A cold hand found my arm—wrenched me to the surface. I looked up into yellow eyes.
“There you are.” He wrapped me in his arms, holding me against his armored chest like a father would a child. “One day, you will be nothing more than memory, Elspeth Spindle. But not yet.” His yellow eyes rose to the blackened sky. “Don’t leave me alone with these fools.”
Voices rolled through the air like thunder. Far away at first, then closer. A man’s voice. “No—no! Don’t move Petyr.”
Coughs, shouts.
“Tie it off below his knee. Jes—light a fire. Wik—help me move him.”
I knew that voice. Deep. Turbulent, like the lines of a calloused hand. Rich, smoke and wool and cloves. “Do something,” the voice called. “Nightmare!”
Ravyn.
“If I take you away from this place, Elspeth,” Taxus said, “you will see what I see. But you will have no control of what used to be your body. You will live in my mind as I once lived in yours.” He looked down at me, the lines of his face drawn. “Only my mind is monstrous.”
“Are you trying to frighten me?”
“No, dear one. Only warn you.”
Ravyn’s voice sounded from above once more, louder. “Damn it, help us.”
Taxus kept those strange yellow eyes on me, waiting for my answer.
I reached out for his hand. When I pulled in a breath, my first words on that darkened shore became my last. “Let. Me. Out.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ravyn
Petyr’s blood was everywhere. And that smell, the putrid odor that wafted from the wound—impossible to stomach.
Gorse staggered away and was sick in the lake. Jespyr put a hand to her nose and stacked the dry brush she’d scrounged at the edge of forest. Her hand shook on the flint. When a spark lit to flame and the brush was alight, she pulled a knife from her belt and held it to the fire. “How does it look?”
Ravyn’s stomach rolled as he peered down at Petyr’s leg. His blood was frothing, the flesh around it turning a bloodless gray. “Hurry, Jes.”
Wik’s belt was fastened around Petyr’s leg in a tourniquet above the wound. “That’s not an ordinary wound,” he said to Ravyn.
Petyr thrashed in the mud. “Just cut the damn thing off and be done with it!”
“We’re not cutting your leg off,” Ravyn snapped. He jerked his gaze to the Nightmare. “What do you know about this poison?”
The Nightmare said nothing—did nothing. He stood eerily still, eyes glazed over, his gaze lost somewhere out over the lake.
Ravyn smelled hot steel, and then Jespyr was crouching next to Petyr. Her knife was red—smoking. When she looked down at the wound, she blanched. “You sure this will work?”
“Poison or not,” Wik said, putting an arm over his brother’s chest, “we need to stop the bleeding.”
Jespyr looked at Petyr. Tried to smile. “Don’t knee me. I like my teeth.”
The rot in the air went acrid as she pressed the molten blade over Petyr’s wound. He screamed, flailed. The flesh blackened and the wound sealed shut. Jespyr pulled the blade away—
And the wound pried itself open, blood sludging out of Petyr’s leg faster than before.
Ravyn slammed his hands against it. “Tighten that belt!” he barked at Wik.
But no matter how hard he pressed into the wound, no matter how tight Wik tugged, they couldn’t stop the bleeding.
Petyr was screaming—shaking. His eyes rolled back and the muscles in his neck and jaw bulged. Wik clung to him, muttering something that sounded like a bitter plea, and the two of them shook.
Ravyn looked up at the Nightmare. “Do something,” he said, his voice breaking. “Please.”
But those yellow eyes were unfocused. The Nightmare seemed a hundred miles away.
A cry crawled out of Ravyn, vicious and desperate. “Damn it, help us.”
Those words seemed to wrench the Nightmare back. He looked down, his gaze homing in on Petyr. “The Maiden Card,” he murmured. “Give him the Maiden.”
Ravyn fumbled in his pockets, throwing his Mirror and Nightmare Cards into the mud, digging until his fingertips snagged the third Card. He wrenched the Maiden free. “Now what?”
The Nightmare was mumbling to himself. “It was hardly my fault, dearest, that they are pathetic swimmers.”
Petyr skin had gone colorless—pale as the surface of the lake.
“Nightmare!”
His nostrils flared. He looked down at the Maiden Card in Ravyn’s hand. “Make him use it.”
Ravyn didn’t question it. He shoved the Maiden Card into Petyr’s hand, curling his fingers to tap it once—twice—three times.
Petyr’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open. He took in a ragged gasp, then another.
The putrid blood stopped.
Beneath Jespyr’s shaking hands, Ravyn could see Petyr’s wound...closing. Petyr took another breath, and the color in his face returned. Another, and the tension in his body eased.
On the fifth breath, he opened his eyes and looked up at Wik, then Ravyn. “I—I can’t feel the pain anymore.”
Ravyn stared into Petyr’s face. It had never been the sort of face an artist might flock to. There was a scar from a knife fight that stretched from Petyr’s left eyebrow to the corner of his nostril. Crumpled cartilage in his ears, crooked teeth. Only now, they were gone. Petyr’s scars, his imperfections—gone. He was covered in his own blood and lake mud, but he’d never looked so well.
Wik gaped at his brother. “Goddamn trees.”
Petyr pushed up, blinked, turning his injured leg left, then right. He tore more of his pant leg to get a better look. The claw marks were gone—healed. Not even a scar remained.
Ravyn’s voice came out a strangle. “How do you feel?”
Petyr ran a hand over where the wound had been, testing the skin. His brown eyes went wide. “Like nothing happened.” He looked down at the Maiden Card in his other hand. “Did this heal me?”
Only then did the Nightmare come back into focus. He was still talking to himself, his sentences broken between purrs and hisses. “I am helping them, dear one,” he said under his breath. “More than they know.”
Ravyn cocked his head to the side.
“Who the hell are you talking to?” Jespyr snapped.
The Nightmare ignored her. His gaze drifted to the ground—to Ravyn’s Providence Cards in the mud. Mirror, and Nightmare.
Gorse, who’d been useless, trying to save Petyr, came forward. “Am I seeing things, or is that a Nightmare Ca—”
Ravyn dove. He snagged his burgundy Card out of the mud, yellow eyes flaring above him. Tapped it once—twice—thrice.
Ravyn! called a woman’s voice.
Wind kicked out of his lungs. He fell into mud. That voice. Her voice.
Can you hear me, Ravyn?
He closed his eyes. Elspeth.
She made a pained sound that ripped the heart out of him, and then a different voice called. Male and monstrous. Give her time to adjust, Ravyn Yew. Put away your Nightmare Card.
If she wants me gone, she will tell me so herself. It is her mind. YOU are the trespasser.
An invisible wall of salt slammed into Ravyn. He called out for Elspeth once more, but she was gone. The Nightmare had shut him out.
Ravyn released himself from his Nightmare Card, jolted up—