: Part 2 – Chapter 17

Ravyn returned to Castle Yew the next morning.

I heard the clatter of hooves. I slammed shut the tome I was reading and slunk out of the library in a cloud of dust, navigating the back passages and hallways of the castle until I found a small wooden door that led straight from the castle into the wild gardens beyond.

Ducking beneath an old willow tree, I let out a long breath and threw myself onto the lowest of the branches, the bite of morning frost stinging my fingers and cheeks.

The Nightmare hummed, his words slippery. The Captain of the Destriers is dark and severe. Perched atop yew trees, his gray eyes are clear. Be wary his magic, be wary his fate. The Yews and the Rowans do not ready friends make.

Be quiet, I said, slapping the branch above my head, morning dew falling onto my brow. I don’t want to talk about it.

But I didn’t need to talk about it. Ever since the night I was attacked on the forest road, the line between talking and thinking had begun to blur. The more I asked for his help, the more potent the Nightmare’s presence in my head became. I understood his emotions—his interests and revulsions—without words, sometimes so strongly I mistook them for my own. I felt his wakefulness, his focus. I saw more clearly—heard more soundly—with his senses.

But I did not fully know his mind. There were still secrets between us.

Mourning doves cooed, the noises of dawn lively in the garden. I snapped thin reeds off the willow tree and wove them into a simple crown and placed it on my head. Charm in hand, I slid from my seat out into the mist, searching the garden for wild carrot blooms.

As far as I could tell, Castle Yew housed no gardeners. As orderly as he kept the castle, Jon Thistle’s attentions did not extend beyond the statuary. The gardens were wild. I liked that about them. Unlike the manicured hedges and blooms at Stone, Castle Yew’s eclectic assortment of herbs, weeds, and blooms looked as if they might rise up and take the castle by storm—wild and strong and free.

The cobbled path had been absorbed by plant life. I slipped over mossy stonework and trod deeper into the greenery in search of flowers.

But it was the wrong time of year for blossoms. Soon the wild soul of the garden would grow tired and retreat deep into itself, the looming chill of winter drawing closer each night. I had to look deep within the bramble for blooms, only the most protected plants still willing to share their flowers with me. Crouched on my knees, I spotted a cluster of purple phlox and added several flowers to the weave of my willow crown.

A sharp pain stung my hand. I whirled, unaware I’d rested it on a rose bramble, its buds harvested by hungry deer. Only one flower remained. Red as blood, so fresh I could almost feel its smell, the rose stood alone among the thorns, as if waiting.

I did not pluck it. I’d had my fair share of punishment going after roses without gloves or shears. Still, I found myself running a finger up the stock of the stem, testing its fortitude, the sharpness of its thorns pressed precariously into my flesh.

“Those thorns are vicious,” a deep, familiar voice called.

I spun, my heart in my throat.

Ravyn stood a few paces away, his boots, cloak, and hair made darker by the morning rain. In his pocket beamed familiar burgundy and purple hues, brighter than any flower in the garden. On his belt rested the ivory hilt of his dagger, and when he drew it, my muscles tensed, the memory of the blade’s tip at my heart still vivid.

But the blade did not touch me. Stepping to my side, Ravyn took the rose by the base and lifted it from the bramble of thorns, freeing it with a single cut. He held it for a moment and said nothing, the silence between us loud enough to drown out even the most enthusiastic morning birds.

When he finally spoke, his voice was rough, as if unused. “Are you well?”

My voice hitched, still shaken by his sudden arrival. “Yes.”

“My family is seeing to your needs?”

“I haven’t starved, if that’s what you mean.” I pulled out my charm and twisted it between my fingers. “They’ve been kind. I’m embarrassed to think I was afraid to walk by your gates as a girl.” I looked out into the garden. “It’s very beautiful.”

“Why were you afraid?”

I shrugged. “My aunt told me the castle is haunted.”

The corner of Ravyn’s mouth tugged. “I wouldn’t be so quick to refute her.” His eyes roved my face, flickering to the flower crown atop my head. Neither of us spoke, a day apart enough time to make strangers out of us once more.

If we’d ever been anything else.

He took a step forward, holding the blood-red rose in his hand out to me. “May I?”

I looked at the rose, then back at his face. Trees, that face. Austerity and beauty. An imperfect, breathtaking statue. “I thought we weren’t pretending,” I murmured.

He stripped the rose’s thorns with his blade. “It’s just a flower. Flowers don’t play games.” He offered it again, once more asking my permission. “May I?”

This time, I nodded. He stepped to me and placed the rose atop my head, weaving its stem into the willow crown with strong, deft fingers. When he pulled back, his hand grazed the hair along my cheek.

I kept still. I could smell the wet wool of his cloak—smoke and cloves. “How did you know I was here?”

“You weren’t in your room.” He gestured around the garden. “If I was trying to avoid someone, this is where I would go.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. There was no point lying.

He offered a small smile. “Would you like a tour?”

I looked around, the garden soft in the mist. “I didn’t realize there was an allotted design.”

“Quite the opposite,” Ravyn said. “Which makes it the most interesting part of the estate. Only don’t tell Thistle. He’ll take enormous offense.”

The corners of my lips twitched.

“You won’t need that,” Ravyn said as I pocketed the crow’s foot. “You haven’t needed it for eleven years.”

I stared at him. “But the mist—The Spirit of the Wood—”

“Does not catch people like us,” he said.

“But the book says—”

“You and I already carry strange magic. We’re the very things the book warns against, Miss Spindle.” He smiled, gesturing away from the house into the garden. “We needn’t be afraid of a little salt in the air.”

Ravyn didn’t know the names of the plants or the flowers. The trees, of course, he knew. I followed him at a distance, listening to his voice as I took in the garden. Weeds clung to the hem of my skirt, and untrimmed branches reached for my hair as we trod deeper into the thicket, the brambles unaccustomed to visitors—the path almost hidden.

“Where does this lead?” I asked, untangling my hair from a low-hanging branch.

“The ruins,” Ravyn answered. “The original castle. Or what’s left of it.”

Piqued, the Nightmare’s interest spurred my steps, and I followed the Captain of the Destriers through a particularly dense thicket to a meadow beyond. My eyes widened as I took in the landscape—the dewy grass, the enormous trees, and the graveyard of stonework: the last remains of a crumbled castle, nestled in the mist.

The stones stood, strangely balanced, in the meadow.

I trod on tiptoe among the crumbling limestone pillars laid out across the grass, afraid even my footsteps might topple them. “I didn’t realize there was another castle here,” I murmured.

Ravyn nodded. “It’s old—older than Stone. No one knows exactly when it was forged. Or when the fire felled it.” He pointed to the east beyond the ruins, a rusted iron fence poking through the mist. “Only one room remains.”

The Nightmare clawed through my mind and inhaled deeply, the salt in the air strong. I leaned against one of the pillars but jerked away a moment later—afraid I’d knock it down with my weight.

Ravyn watched me. “It’s all right,” he said. “They’ve been here hundreds of years. They won’t fall.”

The sandstone was rough under my palm. I slid my hand along the pillar’s perimeter, surveying the ruins with wide eyes. “What’s that?” I asked, gesturing to a stone chamber nestled beneath the shadow of a tall, ancient yew tree.

“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.

The Nightmare’s tail whipped through my mind, the chamber fixed in our shared vision. Go in, he said.

Go in where? My eyes caught on the ivy-laden room. There?

Yes.

Why?

I want to see it.

There is no door. Only—

A window. His voice swarmed in my ears, near and far at once, slick with oil. That’s all she ever required.

Who?

The Spirit of the Wood.

The hair at my spine prickled. You’ve been here before?

He laughed. But there was no joy in it. It was an empty laugh, ominous—like falling down a well. Like being eaten by darkness. It stole something from me, leaving me terrified of the place—the doorless chamber—he so desperately wanted me to take him.

My muscles strained, every part of my body begging to heed him—to go to the chamber. I clenched my jaw and turned away from the dark window at the lip of the tree line, denying the Nightmare his request.

A monstrous hiss echoed through my mind.

Ravyn kept talking, oblivious of my struggle. “The rumors are folklore, mostly,” he said. He retrieved the purple Card from his pocket and twirled it absently in his hand. “If this place is truly haunted and ghosts linger here, they are not keen to show themselves. At least not to me.”

I watched him, forcing my focus away from the Nightmare and the chamber, shifting to the light of the Mirror Card in Ravyn’s hand. “What does it feel like,” I said, my eyes tracing the amethyst velvet embroidered along the Card’s edges, “being invisible?”

Ravyn twirled the Mirror between his fingers, flipping the Card between each digit so quickly it blurred.

Show-off, the Nightmare muttered.

The air around us shifted, and suddenly Ravyn was absorbed into the landscape—into nothingness. Disappeared. “It feels cold,” his voice called through the air. “But not unbearably so.”

“Can you see any… spirits?”

“Not yet,” he said, his invisible steps treading a distinct path in the grass. “I’d have to remain invisible longer. I try not to use it too often.”

The purple light moved closer. I turned, watching the light. A moment later, Ravyn reappeared, close to me, a mischievous grin on his mouth.

“You’re the only one I can’t sneak up on,” he said.

My heart quickened, seeing his stern mouth turned by a smile. I stepped away, tarrying through the overgrown meadow, my mind laden with questions. “And the Nightmare Card?” I said. “You use that Card often enough.”

He did not deny it.

“What of its ill effects?” I paused. I’d never spoken to anyone who had used a Nightmare Card before. And though I was certain the monster in my head was so much more than the Card I had absorbed, there was still so much I did not know. “Do you see a creature—hear a voice?”

Ravyn did not answer right away. “Every Card user experiences the negative effects differently.”

“You’re not very clear with your answers, Captain.”

His gray eyes flashed to my face. “When I use the Nightmare Card too long, I don’t see a creature. But I hear him. Does that answer satisfy you, Miss Spindle?”

Not by half. “What does he say to you?”

“It’s hard to explain,” he said, running a hand over his jaw. “Most of the time, he doesn’t say anything. But when he does… it’s like he knows everything I’ve ever thought—ever feared. He taunts me, telling me I’m going to fail—that my efforts are meaningless.” His gray eyes met mine. “But it’s just a voice, not a creature at all.”

“How do you know?”

“Because when he speaks—relaying my worst fears over and over in my mind—it’s not a stranger’s voice,” he said quietly. “It’s mine.”

Ravyn had returned to Castle Yew to steal the Iron Gate Card. Rather, to retrieve me, so that I might point out the Iron Gate Card to him and his fellow—I wasn’t sure what to call them. Thieves. Traitors. Highwaymen.

After Jespyr had relayed what we had learned at tea with the Pine women, Ravyn and Elm had set to mapping Wayland Pine’s travel arrangements. He and a few fellow travelers would caravan from Stone to their separate estates, of which House Pine was the last. We would intercept Pine’s carriage on the forest road. If we departed Castle Yew just after midday, we would have enough time to get to the Black Forest before nightfall. There, at the edge of the road, just beyond the tree line, we would wait for Wayland Pine.

And steal his Iron Gate.

Ravyn and I left the ruins through the mist, the same brambles hungry for my hair. I tripped on my skirt and would have fallen had there not been a firm boxwood to catch me. Winded, my dress wet and muddy at the hem, I stomped out of the thicket like an ogress, wild and weary.

Ravyn, having the good sense not to laugh, waited as I plucked brambles from my hair.

“Tell me, Miss Spindle,” he said, watching me. “Have you ever used a blade before?”

I swore, a vengeful bramble taking some of my hairs with it. “Do garden shears count?”

This time, he did laugh. “Decidedly not.”

We rounded the castle. Servants brushed past, offering Ravyn stooping bows. I could hear the clatter of hooves on stone and the yip of hounds in the distance, the soft quiet of the garden lost as we stepped out of the mist toward the cluster of outbuildings on the west side of the estate.

“Your father said there would be no violence. Am I expected to fight, Captain?”

“No,” he said over his shoulder. “But I imagine you’d like something to protect yourself with just the same.”

The path led us to the yard—the dirt arena situated in the heart of three outbuildings. On the yard’s left stood the armory, and on its right, the stables. They sat nestled beneath the shadow of the castle, the hour not yet midday.

We came to the armory. Swords, knives, quivers, and arrows littered the walls, the shelves equipped with every tool and weapon a man-at-arms might wield. Jerkins, armor, and chainmail lay in crates along the floor, and in the center of the room stood a long oak slab held up by two barrels. Around the slab stood four men and a woman dressed in blackened leather. At the opening of the door, they turned to me with expectant eyes.

I surveyed them, my breath quick and shallow. Jespyr and Prince Renelm stood together, Jespyr equipped with a bow and quiver filled with goose-fletched arrows, Elm with his signature red glow. Next to them, two men I did not recognize looked up from a whetstone, appraising me with shifting eyes.

The last of the lot was Jon Thistle, who greeted me with a broad smile. “Pleased to see you, milady. Welcome to our fine collection of ruddy outlaws.”

I heard Ravyn fasten the door behind us, torches and hearth the only sources of light in the armory. I took a step back, surveying the room a second time.

“That’s Wik Ivy and his brother Petyr,” Ravyn said in my ear. “Thistle you know, and of course my sister and cousin.”

To my silence, the Captain of the Destriers smiled. “Come now, Miss Spindle. Surely you’ve seen a party of highwaymen before.”