Chapter Twenty-Two #2
He caught me by my good wrist and pulled me back. He brought my hand close to his chest. Above it, he held his knife like a violin bow, its wicked edge a whisper from my palm. “It doesn’t take much blood,” he said, his voice a growl. “Just a small amount. An offering.”
A barter , whispered the Nightmare. Nothing comes free.
Ravyn’s skin was rough, like the cover of a long-forgotten book. But it was warm. My breath swelled as I waited for the pain of the blade, my eyes never leaving his.
He slid his knife along the heel of my palm. I gasped, watching a trail of red beads escape the nigh-invisible cut Ravyn had just dealt. He pinched my flesh, pulling more blood to the surface. “Just a small cut,” he murmured. “Nothing too deep. No need to scar these beautiful hands.”
If there was pain, I hardly felt it. Something else was stirring in me. Not quite pain; an ache .
Ravyn guided my hand to the stone, pressing it against the textured, ancient stone. When he pulled it back, droplets of blood remained. A moment later the Cards were gone, sealed back in the stone, the chamber dark once more.
Gone, too, was my blood, my barter, lost to the strange magic of the stone.
“Nothing comes free,” I whispered.
Ravyn pulled my hand back to him, only a few beads of red remaining. He pressed two calloused fingers into the cut, stopping the bleed. A strand of hair fell over his brow, his eyes lowered to my palm.
I pushed the hair out of his face with my other hand, my fingers shaky as they brushed over his forehead.
Ravyn looked up, his gaze lingering on my mouth before climbing to my eyes. His fingers slid to my wrist, languid in their journey. “I can feel your pulse. Your heart is racing,” he said.
I was suddenly thankful for the cover of nightfall—the darkly shadowed chamber. Had it been daylight, the intense heat in my cheeks would have been unmistakable.
I felt tethered—wrapped in an invisible string that tied me to the Captain of the Destriers.
I was painfully aware of how closely we stood—the warmth of his broad body—the curve of my breasts above my neckline as I took quick, unsteady breaths—the feel of his calloused hand on mine. “I don’t know why,” I said.
His lips curled into the ghost of a smile. “Don’t you?”
I kept still, waiting for something I didn’t have the courage to name. With his free hand, Ravyn cupped the side of my face, his thumb lingering perilously close to my mouth.
Breath hitched in my lungs and my lips parted, anticipation melding with a lightness I did not understand. Ravyn let out an abrupt exhale—his thumb brushing across the flesh of my bottom lip, snagging it.
When he leaned closer, I closed my eyes, his mouth a whisper from mine. His voice caught at the edges. “Is this you pretending, Elspeth?” he said, the tip of his nose grazing mine. “Because if it is…” His breath stirred my eyelashes. “You’re very good at it.”
His words moved something in me. The same calling from before—the same ache. I wanted him to run his hand over my mouth again—to feel the texture of his rough, hardened skin. My body was screaming, a mindless, impatient call for touch.
His touch.
“No better than you, Captain.”
Ravyn’s throat hitched, his eyelids lowering.
He placed my hand firmly on his chest, across the Yew insignia, just above his heart.
His chest thumped—his heartbeat ragged, as if he’d just been running.
When I looked up, he was watching me, his eyes softer than before.
“Does this feel pretend?” he said, his mouth close now, so close his lips tugged at mine.
It felt… raw. Honest. Something I was deeply unfamiliar with. It had taken Ravyn Yew, Captain of the Destriers, my supposed natural enemy, to make me realize what I truly, deeply wanted.
To stop pretending.
Our lips collided, there, among the salt.
Ravyn growled into my mouth and I pressed my entire self into him, wanting—needing—to feel him against my body.
His hand slid over my jaw to the nape of my neck, his fingers twisting in my hair, his mouth opening to mine.
Our tongues touched, hot and unfamiliar, tentative at first, then greedy.
He drew me out of my Nightmare-infested mind into myself . The kiss deepened. I cupped Ravyn’s jaw in my hand, my fingers digging into the stubble that grew there. I didn’t think about being soft with him. I was so tired of pretending not to want this.
The hardening of his body told me he felt the same.
Ravyn hooked his arm around the small of my back, pressing me against him.
He brushed his mouth across my cheek, his teeth nipping my earlobe before lowering to my neck.
Shivers danced up my spine. His fingers curled in my hair, pulling it just enough so that my head tilted back, my neck bared to him.
He kissed me below my ear, under my jaw, down my throat.
Had I kept my eyes shut, I might have surrendered entirely to Ravyn’s touch.
But I opened them a sliver, and when I did, something over Ravyn’s shoulder caught my gaze.
A shadow shifting across the dark chamber.
When I followed it, my eyes returned to the stone in the center of the room—the one that, only moments ago, Ravyn had opened and I had closed, with blood.
Only now, perched atop it, his gold armor dimly glistening, sat the man from my dreams.
He watched me as I stood with the Captain of the Destriers. When he spoke, I recognized the silky quality of his voice. “Elspeth Spindle,” he said, his eyes—so strange and yellow—ensnaring me. “Let me out.”
I ripped away from Ravyn, fighting to suppress a scream. But when I looked back at the stone, the knight was gone. The only thing left was the smell of salt, invisible as it lingered all around us.
Ravyn’s eyes were wide, wild. His black hair untidy, his hands—hands that, a moment ago, had been tangled in my hair, my body—dropping to his sides.
Even in the darkness, I could trace the flush up his neck.
He opened his mouth to speak, but I was already turning away, afraid to stay another second in the strange, magical chamber.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I moved to the window. “I have to go.”
“Elspeth,” he called after me.
But I did not turn back, and graciously, he did not pursue me. I ran into the meadow, released from the salt—the magic. I exhaled short, hot breaths that did nothing to soothe me, and did not stop running until I’d reached the small wooden door at the base of the castle.
What’s happening to me? I cried, my fingers balled into fists. Am I losing my mind?
The Nightmare slithered through my thoughts, like a serpent over grass. I know what I know , he murmured.
I shouted into the chasm of my mind. Enough, Nightmare! Tell me the truth. Who is that man? Why do I keep seeing him?
He is a vestige of the past, haunting the chamber he built for the Spirit of the Wood, nothing more than a memory of a man who once was. His voice grew harder. A man I once was.
I slammed my chamber door shut and flung myself into the room. But my foot caught on the carpet. I swore, kicking the ancient wool.
My eyes froze. There he was, woven into the carpet of my room, his gilded armor bright atop his black horse.
The knight from the chamber. Only now, as I scanned the wool, I noticed a distant object, woven into the green at the edge of the carpet, nestled at the edge of the woods, just before the tree line.
A doorless chamber with one dark window.
My youth came slamming into me. I saw myself as a little girl, poring over my aunt’s copy of The Old Book of Alders , fixed on the Nightmare Card’s page.
So certain had I been that the creature in my mind was an embodiment of the Card itself—the monster on its cover matching him entirely—that I had failed to understand what was written just a few pages prior.
But it felt incomplete, my collection yet whole. And so, for the Nightmare, I bartered my soul.
I put a hand to my mouth, fingers shaking. My voice came out hollow. “But that would mean I absorbed your soul when I touched the Nightmare Card. Which makes you… the Shepherd King.”
A growl, a sneer—oil, bile. His voice called, louder than it had ever been, as if he was closer. Stronger. Finally, my darling Elspeth, we understand one another.