangled, an invisible rope around his neck. “Highwayman, Destrier, and another. One of age, of birthright. Tell me, Ravyn Yew, after your long walk in my wood—do you finally know your name?”
