Chapter Seventeen #2
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.”