Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King #2)

Petyr’s blood was everywhere. And that smell, the putrid odor that wafted from the wound—impossible to stomach.

Gorse staggered away and was sick in the lake. Jespyr put a hand to her nose and stacked the dry brush she’d scrounged at the edge of forest. Her hand shook on the flint. When a spark lit to flame and the brush was alight, she pulled a knife from her belt and held it to the fire. “How does it look?”

Ravyn’s stomach rolled as he peered down at Petyr’s leg. His blood was frothing, the flesh around it turning a bloodless gray. “Hurry, Jes.”

Wik’s belt was fastened around Petyr’s leg in a tourniquet above the wound. “That’s not an ordinary wound,” he said to Ravyn.

Petyr thrashed in the mud. “Just cut the damn thing off and be done with it!”

“We’re not cutting your leg off,” Ravyn snapped. He jerked his gaze to the Nightmare. “What do you know about this poison?”

The Nightmare said nothing—did nothing. He stood eerily still, eyes glazed over, his gaze lost somewhere out over the lake.

Ravyn smelled hot steel, and then Jespyr was crouching next to Petyr. Her knife was red—smoking. When she looked down at the wound, she blanched. “You sure this will work?”

“Poison or not,” Wik said, putting an arm over his brother’s chest, “we need to stop the bleeding.”

Jespyr looked at Petyr. Tried to smile. “Don’t knee me. I like my teeth.”

The rot in the air went acrid as she pressed the molten blade over Petyr’s wound. He screamed, flailed. The flesh blackened and the wound sealed shut. Jespyr pulled the blade away—

And the wound pried itself open, blood sludging out of Petyr’s leg faster than before.

Ravyn slammed his hands against it. “Tighten that belt!” he barked at Wik.

But no matter how hard he pressed into the wound, no matter how tight Wik tugged, they couldn’t stop the bleeding.

Petyr was screaming—shaking. His eyes rolled back and the muscles in his neck and jaw bulged. Wik clung to him, muttering something that sounded like a bitter plea, and the two of them shook.

Ravyn looked up at the Nightmare. “Do something,” he said, his voice breaking. “Please.”

But those yellow eyes were unfocused. The Nightmare seemed a hundred miles away.

A cry crawled out of Ravyn, vicious and desperate. “Damn it, help us.”

Those words seemed to wrench the Nightmare back. He looked down, his gaze homing in on Petyr. “The Maiden Card,” he murmured. “Give him the Maiden.”

Ravyn fumbled in his pockets, throwing his Mirror and Nightmare Cards into the mud, digging until his fingertips snagged the third Card. He wrenched the Maiden free. “Now what?”

The Nightmare was mumbling to himself. “It was hardly my fault, dearest, that they are pathetic swimmers.”

Petyr skin had gone colorless—pale as the surface of the lake.

“Nightmare!”

His nostrils flared. He looked down at the Maiden Card in Ravyn’s hand. “Make him use it.”

Ravyn didn’t question it. He shoved the Maiden Card into Petyr’s hand, curling his fingers to tap it once—twice—three times.

Petyr’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open. He took in a ragged gasp, then another.

The putrid blood stopped.

Beneath Jespyr’s shaking hands, Ravyn could see Petyr’s wound…closing. Petyr took another breath, and the color in his face returned. Another, and the tension in his body eased.

On the fifth breath, he opened his eyes and looked up at Wik, then Ravyn. “I—I can’t feel the pain anymore.”

Ravyn stared into Petyr’s face. It had never been the sort of face an artist might flock to. There was a scar from a knife fight that stretched from Petyr’s left eyebrow to the corner of his nostril. Crumpled cartilage in his ears, crooked teeth. Only now, they were gone. Petyr’s scars, his imperfections—gone. He was covered in his own blood and lake mud, but he’d never looked so well.

Wik gaped at his brother. “Goddamn trees.”

Petyr pushed up, blinked, turning his injured leg left, then right. He tore more of his pant leg to get a better look. The claw marks were gone—healed. Not even a scar remained.

Ravyn’s voice came out a strangle. “How do you feel?”

Petyr ran a hand over where the wound had been, testing the skin. His brown eyes went wide. “Like nothing happened.” He looked down at the Maiden Card in his other hand. “Did this heal me?”

Only then did the Nightmare come back into focus. He was still talking to himself, his sentences broken between purrs and hisses. “I am helping them, dear one,” he said under his breath. “More than they know.”

Ravyn cocked his head to the side.

“Who the hell are you talking to?” Jespyr snapped.

The Nightmare ignored her. His gaze drifted to the ground—to Ravyn’s Providence Cards in the mud. Mirror, and Nightmare.

Gorse, who’d been useless, trying to save Petyr, came forward. “Am I seeing things, or is that a Nightmare Ca—”

Ravyn dove. He snagged his burgundy Card out of the mud, yellow eyes flaring above him. Tapped it once—twice—thrice.

Ravyn! called a woman’s voice.

Wind kicked out of his lungs. He fell into mud. That voice. Her voice.

Can you hear me, Ravyn?

He closed his eyes. Elspeth.

She made a pained sound that ripped the heart out of him, and then a different voice called. Male and monstrous. Give her time to adjust, Ravyn Yew. Put away your Nightmare Card.

If she wants me gone, she will tell me so herself. It is her mind. YOU are the trespasser.

An invisible wall of salt slammed into Ravyn. He called out for Elspeth once more, but she was gone. The Nightmare had shut him out.

Ravyn released himself from his Nightmare Card, jolted up—

And lunged.

He wrapped his fists into the Nightmare’s cloak, looked into those terrible yellow eyes, and slammed him into the mud.

More terrifying than snarl or hiss, the Nightmare laughed. “Your stone veneer is crumbling, Ravyn Yew. Who will be waiting on the other side when the mask slips away? Captain? Highwayman? Or beast yet unknown?”

Ravyn drew a breath, his voice deathly quiet. “If it would not hurt her, I would flay you alive.”

A crooked, malevolent smile was his only answer.

They ate a mile from the water. Ravyn found a stream and cleaned the putrid blood from his hands, his clothes, noting just how sore his muscles were—how much strain it had taken to cross the lake.

The Nightmare shoved aspen bark into their hands to remedy whatever lake water they’d ingested. When Jespyr asked how he knew the bark would aid them, he muttered something about the idiocy of Yews before disappearing behind the tree line.

Ravyn watched him go, Elspeth’s voice ringing through his mind.

Alive.

She was alive.

The relief was like stepping indoors after a winter night’s watch—so warm, it hurt.

Wik built a fire and pulled rations from his satchel, handing them down the line. When Ravyn sat next to Gorse, the Destrier got up and took a seat on the other side of the fire. His eyes slid over Ravyn’s hands—his pockets. Ravyn knew what he was hoping to glimpse.

The Nightmare Card.

Only two burgundy Nightmare Cards had been forged. Both had been missing for decades. Tyrn Hawthorn had brought one forward—traded it to King Rowan at Equinox for a marriage contract between Ione and Hauth. It was no doubt still being used at Stone by the Physicians attempting to revive Hauth.

Gorse wasn’t the smartest Destrier. But the distrust coloring his face meant he had come to one of two conclusions. Either Ravyn had taken the King’s Nightmare Card—

Or he, Captain of the Destriers, possessed the second one. Along with a Mirror Card he’d conveniently failed to mention.

Jespyr mouth was full of food. “If there’s something you want to say,” she managed, watching Gorse as she heated dried venison over the flames, “now’s a perfect time.”

Gorse’s lips welded to a fine line. His eyes dropped back to Ravyn’s pocket. “That’s a rare handful of Cards you’ve got there, Captain.”

Ravyn leaned into the log at his back. “And?”

“Does the King know about them?”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

A shrug. “Hauth liked to say the Yews have sticky fingers.”

Not smart at all. Ravyn tapped his Nightmare Card three times, pushing its magic out like a cloud of hungry black smoke. Is that what you think, Destrier? That I am a thief?

Gorse blanched, his eyes widening in the firelight. “Stop.”

Stop what?

“I’m sorry—I—I don’t think you stole it. Just—get out of my head.”

Jespyr’s eyes bounced from Ravyn to Gorse, a smile curling the corners of her mouth. Wik chuckled into his food, and Petyr held up the Maiden Card. “Speaking of Cards,” he said, “this was a damn interesting surprise.”

“You sure it wasn’t your lucky coin that saved you?” Jespyr said with a wink.

Ravyn released Gorse from the Nightmare’s magic, his gaze dropping to Petyr’s leg, its wound distinctly missing. Petyr had stopped using the Maiden Card twenty minutes ago. And while his face had returned to its familiar roguish expression, the scar upon it had not. He was healed. Completely.

“He seemed to know the Maiden would heal you,” Wik said, jerking his head to the wood where the Nightmare had retreated.

Ravyn glanced over his shoulder to the trees. “I imagine there are many things he knows about Providence Cards.”

Jespyr chuckled. “Too bad he’s wholly unwilling to share them.”

They went in separate directions, relieving themselves and changing into clean clothes in the underbrush. Ten minutes later, Ravyn and Jespyr regrouped at the fire. The Ivy brothers joined them. The Nightmare, slow in his steps, came last.

Jespyr kicked dirt over the dying fire. “Where’s Gorse?”

“He fled five minutes ago,” the Nightmare said with unsettling calmness. “Off to report Captain Yew’s Nightmare Card to the King, no doubt.” His lips peeling back, offering Ravyn a sneer. “I suppose he felt rather uninspired, following a liar into the wood.”

Jespyr muttered into her glove, then disguised it as a cough. “He’s not the only one.”

Ravyn turned—searched the trees. The Black Horse could only aid Gorse so long. He didn’t doubt that he could catch the Destrier, silence him with threats. Or worse. But the feeling that he was running out of time was an ever-ticking clock in Ravyn’s mind—and it was getting louder. He would deal with Gorse, and the King, when he got back to Stone. For now—

“We keep going.”

Forward. Always forward.