“Keep your cut shallow,” he said. “Don’t give her a scar.”
There it was again—that pained expression that crossed the monster’s face. The one that looked like despair. More than wolves or the lake, that look terrified Ravyn. He stepped closer, lowering his voice so only the Nightmare could hear. “Tell me what’s happening.” A lump rose in his throat. “You can’t reach Elspeth?”
The Nightmare looked out over the water. So quick Ravyn hardly saw it happen, he dragged his thumb across the edge of his sword and shoved it into the water. “Swim fast, Ravyn Yew.”
He dove headfirst into the lake, shattering the smooth visage of the mirror.
Ravyn and Jespyr exchanged a tight glance. Gorse looked back at the wolves, who’d snuck twenty yards closer. He swore under his breath and dove into the lake, leaving short, choppy waves. Wik followed. Petyr kissed his lucky coin and joined them.
Ravyn looked at his reflection in the water. And maybe he was scared—maybe he was imagining things. Because the man who looked back up at him was not him. Not fully. He wasn’t wearing the same clothes—his head was covered by a hood, a cloth mask obscuring his face. He wasn’t the Captain of the Destriers, but the other Ravyn. The one who stalked the forest road.
The highwayman.
“Are you with me, Jes?”
His sister’s voice was close, just as it always was. “I’m right behind you.”
Ravyn bent his knees. To the sound of howling wolves, he dove off the embankment.
In stories, sirens were beautiful women whose songs pulled men into the deep. They were not dressed in black cloaks with masks fastened to their faces. They were not highwaymen.
But the creature that reached from the depths of the lake and took Ravyn by the ankle was.
His fingers were icy, piercing through Ravyn’s boot and into his skin. He spoke with Ravyn’s voice—wore Ravyn’s face, his gray eyes bright. “Swim no farther,” he said. “The freedom you seek has always been here, behind the mask. Be who you like. Love the infected woman. Steal, betray. Flout the King’s law. Stay.”
It was a test, honed by his blood—a trick of the Spirit of the Wood. To fortify him—
Or to drown him.
Ravyn flailed in the water. Lungs burning, he aimed a kick at the highwayman’s face and wrenched away.
The weight of his clothes, his blades, was enormous. But he was strong. He’d never had a choice but to be strong. Ravyn breached the lake’s surface and took a deep, gasping breath, searching frantically for the others. He saw Wik ten strokes ahead, then Petyr, struggling to keep up. “There are fucking demons in the water,” he screamed.
“Get off me!” Gorse shouted somewhere nearby, his voice clogged with water.
Jespyr came into view. She was swimming fast, sucking in frantic gulps of air. Ahead of all of them was the Nightmare. He’d almost reached the embankment at the other side of the lake. Whatever monster chased him beneath the water, the bastard was outswimming it.
Ravyn’s voice boomed over the lake. “Black Horse, Jes!” Icy water slipped into his mouth. “Swim.”
She didn’t need telling twice. Jespyr disappeared a second under the water. When she reemerged, her pace quickened tenfold. Ahead, Gorse did the same. He tapped his Black Horse Card and then the two of them were identical streams—currents pushing through the silver water—kicking with unearthly speed toward the shore.
Ravyn and the Ivy brothers were still in the center of the lake. And the monsters beneath the surface were catching up.
Legs pounding, Ravyn broke his pace to pull a knife from his belt. This time, when a hand found his ankle, he was ready.
The highwayman beneath the water yanked him back. “Stay, Ravyn Yew,” he said once more. “The man beneath the mask—that is who you are meant to be.”
Ravyn took in a gulping breath and let himself be pulled beneath the water until he was eye to eye with the highwayman, then plunged his knife into the monster’s shoulder. A shattering scream shook the water. The monster flailed and disappeared into the deep.
Ravyn returned to the surface just in time to see Petyr get dragged under.
He dove, following the stream of bubbles that fled Petyr’s open mouth. The lake monster beneath them had Petyr’s body and face, but it was cloaked as a Destrier, and its fingers were long—tipped by claws that latched into Petyr’s leg. Even when Ravyn levied the monster with a kick, those claws held on.
Ravyn wrapped an arm around Petyr’s middle and pulled with all his strength against the monster’s might. When they breached the surface, water blinded him—choked him. All he could think to do was drag in the occasional breath—just enough to keep himself conscious as he pulled Petyr toward the shore. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe—
His legs tangled in mud. The water shallowed, and then Ravyn was flinging himself onto the shore, crawling over the embankment out of the lake, dragging Petyr—and the monster fastened to his leg—with him.
Voices shouted, feet squelched through the mud. Jespyr, then Wik, grabbed Ravyn and Petyr by their shoulders.
Petyr wailed, kicking. The monster at his leg opened its mouth, letting out a shriek that echoed over the lake. Its claws flexed, tearing into flesh and muscle.
A ring of steel—a flash of light. The Shepherd King’s sword cleaved the air.
There was another wrenching scream. Ravyn watched as the monster with Petyr’s face staggered back. Its eyes rolled and its head fell from its shoulders onto the lake’s muddy lip.
Ravyn tried to pull himself up—
And saw the blood.
Petyr’s left pant leg was in tatters. So was the skin beneath it. His calf was open in long, red seams where the monster’s claws had found purchase. Even through a wince, Ravyn could see there was something wrong with the wound. It wasn’t bleeding freely as it should have been. The blood was coagulating too fast, slow as sludge as it slid from Petyr.
The odor came next—putrid as an animal carcass left to rot.
“What the hell is that smell?” Gorse said, his pallor going a sickly green.
“It’s his leg,” Jespyr whispered, hand covering her nose as she leaned over Petyr.
Two boots squelched in the mud at Ravyn’s side. The Nightmare lowered himself to a crouch, peered at the wound—the sludging, fetid blood. “How unfortunate,” he said with a sigh. “There is poison in the water.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Elspeth
In the end, he reached me the way he’d reached me as a child, just as the trees had once reached him.
On a rhyme.
In the wood, the spindle is slight. A delicate tree against hail, wind, and might. But how the tree carries, and how the roots dig. She weathers all storms, no matter their bite.
I managed to move. A small but incontestable ripple in those dark waters. I opened my mouth—called out his true name. “Taxus.”