Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Seven
To steal a Providence Card is a wicked crime. No one is invulnerable to the King’s inquest. No one is immune to the Chalice—the truth will always out. Those who bear guilt will pay in blood.
To steal a Providence Card is a wicked crime.
T he 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.”