Chapter Eleven #2
Ravyn stepped out of shadow and stood before me, eyes fixed on my face. I fought the urge to squirm in my seat. “Do you trust us, Miss Spindle?” he asked.
The Scythe’s influence warred within me. All I wanted to do was answer with the earnest truth. But what Ravyn Yew and his cousin did not know was that I had great practice being at war with my own mind. Eleven years’ practice.
I gripped the seat of my chair tighter, sweat pooling in my palms. “I don’t know what I believe yet,” I said.
“What about Ravyn?” Elm called from the hearth. “You seem to trust him.”
I looked at the Captain of the Destriers, his gray eyes full of me. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his feet shoulder width apart. He looked every bit the soldier—stoic and severe.
But Ravyn Yew was more than a soldier. He was the shadow on the forest road. The keeper of keys and secrets, invisible but for his purple and burgundy lights. A man with many masks.
A traitor , said the Nightmare.
A highwayman , I replied.
No sooner had our eyes met—a flash of gray—did I think back to standing against the door in Ravyn’s chamber, his body towering over me, his finger pressed against my lips.
I looked away. Fast. “How can I trust him?” I said to Elm. “I’ve only just met him.”
Elm’s smile held no hospitality. “Do you think he’s handsome?”
The Prince was toying with me, like a cat its prey. I bit down, determined not to answer, but the Scythe’s influence—the desire to reply—was overwhelming.
My head began to pound. Sweat came in beads along my brow and the nape of my neck. When I spoke, my voice sounded strangled. “Yes.” Then, out of spite, “For a Destrier.”
Elm cackled. Ravyn shot him a narrow glance. Still, I did not miss the way the Captain’s lips pulled at the corner; the elusive half smile, tugged by an invisible string.
“Tell us more about your magic,” Filick Willow said from the table. “Is it contained merely to seeing Providence Cards by color? Or do you possess other gifts?”
Tread lightly , the Nightmare warned. Feel the Scythe’s influence?
I could. I had hardly known an urge so vital as the one imploring me to tell the council everything they wanted to know about me. I felt trapped in the crumbling shelter of my thoughts, as if the Scythe were knocking against a weight-bearing pillar, the stone ceiling of my mind cracking.
When I hesitated, Ravyn’s brow perked. “Forgive me, Miss Spindle, but you do not have the appearance of someone trained in combat. It might have been luck, knocking Elm off his feet,” he said, shooting his cousin a wry grin, “but not me. Do you have other magic?”
I wanted to be honest. Rather, Elm Rowan and his Scythe wanted me to be honest. I looked at the others, many of whom had leaned forward in their chairs, eyes sharp, waiting for my answer.
My palms were slick with icy sweat. One wrong word, and they’d realize it wasn’t my magic they needed… but the monster’s in my head.
Help me , I called into the void.
The Nightmare slithered across our shared darkness, churning against the current of Elm’s influence. It will be easier with me here, my dear. After all, the Scythe has no sway on me.
I blinked. What? Why didn’t you say before?
You did not ask.
Magic. I felt it like salt water up my nostrils. The Nightmare stirred, loosening the rope Elm Rowan had tied across my mind. The Scythe’s magic lessened, the desire to be honest—malleable—obedient—fading, washed away by a wave of salt.
I gasped, as if coming up for air, my mind suddenly calm, the last remnants of the Scythe’s control fading like ripples on still water. When I spoke, my voice was ironclad. “No,” I said to Ravyn. “I have no other magic. I can only see Providence Cards.”
The Captain’s eyes narrowed as he cocked his head to the side.
I held his gaze, forcing my features to remain still.
If he suspected I’d beaten the Scythe’s control, he did not say so.
Still, I did not miss the sharp edge of doubt that crept into the corners of his eyes. “Who trained you in combat?” he asked.
“No one,” I said. “I taught myself how to survive.”
“And you never told anyone about your magic?”
I glared up at him. “As I told you, Captain, no one else knows. Not my father or stepmother or half sisters—not my uncle, aunt, or cousins.” I faced the others, my temper flaring.
“I avoid town, Destriers, and Physicians. I keep to the wood, which, until lately,” I said, shooting Ravyn a cold glance, “was the safest place for me to be.” I crossed my arms across my chest. “Until today, my life has been one of caution, not one of magic and risk.”
A weighted silence filled the room, broken by Morette Yew’s austere voice. “Then let us proceed.” She opened her hands to the table. “Does anyone have anything new to ask Miss Spindle?”
No one spoke. After a severe pause, Morette’s gaze returned to me. Deeper than I expected, I could almost hear the iron in her voice—the sheer resolve. “Do you swear what we tell you does not leave this room, Elspeth Spindle?” she said. “Do you give your word?”
I reached in the darkness, but the Nightmare did not speak. He, like the others, was waiting for my answer.
The Scythe no longer controlled me. I was free to lie at will.
But I didn’t. “Yes,” I said. “I swear.”
Ravyn approached, kneeling beside my chair.
He rested his arms on his bent knee. Had he not been clad in all black, severe as a crow, I might have thought him a knight kneeling before a maiden, slipped from the pages of a book.
“We need you to help us collect the Deck of Cards, Miss Spindle,” he said.
Suddenly I was a little girl, sitting next to Ione as my aunt read to us from The Old Book of Alders . The silky rhythm of the ancient text swept over me, the poem on the final page and the sound of my mother’s voice ingrained into my very soul.
What was it she had once said? The Cards. The mist. The blood. They are all woven together, their balance delicate, like spider silk. Unite all twelve Providence Cards with the black blood of salt, and the infection will be healed. Blunder will be free of the mist.
I stared at the faces around me. “King Rowan, and all the Rowan Kings before him, have wanted to collect the Deck.” I gripped the lip of my chair so tightly my knuckles ached.
“But you’re not working with King Rowan.
Otherwise, you would have already given him your Nightmare Card.
You’re collecting the Deck on your own account…
” My eyes flew to the table. “Is there going to be a rebellion? Are you going to depose the King?”
Fenir’s voice was sharp. “Nothing of the sort. Rebellion would destroy Blunder.”
Then why not work alongside the King to collect the Deck? the Nightmare said, coiling through my mind. They’re hiding something.
I waited, the room so quiet it might have been a tomb. “With the Deck of Cards,” Fenir said, “the King will lift the mist, regaining ownership of Blunder from the Spirit of the Wood.” He took his wife’s hand, his face drawn. “And he will be able to cure the infection.”
I waited, my breath fast.
“But as The Old Book of Alders so loves to remind us,” Elm said from the hearth, twirling the Scythe, “nothing comes for free. Now that my father has the Nightmare Card, he needs only two things to unite the Deck: the lost Twin Alders Card and blood. Infected blood.” He looked toward the flames, his shoulders tight.
“And he’s going to kill Emory to get it. ”
The strange boy—his erratic, fitful nature. Infected. Which meant Emory Yew was not a resident in the King’s castle as a token of hospitality.
He was a captive.
And they were going to commit treason to save him.
Even the Nightmare was stunned into silence.
I looked away, ashamed of the cruel thoughts I’d had about Emory. The boy was sick—addled by magic. And his uncle was going to sacrifice him for it.
How easily it could have been me.
“There is more to tell,” Fenir said, breaking the doleful silence, “but not here. The hour is late, and we are still within the King’s walls. If you agree to help us, we will take you to Castle Yew.”
This time, Jespyr spoke. There was a rasp in her voice, warm, like cracking kindling.
“All we need is the Well, the Iron Gate, and the Twin Alders,” she said.
“After that, our Deck is complete.” She laced her fingers together.
“Finding the Twin Alders won’t be easy. But with your ability to see Cards, we have an advantage the King does not.
Help us, Elspeth, and we can cure Emory’s infection.
” Her brown eyes searched my face. “Help us, and you can cure your own.”
Her plea tugged at me. I looked down at Ravyn to speak—to argue—I was not sure. But I couldn’t find the words. He looked suddenly quite young, kneeling next to me. Only then did I recall that, despite the gravity of his station, the Captain of the Destriers was not much older than I was.
Still, I was wary of joining him. He had not become Captain of the most dangerous men in Blunder because of a handsome face. “Whose infected blood will you use to unite the Deck, if not Emory’s?” I asked, twisting my hands in my skirt.
“Someone close to the King,” Ravyn said, his shoulders tight. “Someone who has committed great wrongs.”
I stilled my features and reached into my mind.
If the Deck is united, will I truly be cured?
Who says you need a cure?
Be serious!
His laugh echoed in the cavernous dark. I know what I know. My secrets are deep. But long have I kept them, and long will they keep.
I shut my eyes and sighed. Just as I could not fathom Blunder without the mist, I could not fathom finding the Twin Alders, a Card that had been lost for centuries.
Worse, the notion of sacrificing someone, deserving or not, and spilling their infected blood to unite the Deck of Cards made my stomach twist. Perhaps that was why the final page of The Old Book of Alders had always seemed like a fairy tale to me—dark, strange. Impossible.
I felt it in their eyes, their shoulders, the air we shared—tense, yet somehow hopeful. They were desperate for my help, for my magic.
I slid my hands up my arms, knowing what waited under my sleeves. I had felt it in my veins the moment I’d asked the Nightmare for help—the moment I’d broken the Scythe’s influence. It was always there, just like the creature in my mind, waiting.
Blackness. Dark as ink. Magic.
Magic strong enough to find a Card that had been lost five hundred years.
“I’ll do it,” I said, my heart drumming in my chest. “For the cure, I’ll help you find the Twin Alders.”