“You’re not out of your mind,” Ione murmured. “The cut was deep.”
The urge to scrape his teeth across her palm—to press her skin like clay and test her fortitude—was overwhelming. “How?”
“Can’t you guess?”
Elm recalled the feeling of Hawthorn House’s aged wood door beneath his ear. Rain on his cheek. Frigid wind. Ione’s yellow hair, damp and wild as they rode. The highwayman’s hand on her leg. The ice in her voice, unrelenting and sure.
Kill me. If you can.
His vision snapped, everything coming into painful focus, the labyrinth beginning to unravel. His eyes traced her face—her unblemished visage. Her skin was too flawless, her face too symmetrical, her voice too even. He’d known from the start that this wasn’t the real Ione Hawthorn. This was how the Maiden Card had remade her, masking her in unearthly beauty. Caging her. Protecting her.
Healing her.
“The Maiden.” The words scraped out of him.
So small Elm almost missed it, the tip of Ione’s brow lifted. “Seems you are clever. On occasion.”
Elm stepped into the room, dizzy, elated, and a little sick to his stomach. “Trees, I need to sit down.” He found the edge of the bed, plopped down, wincing at the thin mattress. “Five hundred years,” he mumbled to himself. “For five hundred years, Maiden Cards haven’t been used for anything but gifts for wealthy men’s daughters.”
“Five hundred years have been wasted on women, is that it, Prince?”
“That’s not—” He bit his lip. “Don’t twist my words. If the Maiden can heal, gross oversights have clearly been made.”
Ione sat next to him on the bed. She didn’t look tired, but her shoulders slumped, and her voice was dull. “Men have no use for the Maiden. What is beauty to real power? My father never let me touch his Providence Cards. But the Maiden—the Maiden I was gifted freely, like a horse a lump of sugar. Something sweet to distract me from the bit they shoved in my mouth.” She lowered her chin, hair spilling over her shoulder. “Is it any wonder, if women discovered the Maiden’s true potential, its healing power, that they kept it a secret?”
Elm was silent. But in his mind, he was shouting. Was his Rowan legacy that of idiots as well as brutes? Someone should have figured this out.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where is it? Your Maiden Card?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Still don’t trust me, Hawthorn?”
“You’re a Rowan.”
She said it softly. But an accusation hid in the melody of her voice—a quiet abhorrence. It sunk into Elm through all the sore, bruised pieces of him. “It’s here, isn’t it?” he said. “Your Maiden. That’s why you wanted to come back to Stone—to retrieve it.” He searched her face. “Where, Ione?”
But that face—that beautiful, unfeeling face—held nothing. Elm knew before she spoke that she wouldn’t answer his question. “Now that you know what the Maiden Card can do,” Ione said, tucking hair behind her ear, “are you going to use one to heal your brother?”
Elm hadn’t thought of that. He groaned and dragged his hands over his eyes. “There are not enough curse words in all the languages,” he muttered, “for me to answer that question.”
“Because, if you do, he’s going to—”
“The list of terrible things my brother will do if he wakes is longer than you know.” Elm closed his eyes and heaved a long, aching breath. Days ago, when he’d stood in the icy dungeon with Ravyn and his father in front of Elspeth Spindle’s cell, he couldn’t imagine a situation more dire.
But it had become so, all because of Ione bloody Hawthorn and her Maiden Card. If he ever grew old enough do so, he would tell this story to his children, with the firm lesson being don’t ever strike bargains with beautiful women.
“It seems the best option is to keep the Maiden’s magic a secret,” he said. “For now.”
When he opened his eyes, Ione was looking at him. Searching his face for something she couldn’t seem to find. Her stare was like running unwashed wool over his bare skin. Elm felt itchy, too warm.
But with the discomfort came another feeling—something low in his stomach. A tumbling exhilaration, like clearing a fence on horseback. And though he was tired to the point of pain, maybe he’d stay awake just a little while longer to get that feeling to stay.
He stood, bracing himself a moment on the bedframe when his legs buckled. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“The dungeon.”
Ione went rigid. “What for?”
“Elspeth,” Elm said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’m taking you to see Elspeth. Or what’s left of her.”
Chapter Thirteen
Elspeth
When they came back, the weight of my memories dragged me so far down I couldn’t find a way out. Magic. My infection. Providence Cards. What Hauth Rowan had done to me that final night at Spindle House.
The monster who had saved me.
I screamed, calling out to the Nightmare who had taken my place. I was met only with silence. I ran the length of the beach, looking for a way out, only to come back to where I’d started. I swam in the water, only to remain ten paces from the shore. I screamed myself raw and cried until there were no more tears. “I remember, Nightmare,” I shouted at the dark. “Let me out. LET ME OUT!”
Silence was my only answer.
The children came and went as they pleased, never leaving marks upon the sand, nor ripples on the water. Slowly, I learned their names. Tilly, and her brothers Ilyc, Afton, Fenly, Lenor. The eldest—the one with gray eyes—was Bennett.
They didn’t seem to notice each other, passing on the same stretch of beach without ever lifting their gazes or trading words. I’d even witnessed two of the young boys pass through one another.
But they did speak to me.
“Will you come see what I’ve built?” Lenor said, reaching for my sleeve, his hand passing through my arm.
“I—I—”
His face dropped, and so did his yellow eyes. “Another time, then.”
“I’ve trained every day for a fortnight,” Fenly declared—the next moment or hours later, I didn’t know. “Aunt Ayris said you might come see me compete in the tournament on Market Day.” But even as he said it, I could tell he didn’t believe it. Just like Lenor’s, his eyes dropped. “But of course, you are busy.”
“I’m not,” I called after him, but he disappeared out over the water.
Ilyc and Afton, I realized, were twins. My stomach twisted at that. They reminded me of my half sisters. Only, unlike Nya and Dimia, they didn’t speak that secret, knowing language of twins. They didn’t speak to one another at all. Sometimes, their visages blended entirely together, two boys becoming one. “I want a Golden Egg Card,” Ilyc—or was it Afton?—said. “You gave Bennett Providence Cards. I want one as well.”
I held out my empty hands. “I have no Providence Cards to give you.”
Their brows narrowed. When they spoke again, it was to shout at me. “You keep them all for yourself.”
“I don’t.”
“I hate you.”
I clasped my hands over my ears and shut my eyes. When I opened them again, the twins were gone.