: Part 2 – Chapter 27

The rain began long before we reached the gates. It pelted the roof of the carriage, forcing us to slow our pace, the sky dark despite the afternoon hour.

When the carriage rolled to a stop at Castle Yew’s threshold, Ravyn leapt down from its perch and ripped open the door. I tried to search his gray eyes but he turned away, his steps anxious as he led us into the castle.

Thistle met us at the door. “He’s in the library,” he said. “Poor boy is cold to his bones.”

I followed Elm and the Yews, our steps thunderous as we ran up the stairwell.

The library doors were open. I felt the warmth of the hearth the moment we stepped into the room, its flames tall and newly stoked, turning the rain on our cloaks and hair and skin to steam.

Morette Yew paced in front of the hearth. I heard Fenir sigh, his brown eyes jumping between his wife and the long wooden bench pulled close to her, near the flames.

A boy with dark hair and a smattering of freckles across his copper nose rested on the bench. His eyes were closed, his arms folded neatly over the blankets across his chest, like a body at burial.

I stared, Emory Yew just as unnerving in repose as he had been Equinox night.

“His lips are still blue,” Morette fretted, sitting at the head of the bench. “Elm, help me warm him.”

Elm reached into his pocket for the Scythe and closed his eyes, the shadow of exhaustion prominent on his brow. Still, the red Card was at his command. He tapped it three times and placed a hand on Emory. “Feel the warmth, Em,” he muttered under his breath. “Feel the fire.”

“He walked all night,” Morette said, her voice quiet. “I’m not sure if the King knows he’s here.”

“I’ll deal with that,” Ravyn said, kneeling at his brother’s side. “How long has he been asleep?”

“An hour.” Morette glanced at the door. “Where’s Jespyr?”

Ravyn and I exchanged a glance. “There was an incident,” he said. “She’s with the Destriers.”

Slowly, Emory’s thin cheeks flushed. He opened his gray eyes, gazing first at his mother, then Ravyn and Elm. “I’m not dead,” he said, smiling impishly. “Only asleep. For now.”

Elm smacked the blankets. “This isn’t a joke, Emory Yew,” he said. “You can’t travel alone. What if you’d fallen off the road—gotten lost in the mist? What then?”

“I wanted to come home.” Emory wrinkled his nose. “But no one would take me.”

“That’s because you’re not supposed to leave,” Ravyn said, his voice harsh. When Fenir put a hand on his shoulder, Ravyn moved to the hearth, his eyes lost in the flames. “You could have died, Emory. How could you be so careless?”

“I’m already dying,” Emory bit back. “At least this way, it’s on my terms.”

His words, though directed at Ravyn, hit me like a blow to the chest. Emory turned his head. He sank deeper into his blankets and stared at me, the corners of his mouth downturned. “Who is that?” he murmured.

The others looked at me, their faces drawn.

“Don’t you remember her?” Elm asked.

“We—We’ve met before?”

“Yes.”

The boy squinted. “I can’t make out her face.”

Morette bid me closer with a small, forlorn smile. Ravyn stepped aside to give me room, our bodies tensing as I passed him.

Emory watched me. I recalled what Elm had told me about Emory’s degeneration—his changefulness, his loss of memory. My eyes widened, the Nightmare and I surveying the boy with morbid fascination.

“Hello,” I said, my voice flickering. “I’m Elspeth Spindle.”

“Spindle,” Emory said. His gray eyes jumped between Elm and his brother. “Is she your friend?”

Elm opened his mouth, but Ravyn answered first. “Yes,” he said, his voice softer than before. “Elspeth is a friend.”

“Spindle,” Emory muttered. “Shrub—no, tree. Both, perhaps? Seeded by birds and wind. Old, historic.” Clarity filled his eyes and he sat up, his collarbones prominent beneath the neck of his tunic. “Spindle,” he said again. “Small—seasonal. Oval, finely toothed leaves that yellow in autumn or, for some rarities, turn a deep blood red.” He tilted his head as he surveyed me, so much like his older brother in looks and manners I might have been staring through time at Ravyn, ten years younger.

“I once came to a courtyard with an ancient spindle tree hewn betwixt stone,” Emory said. “I saw a stern man cloaked in red and a little girl who carried a mirror with her, always.” He blinked at me, as if trying to remember a long-forgotten dream. “Do you know this place?”

“Spindle House. I used to live there,” I said, studying his face. “The girl did not hold a mirror—they are twins. The man in red is my father.”

He ran a bony hand over his brow. “Spindle.” He pulled the word out of his mouth as if he were unspooling yarn. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My memory lives in a cloud these days.”

“Please,” I said, unsure if I was more relieved or disheartened that the boy’s degeneration had wiped me from his memory. “Do not trouble yourself.”

Emory held my gaze. “You’re very beautiful,” he mused. “Your eyes are so dark—so infinite.” He paused. “Like a maiden in a storybook. As if the Shepherd King had penned you himself.”

The Nightmare laughed, sending a shiver clawing up my spine. Death at his door, and the boy still understands you better than the rest of these fools.

I clenched my jaw, the horrors of Market Day still fresh upon me. Shut up. If you ever cared for me, you will shut up.

“Elspeth knows all about the Shepherd King and The Old Book of Alders,” Morette said, smiling at her son.

“And about the infection,” Elm said under his breath.

Emory leaned forward. “Did you also know, Miss Spindle, that we Yews are descendants of the Shepherd King?”

Ravyn and Elm sighed, rolling their eyes. “Not this again…”

“It’s true!” Emory said. “The Shepherd King’s history is gone, but Rowan histories are fascinating if you read between the lines. Stone was built by the first Rowan King, which means the Shepherd King dwelled somewhere else. There are no other grand castles in Blunder.” His lips curled. “Save the one that sits in ruins here at Castle Yew.”

Ravyn smiled. “The ruins are old—perhaps even the oldest thing in Blunder. Still, all that proves is that, hundreds of years ago, another castle stood here.”

Emory shook his head. “But the ruins aren’t the oldest thing in Blunder.” He looked up at me, a glimmer in his gray eyes. “The trees are. If the Shepherd King did live here, he would have taken the name of the trees, the way everyone did. And what kind of trees are planted all along the estate, even near the ruins?” His smile widened. “Yews.”

I froze. The ruins—the chamber. He had built them—he told me so. But he had never said his name, and there was no record of it. No one had uttered it in five hundred years.

This time, I clawed at him. Your name is never given in The Old Book, I whispered, my voice combing the darkness. What is it—your real name?

He snapped at me, vicious. My name is ash, he hissed, lost to the winds.

Elm snickered. “And now comes the part of the story where Emory reminds us all that my ancestors came and destroyed the Shepherd King’s castle,” he said, mussing his cousin’s hair.

“It’s a fair assumption,” the boy replied. “The Rowan lineage is steeped in violence. After all, they were the first to exterminate those infected by magic.”

“Yet they united the kingdom with Providence Cards, offering the people of Blunder a safer source of magic,” Elm argued.

“By killing everything and everyone who didn’t submit to their Scythes.”

“That’s enough, you two,” Fenir said. “This never ends well.”

Elm winked at his young cousin.

A knock sounded on the door. We all turned to see Thistle balancing several steaming bowls of food. “Anyone hungry?”

The fine smells of soup and meat and bread filled the library. Morette and Fenir bid Emory come to a nearby table. When the boy stood, we all let out a collective gasp, blankets falling away to reveal taut flesh and jagged bones. Even the Nightmare hissed his discontent at the sight of the boy, who had lost weight even in the last week since I’d seen him.

Don’t they feed him at Stone? I said.

The Nightmare’s tongue clicked against his teeth. Food is not the trouble. He’s degenerating. First his mind, then his body. His voice quieted. Quicker than I imagined.

Ravyn stood and helped his brother to the table.

“Emory,” he said, his jaw tight with strain, “I have to take you back to Stone.”

Emory kept his gaze lowered. “Do you?”

Morette’s eyes were wet. “He needs rest.” Her voice hardened. “Let my brother worry.”

Ravyn ran a hand over his brow. It was not Morette who would face the King’s wrath when Emory Yew was found missing. It was Ravyn. But he said nothing of it. “He can stay tonight. But tomorrow I must return him to Stone.”

“First, he eats,” Elm said firmly, pulling himself into the chair next to Emory. “We could all use a little meat on our bones.”

The food smelled delicious. But my appetite was gone.

“The garden,” Emory said, his fingers shaking along the spoon as he took small sips from the steaming bowl. “I want to see the trees in the garden.” His voice faltered. “Then you can take me back.”

We sat at the table and watched Emory eat, the rest of us forgetting to feed ourselves. Next to me, his posture rigid, Elm glared daggers at Ravyn across the table.

After a full minute of biting silence, Ravyn slammed his fork onto his plate. “Trees, Elm. What?”

“I need to talk to you.”

Ravyn gestured to the table, open palmed. “You have my full attention.”

Elm shot me a narrow glance. “I doubt that.”

“If you have something to say,” Ravyn growled, “spit it out. I don’t have time for one of your Princely tantrums.”

Elm’s voice deepened, hot with anger. “Fine. I think you’re a fool, cousin.”

Emory held his sleeve up to his mouth, smothering a laugh.

Ravyn’s voice remained characteristically smooth. “How do you figure?”

“We could have been in Spindle House today, stealing the Well Card,” the Prince declared. “But you insisted we go to Market Street because you wanted to be near her,” he said. “Who, I might add, came this close to ruining our entire plan by flouncing about in front of Orithe bloody Willow.”

I coughed into my wine. “I practically begged you to go into Spindle House with me and find the Well!”

Elm waved a hand in my face. “I didn’t say it was a bad idea, only that it wasn’t the right moment.” He wrinkled his nose. “And I wasn’t about to give you the satisfaction of having a semi-intelligent idea, Spindle.”

I wanted to reach over and wring his long Rowan neck.

Ravyn, across the table, remained quiet.

“There will be hell to pay when we get back to Stone,” Elm said, his ire returning to his cousin. “She maimed a Destrier. My father won’t take kindly to an assault on his guard, nor the botched arrest of an infected child.” He paused, shooting me another unfeeling glance. “Whatever her magic, it’s more than a penchant for spotting Providence Cards. I don’t trust her.”

“I do,” Ravyn said, folding his arms over his chest. “That should be enough for you.”

“Should it? Am I not allowed my own opinion? Or does everyone bow to the Captain of the Destriers?”

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

Elm’s voice grew louder. “And what facts, pray tell, am I missing?”

“I wanted us all to go to Market Day so that if the Ivys stole the Well Card from Spindle House this morning, we would all be accounted for.”

I blinked. Across the table from me, Fenir’s and Morette’s faces grew stern.

“The Ivys were in my father’s house?” I said.

Fenir nodded.

“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.”

Fenir ran his hand over his beard. “I take it the Ivys didn’t find the Well Card.”

Ravyn shook his head.

“That’s probably because they didn’t know where to look,” I cried, pushing out of my seat. “I could have helped them! I tried to go inside, but Elm—”

“Twenty people would have seen you march through that gate,” Elm bit back at me. “Besides, the Captain bade we wait.”

Ravyn looked on unapologetically. “I told only those who were imperative to the task.”

“So everyone except me and the magically disturbed woman?”

“Disturbed?” the Nightmare and I called at once.

“We can’t afford mistakes, Elm,” Ravyn bit back. “What if we’d been seen? It’s one thing to steal a Card behind a highwayman’s mask. But entering a man’s house—stealing in the light of day—is a risk we cannot afford. Unless you think you have the stomach to stand up to an inquest.”

Elm’s frown deepened, his mouth tightening in a long, unhappy line.

The air in the library felt suddenly thin. “Would there really be an inquest?” I asked. “Even if we were not caught in the act?”

Morette lips wrinkled into a scowl. “Card theft is unforgivable. My brother places full retribution in the hands of the wronged Card owner. Anyone, no matter their station, might be interrogated.” She paused. “A Chalice Card is presented.”

Ravyn cast Elm a pointed look. “And it is very difficult to cheat a Chalice.”

Jespyr returned at nightfall. The infected boy and his parents had not been found. Linden was alive. Just. Her steps dragged, a noticeable limp in her gait. She wrapped her arms around Emory in a long, steadfast hug and bade us all good night.

Emory was next to claim sleep, Morette stationed in a large chair by his bedside, a night vigil. Fenir, Ravyn, Elm, and I moved to the parlor, Thistle popping in now and again to fill our goblets.

The wine put heat in my chest, and I stared at the fire, fighting the urge to glance at Ravyn, who sat opposite me with practiced smoothness. When I caved and looked his way, he was watching me, his gray eyes unreadable, his hand scraping over the stubble along his jaw.

I didn’t know where we stood, the Captain and I. The violence of Market Day had taken the fragile, unspoken thing budding between us and shoved it back into shadow. I held his gaze, searching for cracks in his unshaking smoothness. Longing for them.

Elm looked up from his second glassful, his green eyes flickering from Ravyn to me. “Bloody trees,” he muttered, hoisting himself out of his chair. Without a good-night, he took the flagon of wine from the table and quit the parlor.

Fenir did not miss the cue. He cleared his throat. “Well, that about does it for me,” he said, shuffling out of the room, leaving me and the Captain of the Destriers alone together.

Ravyn’s eyes did not leave my face. But I could not read them. And it hurt, somewhere between my lungs and my sternum, knowing he was guarded around me once more. My fingers shook along the stem of my goblet. “Did you mean what you said?” I asked, matching his gaze. “You trust me? Or were you just making a show for your cousin?”

Ravyn thumbed the rim of his goblet. “What makes you think I was making a show?”

“No—don’t do that,” I said. Something burned behind my eyes. I pushed it away. “Don’t answer a question with a question. I’m tired of that.”

He cocked his brow, leaning forward in his chair. “How would you have us talk, Elspeth?”

I looked away, a lump rising in my throat. The muscles above my brow straining, holding everything I had not yet told him at bay. “I want us to be honest,” I whispered. I pressed my hand to my face, but it was too late; he’d seen the tears in my eyes—the upturn of my brow. The fear.

The Nightmare slithered out of the darkness, his voice caressing my ear. You needn’t be afraid. His voice was slick with oil. Magic comes for us all.

Go away! I cried.

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.

I closed my eyes. “I’m degenerating, Ravyn.”

I heard his sharp inhale, then the clang of silver as his goblet hit the tray. He was out of his seat and kneeling beside me in a breath, one hand on the arm of the chair, the other on my knee. “Tell me,” he said.

“It’s why I attacked the Destrier—why Elm doesn’t trust me. I’m changing. Not the way you are, and not the way Emory is, but just as sure.” I felt for the Nightmare, but he had gone eerily quiet. “And I’m running out of time.”

“Have you told Filick?”

“There’s nothing he can do, Ravyn. Nothing anyone can do.”

His hand on my knee tightened. “What kind of degeneration, Elspeth?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never spoken about it,” I said. I covered my eyes with my hand. “I can’t.”

A hot tear slid down my cheek, dipping into the crease of my mouth. Ravyn wiped it away with his thumb. He leaned closer. “We all have secrets we’re forced to keep, Elspeth,” he murmured. He lifted my chin. When I opened my eyes, his gaze poured into mine. “I trust you. You’re safe with me. Magic—or something else—is pulling us together. Only two more Cards,” he said, the tips of our noses grazing. “And then you’ll be free.”

I wanted to believe him—to feel safe, like I had in his arms earlier that day. I wanted him to blot out the entire world, shielding me from everything and anyone who might do me harm. Still, even the vastness of Ravyn Yew’s arms, the heat on his skin, the muscles beneath his clothes, could not keep me safe from myself.

But I was more than willing to lose myself to his touch, just to be certain.

I reached for him, my hand cupping the nape of his neck, pulling his mouth to mine. He let out a breath that slipped into a growl. The hand on my chin lowered to my neck, his thumb pressing lightly against the hollow of my throat.

The chair creaked in complaint as Ravyn pushed into me, our kiss almost frantic. His other hand traveled up my leg, his fingers digging into the fabric of my dress. When he gripped the soft skin of my thigh, I let out a gasp.

He pulled back, pupils wide, mouth swollen. “Is this—Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” I said claiming his mouth again. Wine and firelight and the desperate need to escape my own fate blended in a heady draft. It struck a fire in me I had never tended, wild, unfettered.

I wanted it to burn me to pieces—for him to burn me to pieces.

A loud clatter sounded somewhere outside the parlor door, followed by the echo of rapid footfall, close, then far. Thistle, no doubt coming to refill our wine, scurried away in a hurry.

Ravyn swore under his breath. He gripped my hips, pulling me out of the chair. When we stood, he adjusted his jerkin, his voice a low rumble. “Come with me.”

His room was at the end of the same corridor as mine, unlocked. He pushed it open and ushered me in, his hand grazing the small of my back.

The smell of clove and cedar and paper and leather reached for me. His room was a flood of scent—drying herbs, shelves filled with books, freshly cut wood for the hearth, cedarwood in various forms scattered across the floor, some half carved, others whittled to perfection. Clothes were thrown without aim, crumpled in corners and flung over furniture spines. His bed was large and unmade, its heavy quilt shoved to the foot of the mattress, as if kicked there. Messy, warm—a gentle chaos. The kind of chaos that lived in stark contrast to the stony, controlled Captain of the Destriers.

And he was showing it to me.

Ravyn closed the door behind us and leaned against it, long shadows dancing across his face, the hearth the only light in the room. “I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t always this untidy.”

“I like it,” I said, my eyes lingering a moment too long on the bed.

It was jarring to go from having my hands full of him to this—him against the door, me in the middle of the room, unsure what to say or where to look. I put a hand to my cheek to steady myself, but it had the opposite effect. The touch of my own skin made me think of his rough, calloused hands, pulling at me.

Ravyn watched me, the invisible string tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Is this what you want, Elspeth?”

I leaned against the post of his bed frame. “What do you think I want, Ravyn?”

His eyes narrowed dangerously. He pushed off the door and came toward me. “I thought we weren’t answering questions with questions.”

It felt painful, saying what I wanted out loud, like flexing an underworked muscle. I wanted to make a joke of it—to play coy—to tease him—anything that would stop me from feeling vulnerable and exposed, the distance between us rapidly closing.

But I had kept too much of myself from him already. In this, at least, I could be truthful. I sat on the bed. With my good hand, I twisted my skirt, the fabric puckering as I pulled it up and over my knee, the quiver in my voice betraying me. “I want to be here. With you.”

It was difficult, removing his jerkin with only one hand. He helped me, bowed over me, his mouth on mine. After the jerkin came his tunic, ripped over his head and tossed atop the pile of discarded clothes. I ran my hand over the taut muscles of his chest—his stomach—stopping just below his navel.

He shivered and pulled back, sliding his hands up my legs, pushing my dress until it sat in the crease of my thighs. His fingers caught on my wool leggings, easing them down from my waist over my curves, so slow I wanted to scream, his mouth a pace behind. His facial hair scratched against my inner thigh, my knee, my calf. When he slipped my leggings off and flung them onto the pile of clothes on the floor, his hands returned to my thighs.

My breaths came rapidly, far too shallow. I suddenly felt confined by my dress, my bodice too constricting, pinning me in all the wrong ways. I tore the lacings open, my fingers clumsy and wild as the long crimson cord released me.

The dress fell open. I took a filling breath, then another, my chest hurried as it rose and fell, covered now only by a thin chemise.

Ravyn’s hands moved to my hips, his gaze traveling up the curve of body. He looked me in the eye, kissed me hard, and yanked me to the cusp of the bed. “Can I kiss you?”

My voice shook. “A bit late to ask, isn’t it?”

“Not on your mouth, Elspeth.” His eyes turned wicked as he lowered himself to his knees, kissing the inside of my leg, the tips of his teeth edging over my skin. With a sharp breath he pushed my thighs open, wide enough to accommodate his broad shoulders. “Here.”

I put a hand over my mouth and fell back on the bed, my breath soaring out of me, caught between a sigh and a curse. The ache in my stomach moved lower, amber hot as it coiled, touch starved. I shut my eyes. “Yes,” I said, dropping my fingers into his hair.

Ravyn sighed into me, his hands on my hips tightening, holding me to him. When he kissed me below my skirt, my ache responded, tendrils of heat knotting themselves over and over deep within me.

I had no practice living outside my mind. But here, pinned on Ravyn Yew’s bed, his touch searing over my skin, I was alive only in my body, as if leaning out an open window in the tallest tower of Spindle House. I felt it in my stomach, the palms of my hands, the soles of my feet. And with every kiss, every flick of his tongue, Ravyn was crumbling the window’s casement—pushing me toward an inevitable, ruinous fall.

He did not let me fall right away. By his sighs, the muffled, contented growls, he was taking his time with me. Laying waste to me.

“Don’t stop,” I uttered, squeezing my eyes shut.

I felt him moan and then I was falling, released from the casement, tumbling down the tower, every part of me caught in the fall. I cried out, pulling his hair, my legs flexing, toes curling.

He leaned over me and smiled, like he knew exactly how thoroughly he’d shattered me. His hand slid up my stomach to my chest, pressing over my breast, just above my heart. He bent down, his lips brushing mine. “Your heart is racing,” he said with a smirk.

Somehow we ended up on the floor, heaped among his belongings, tangled with one another. Clothes long discarded, I trapped Ravyn with my body, pinning him to the rug, taking my own time with him. He let me at first, ceding control, hands gripped tightly along my hips, brow strained.

But even he, with his abundance of restraint, could not hold back for long.

He flipped me onto my back in one fluid motion, never breaking our touch. His lips found my neck, and when he pressed into me, deeper than before, I let out an abrupt breath.

My name was a token on his lips, a barter, as if he was giving all of himself to me just to say it. “Elspeth.” He pressed his forehead to mine, his breath coming quicker. “Fuck, Elspeth.”

We lay, undone, on the floor and watched the fire with heavy eyes. Ravyn ran a finger down my spine and I traced the lines of his throat, his jaw, his brow, his hooked nose. When I could no longer keep my eyes open, he lifted me off the floor and carried me to the bed, wrapping us both in the thick quilt. I pressed my head to his chest, lost to the sound of his heartbeat against my ear. It stretched on and on, an eternal beat, a false promise.

As if all my woes would disappear if I remained there, naked, next to him.

As if I had all the time in the world.