“Trees.” Elm reached into his pocket once more for the Scythe. When his fingers snagged velvet, he tapped it. “Ignore her,” he commanded the Destriers. “Keep looking for Cards.”
Their hands went slack on their hilts. Gorse and Wicker blinked and looked away, a glassy sheen over their eyes.
Elm jerked forward, his hand closing around Ione’s arm. “Not another word,” he warned. He wrenched her forward, pushing past the Destriers and hurrying down the stairs.
The sound of Ione’s bare feet slapping against stone floors echoed in the empty house. When they reached the parlor, she wrenched her arm free. “What’s going on?”
Elm’s throat caught, his voice rough. “Your cousin Elspeth—” No, not Elspeth anymore. He clenched his jaw. “She tore into Hauth at Spindle House. Broke his spine. He’s hardly alive. My father is out for blood. His inquest—” His eyes swept over Ione, a chill crawling over him. “I have to bring you to Stone.”
Ione did not flinch. She hardly even blinked. “So do it.”
“You don’t—” He took a steadying breath. “Clearly, you do not understand.”
“But I do, Prince. Had you not come and offered yourself as an escort, I would have found my own way to Stone.”
“I’m not your goddamn escort,” Elm bit back. “I’m arresting you.”
Ione turned to face him, but her expression remained unchanged—utterly blank. She should have been crying. Or screaming. It was what most people did when they faced an inquest. But she was just...calm. Eerily so.
Elm looked her up and down, an acrid taste in his mouth. “You’ve been using that Maiden Card too long, haven’t you? Where is it?”
“Why? Would you like to borrow it, Prince?” Ione studied Elm’s face. “It might help with those dark circles beneath your eyes.”
She didn’t wait for him to scrape together a reply. She opened the front door, the clamor of rainfall loud on Hawthorn House’s thatched roof. Elm’s exhale met the cold air, his patience for difficult weather—and difficult women—scant on the simplest of days.
“Forget the Maiden, then.” He pushed past her, her white dress stirring in his wake. “Do you at least have your charm?”
Ione pulled a gold chain out from the neckline of her dress. On it was her charm, a horse tooth, by the looks of it. A token to keep her mind and body safe in the mist. She glanced back at Hawthorn House. “What’s become of my family?”
“Your father’s at Stone, along with Erik Spindle. Your mother and brothers are gone—disappeared. Nerium and her daughters, too.” He looked away. “Your cousin is chained at the bottom of the dungeon.”
Ione stepped outside. She plucked a wet leaf from a hawthorn tree and ran it through her fingers. Droplets cascaded down the branch onto the tip of her nose and down the crease of her lips. When she said her cousin’s name, it came out a whisper—soft as a child’s secret. “Elspeth.”
She looked up at Elm. “She kept so many things hidden, even from me. I’d hear her footsteps in the hall at night, after we’d all gone to sleep. I listened to the songs she hummed. She spoke like she was carrying on a conversation, though she was so often alone. And her eyes,” she murmured. “Black. Then, in a flash, yellow as dragon’s gold.”
The lie slipped out of Elm before he could think. “I know nothing of that.”
“No?” Ione tucked her damp hair behind her ear. “I thought you might, seeing as you spent time with her at Castle Yew after Equinox. You, Jespyr, and of course, the Captain of Destriers.”
A thousand worries stabbed at Elm. The King knew Elspeth Spindle could see Providence Cards. He did not know that was precisely why Ravyn had recruited her. That Ravyn and Jespyr and Elm, the King’s chosen guard, had brought an infected woman into their company to steal Providence Cards. To unite the Deck. To lift the mist and heal the infection.
To save Ravyn’s brother Emory.
To commit treason.
Glass cut through his mind. The Scythe. He’d forgotten he was still compelling Gorse and Wicker. Elm reached into his tunic—tapped the velvet three times—and the pain ceased.
Ione watched his hand in his pocket.
Thunder rolled. Elm looked up at the sky and shivered. “It’s going to storm.” He led Ione to his horse. “It won’t be an easy ride.”
She said nothing. When Elm lifted her onto the horse, she pulled her dress over her knees and swung her leg astride. He climbed up behind her, his jaw flexing when she settled into the saddle, the curve of her backside pressing into him. Her hair smelled sweet.
He spurred his horse. Hawthorn House disappeared into the wood, its final resident taken from its threshold in a flurry of rainwater and mud.
Ione leaned against his chest, her eyes lost on the road. Elm glanced down at her, wondering if she understood the fate that awaited her at Stone. If she knew this was likely the last time she’d leave her family’s home and travel the forest road. If she’d look back.
She didn’t.
Chapter Three
Elspeth
Gold armor glistened and creaked as the man who had dragged me out of the water sat next to me on the black sand. Together, we watched the water roll up to our ankles before passing back down, the tide constant, the measureless flow of waves without variation.
“Taxus,” he finally said, raising his voice above the sound of the waves.
Salt water dried on my lips. I licked them, my voice cracking. “What?”
“Aemmory Percyval Taxus.” He dragged his gauntlets across the sand. “That’s my name.”
I blinked, sand in my eyelashes. “You...you are...”
When he looked my way, his yellow eyes tugged at my lost memory. “You’ll remember soon enough.” He glanced back at the dark, skyless horizon. “There is little else to do here but remember.”
My name was Elspeth Spindle, and I only knew it because he, Taxus, called me by it. I tested it out loud. It came out a slithering hiss. “Elspeth Spindle.”
Taxus was gone, though I hadn’t seen him leave. I turned my head both ways, searching for him, but he had left no footprints in the sand.
I looked out onto the water—ran my hands through sand until my skin was raw. My long hair was stringy with brine. I pulled a strand from my scalp and wrapped it around my finger so tightly my fingertip turned purple. I didn’t eat—didn’t sleep.
Time didn’t find me. Nothing did. And the nothingness was cavernous. When Taxus returned, looking down at me like he knew me, my brow twisted. “You’re wrong. I don’t remember who you are. I can’t—” I looked back out onto the water. “I can’t remember anything.”
“Shall I tell you the story?”
“What story?”
“Ours, dear one.”
I sat up straighter.
“There once was a girl,” he said, his voice slick, “clever and good, who tarried in shadow in the depths of the wood. There also was a King—a shepherd by his crook, who reigned over magic and wrote the old book. The two were together, so the two were the same: “The girl, the King, and the monster they became.”
Chapter Four
Ravyn