Chapter Four
Chapter Four
Magic smells of salt. Like ocean tides, it carries great balance. It wraps itself around the Spirit of the Wood, good and evil, love and hate, life and death. Can you smell it in the mist—in the Cards—in your own house?
Magic smells of salt.
K ing Rowan dwelled in Stone, the castle just beyond the town, surrounded by treeless hills rich for farming. If the hills were beautiful, I did not know it. I could not see them. No one could.
The mist was too thick.
As if spun of sheep’s wool, magical and smelling of salt, the mist blanketed all of Blunder in gray.
It was heaviest in the woods. Every year it expanded, choking Blunder off from the outside world, slipping over our fields and farms. If the Deck of Providence Cards was not collected in my lifetime, even town—even roads and places of dwelling—would surely be caught in its snare.
And the Spirit of the Wood would roam freely.
But families of Blunder had learned long ago to keep out of the mist. They walked in droves down the road through great iron gates onto the King’s lands, the promise of Equinox—a chance to dine at the King’s table—spurring them on.
Some came by carriage, but most traveled, by tradition, on foot.
I held Ione’s arm and kept my other hand on the clasp of my cloak.
Next to me, Ione filled my ears with excited chatter. “What do you think King Rowan will give Father for the Nightmare Card? More Cards? Gold? Land? An honored place in his court?”
The Shepherd King had made seventy-eight Providence Cards in descending order.
There were twelve Black Horses, held exclusively by the King’s elite guard—the Destriers.
Eleven Golden Eggs. Ten Prophets. Nine White Eagles.
Eight Maidens. Seven Chalices. Six Wells.
Five Iron Gates. Four Scythes. Three Mirrors. Two Nightmares.
And one Twin Alders.
One of only two, the Nightmare Card was exceedingly rare. Which meant, despite the fact that Kings of Blunder had sought it for decades, my uncle had chosen to hold on to it in secret for eleven years.
I peered across my shoulder at my uncle where he walked in step with his sons.
His expression was jovial, his mouth open in conversation.
His beard had been trimmed, and his silk collar was finer than the ones he usually wore.
“I suspect your father’s had plenty of time to decide what he and the King will barter over for the Nightmare Card,” I said, my voice grim.
The voice in my head slipped through my mind, like wind whistling through a window. The Hawthorn tree carries few seeds. Its branches are weary, it’s lost all its leaves. Be wary the man who bargains and thieves. He’ll offer your soul to get what he needs.
Ione tucked her yellow hair behind her ear. “Father asked, when he presents the Nightmare Card to the King, that I come with him.”
My focus on my uncle broke. “What? Why?”
She scrunched her lips from side to side, something she always did when she hadn’t decided what to say. “He wants to introduce me to Prince Hauth.”
I snorted. “Sounds like a punishment, not a reward.”
Ione had always been generous with her laughter—one of the many things I loved about her. She made me feel a great deal funnier than I was. But this time, she did not laugh. Her brow was creased, her hazel eyes distant.
Too slowly, I began to understand. “Wait, is Uncle trading the Nightmare Card… so that you and the High Prince may become acquainted?”
Ione shrugged, kicking a loose stone out ahead of her. “Would that be a horrible thing?”
I blinked. “How could it not be?” I lowered my voice and peered over my shoulder, remembering whose castle I was walking to. “The man’s a brute. Both Princes are.”
“How do you know?” Ione countered. “Have you ever met them?”
“They’re Destriers,” I bit back, more heat in my voice than I’d intended. “They’re trained to be violent, horrid men.”
“Not all of them. Your father was Captain not long ago.”
The muscles along my jaw twitched.
“Besides,” Ione continued, “perhaps Hauth will be a different kind of Rowan King than those who came before him.”
The Nightmare growled at the name Rowan, his claws scraping through my mind. I shushed him. “How do you imagine?” I asked.
“He’s so magnetic—attuned. A true leader. Perhaps, under him, the Destriers will be a symbol of protection, not oppression. Perhaps he will be a King who does not hurt those who catch the infection, but lets them convalesce. A King of abundance, not fear. A better Rowan King.”
I gritted my teeth. When I spoke, my voice was not gentle. “That Hauth Rowan does not exist, Ione. You’ve made him up in your mind.”
My cousin’s arm slipped out of my grip. “If everyone was as distrustful as you, Bess, Blunder would never change.”
My laughter was hollow. “Better distrustful than delusional.”
There was redness in Ione’s cheeks—rarely displayed anger in her hazel eyes. “Having hope does not make me delusional, Elspeth,” she said.
I opened my mouth to say something more, but Ione was stomping ahead, leaving me to walk alone, her words stinging me like wasps. I walked the rest of the way alone, already yearning for my time at the King’s castle to be over.
We crossed the drawbridge just as the sky darkened. Aldrich and Lyn threw rocks into the moat and roared in delight until my aunt reined them by the ears and brought them into the castle with the rest of us.
I avoided Ione, moving with weary feet to meet my father and half sisters in a cluster of other Blunder families.
Most faces I had not seen in years, but I knew them by the tree insignias sewn into their tunics and gowns.
Spindle, Hawthorn, Juniper, Beech, Gorse, Ash, and so on.
It was the history of our kingdom—an ancient homage to the Spirit of the Wood—to take the name of the trees.
Nya and Dimia, the spindle tree embroidered on their blue silk dresses, stood by the hearth and waved at me. Nerium was with them. When she saw me, her eyes bulged, red around the edges.
My aunt had been right. It felt good to watch her squirm.
When my father approached, I tensed. He walked like an oak, stiff—a head taller than the men around us. His tunic was crimson, Spindle red. He glanced down at me through blue eyes, his emotions so guarded they might not have even existed. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
I reached for my charm—the crow’s foot in my pocket—and stroked it absently, an anxious habit I was hardly aware of. “It’s been three years since I’ve been to Stone,” I said, my eyes lifting to the castle’s vaulted ceiling. “It’s colder than I remember.”
My father paused. His eyes lowered to my face, only to shift away a moment later. “You look well.”
I said nothing, watching his eyes, waiting for him to look at me again—knowing he would not. He ran his palm across his jaw, his calluses scratching against the wiry hairs of his untrimmed beard. “It won’t be as jovial as past Equinoxes,” he said. “It was not a good harvest.”
I nodded. “The mist seems thicker every day.”
My father peered over me at the mingling crowd. “The King is restless to obtain the last two Cards. And he’s willing to pay handsomely for them.”
I flinched, recalling my conversation with Ione.
The Nightmare crawled through my mind. Desperate times , he said.
No Card is worth a formal introduction to Hauth Rowan.
Says the girl who talks to the monster in her head. Not exactly Princess material, are we, my dear?
I ignored him.
“Tell the footman to send your trunk to the Spindle rooms. You’ll have your own chamber with us.” He paused. “That is, unless you wish to stay with the Hawthorns.”
I might have, had Ione and I not just had it out barely an hour ago. Besides, where I slept hardly mattered. The celebration of Equinox was not about sleep. “Thank you,” I said.
My father caught the eye of someone in the crowd and hastily put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m pleased to see you, Elspeth.”
A moment later he was gone, moving through the crowd to the great stairwell. I watched him go, casting one last glance out the door before the guards shut it—the final remnants of gray daylight disappearing behind night’s ominous clouds.
I checked my reflection in a darkened window on my way to the great hall. I looked pale, my low cheekbones too sharp, my dark eyes too bottomless—infinite. I scrunched my face at the woman in the reflection and sighed, determined to keep conversations light and retire to bed early.
I was no more than three paces into the great hall when I realized a better plan would have been to hide out in my room indefinitely.
Alyx Laburnum, brightly dressed in his yellow house color, lingered at the entrance to the great hall.
His brown hair was combed impeccably to the side but for a few wild strands at the crown of his head, governed by an untamable cowlick.
When his ash-brown eyes met mine, he smiled so wide I could see every tooth.
“Shit,” I muttered.
The Nightmare groaned.
“Elspeth,” Alyx said, hurrying toward me. “I thought I saw you earlier—but I feared I had dreamed you up from wishing too greatly.”
Mercifully, Castle Laburnum was on the other side of Blunder from Hawthorn House. The chances of running into Alyx, even in town, were abysmal. Maybe that’s why I’d tangled with him in a quiet part of the King’s gardens when I was seventeen—I’d never have to face him again.
But only if I avoided Equinox.
I dodged an embrace, offering my hand instead. “Hello, Alyx.”
His eyes traced my face. When his lips grazed my hand, I pulled back, my gut knotted by guilt and discomfort, and just the smallest hint of revulsion. I stepped past him into the great hall. “We should go in.”
Alyx, light on his feet, was next to me in a breath. “I would consider it a great honor if you sat next to me, Miss Spindle.”
“I’m supposed to sit with my father,” I said without looking at him.
“Should I ask his permission for you to sit with me?”