Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King #2)

You vile, traitorous SNAKE.

Tether yourself, dear one, the Nightmare said, unaffected. It’s only hair.

I was in a new darkness. Not the long, empty shore, but a room—trapped inside it. I couldn’t feel my body, my hands and legs somewhere far away, numb to me. I was but a presence, my voice the only thing it seemed I could control.

Much like the chamber at the edge of the meadow, my room had no door, only a window—a hole in the darkness. But it was enough. I could see what the Nightmare saw now.

And what he saw was Ravyn.

He was walking with Jespyr ahead of the Nightmare, following a deer path through a wide glen. Light caught his black hair, lightening it like the sheen on a wing. His posture was tight but not entirely rigid. He kept one hand on the hilt of his sword while the other, ungloved, ghosted over the glen, brushing over foxtails and barley grass.

He was alive. Beautiful and alive.

And I could not touch him.

The Nightmare had not let Ravyn back into our shared mind since yesterday, upon that muddy lakeshore. It was midday now, and the party walked at a languid pace. The sun hid behind the oppressive gray of the mist. But to me, against the desolation of that lone, dark beach, the world seemed full of color. Even the mist, pale and unfriendly, glistened anew, the wood welcoming me back with greens and blues and yellows and reds.

So this is what it was like for you, I said to the Nightmare, half marvel, half horror. Trapped. Forced to see and hear everything I showed you.

He made a low hum. Ravyn turned at the noise, shooting the Nightmare a look that could freeze a hot spring. I couldn’t see the face the Nightmare made in response, but I felt the satisfaction that stole over his thoughts. He liked to stoke Ravyn’s ire. Of that I had no doubt.

When Ravyn’s eyes dropped a moment to my hair, his eyes went colder still.

I’d had the misfortune of catching my reflection in a stream we’d crossed that morning—and had yet to recover. Beyond cutting my hair, the Nightmare had done nothing to tend to my appearance. There was dirt caked into the lines of my face. Old blood beneath my fingernails. My lips were chapped and peeling.

Only, none of those things were mine anymore—not wholly. Like my mind, I didn’t know what to call my body. Mine, his, or ours. For now, it seemed the lesser of evils to call it his. That way, I wouldn’t have to own anything he did at its helm.

You could at least have washed my—your—hands. I groaned. I can’t even imagine what you smell like.

It’s better this way. The Nightmare examined blood-encrusted nail beds. The less I look like Elspeth, the less Ravyn Yew startles every time he glances my way. It’s fraying my nerves, listening to him sigh.

No one cares about your nerves.

He laughed, and the sound turned the darkness I occupied warm, den-like.

“I hate it when he laughs,” Wik said from behind. “Sends creepers up my back.”

“Ignore him,” Ravyn snapped.

Jespyr poked his shoulder. “Because you do such a fine job at that.”

“Do as I say, Jes, not as I do.”

Jespyr jabbed her brother in the ribs. Ravyn absorbed the blow, then pinched the tip of his sister’s ear until she squealed. The moment was easy between the siblings.

Naturally, the Nightmare sought to ruin it. “Elspeth worries you no longer find her beautiful,” he called out to them.

That’s not what I bloody said.

“Apparently you aren’t the only one, Captain, who loathes what I’ve done to her hair.”

Ravyn stopped in his tracks. A moment later his hand was in his pocket, salt tipping the air in my dark, listless chamber.

An invisible wall clamped down around me. The salt dissipated, and then the Nightmare was laughing, holding out a finger to Ravyn. “You do not learn.”

I want to speak with him, I seethed.

The Nightmare ignored me. If only, perhaps, to watch the rage in Ravyn’s eyes swell.

But Ravyn’s gaze was clever—honed. “She saw me look at her hair.” He stood straighter. “She can see me now.”

Ha! Call him what you like. But never mark him as a fool.

The Nightmare exhaled. But he is a fool, dear one. Terribly, incessantly stupid.

Take that back.

He cleared his throat. “She says you’re stupid, Ravyn Yew.”

Nightmare!

Ravyn’s eyes narrowed. He was looking into the Nightmare’s yellow eyes. Looking for me. And I was not above pleading so that he might find what was left of me. I had eleven years’ practice, begging the Nightmare to be tolerable.

Please. Let me speak to him. Just for a moment.

He tilted his head to the side. Being apart from you has its merits. It will motivate him to do whatever it takes to retrieve the Twin Alders Card.

I am not part of whatever game you’re playing with him. I matched the silk in his voice with iron. What he and I share has nothing to do with you. Let me SPEAK to him.

“What’s he saying?” Jespyr said, peering over her brother’s shoulder.

Ravyn’s jaw twitched. “He’s deciding whether or not to let me in.”

I felt the Nightmare prickle under Ravyn’s stare. He wanted to deny him. But when I said his name again—Nightmare!—he clicked his jaw three times and sighed. A brief moment, my dear.

The salt returned, washing over me. I yielded to it—desperate for it. Ravyn?

He was still there. He’d been waiting. How many times, when I was alone on that dark shore, had he been there waiting?

Elspeth.

His voice was a caress—so different from the way he spoke to the Nightmare. I bent to it, basking in the soft depths of his tone. I’m sorry.

He flinched, his entire face caught up in the act. No. This isn’t your fault, Elspeth.

I reached for him—reached with no arms, no hands.

Once I’d looked at the Captain of the Destriers and thought, every time I beheld him, I was seeing a different man. Sometimes with a mask, other times without. But I’d never seen him like this—hands shaking, weathered to the bone, a sheen over his gray eyes. Ten minutes. Ravyn’s voice wavered. Ten minutes, and I’d have been up those stairs. And Hauth—you— He glanced away. I’m the one who’s sorry.

Look at me, Ravyn.

When his gaze met mine, I pressed against the window in my dark room. You’re not allowed to blame yourself for a second of those ten minutes. It was magic that made me…disappear. Terrible, inevitable degeneration. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. But I’m still sorry it happened. I would have liked— My voice quieted. I would have liked a little more time. With you.

The lines in Ravyn’s face strained, his voice deepening with insistence. We’ll get that time. I swear it, Elspeth. He blinked too fast, then dropped my gaze. Because it wasn’t my eyes he was looking into—not anymore. There wasn’t a dark, endless shore between Ravyn Yew and me any longer.

Just a King, five hundred years dead.

The Nightmare’s slippery tone entered our reverie. That’s enough for now. Put away your Nightmare Card, Captain.

No. Ravyn’s voice was hard once more. I need her.

Let him stay, I said. Please.

A flash of teeth. No.

Why?

I didn’t hear his answer. A loud fluttering sound blotted it out.

All of our heads snapped up. “Arrows!” Jespyr shouted, pushing Ravyn off the path into the grass.

Ravyn landed in a crouch, three arrows buried in the ground where he’d stood, each tipped by a small glass vial that shattered upon impact.

A sweet-smelling smoke filled the air, shooting up the Nightmare’s nose and deep into his lungs. He coughed, a vicious snarl emptying out of his mouth. My vision blurred and then the world tilted.

The Nightmare fell into the grass. I couldn’t see Ravyn and Jespyr anymore. But I did see the Ivy brothers.

Petyr was in the grass, eyes rolling shut. Wik was next to him, unmoving—

An arrow lodged in his skull.

I screamed.

This, my dear, the Nightmare hissed, is the sort of thing we might have seen coming, had Ravyn Yew not been poking about in our mind.

The last things I saw before the Nightmare lost consciousness were two pairs of leather boots, stepping toward us through the grass.

“Well, well,” came a voice from above. “Two more Destriers.”