Elm had not visited the catacombs beneath the castle since boyhood. Knuckles white, he held a torch in one hand and his ring of keys in the other, every bend along their journey begging him to flinch.
Not like Ione. Nothing seemed to frighten her—an interesting testament to the Maiden’s effects. No shadow was large enough, no room cold enough to shift her unsmiling expression.
Her latest dress must have been another loan. It was pale gray, with sleeves that billowed down to her wrists and a collar that choked just below her jaw. Shapeless vile drapery. Twice, she caught Elm looking at it. Twice, she reprimanded him with a scowl.
The third time she caught him, they were near the King’s private vaults. “Trees.” Her voice echoed against stone walls. “What?”
Elm cleared his throat. “Nothing.”
Ione’s eyes dropped to the bust of her dress. “Go on. Tell me how much you hate it. I know you’re dying to.”
He ran a hand over the back of his neck and pinned his gaze on the path ahead. “You look good.”
“Good?”
“Good, Hawthorn.” He bit at a fingernail. “You always look good.”
A pause. Then a sharp, “What’s the matter with you?”
Elm’s eyes shot to her face. He thought he’d been hiding it well—all the discomfort of being in that cold, awful castle. The places Hauth had led him at the edge of a Scythe to toughen him as a boy. But before he could say anything, Ione added, “You’re being strangely nice.”
Ahead, Elm could see the yellow torches. The fortified doors. They were almost at the vaults. “I imagine there is an Ione,” he said, “buried somewhere in there, who might appreciate a little niceness from a Rowan.”
“Niceness.” She said the word slowly, as if to taste it. “I have no idea what that feels like anymore.”
“What did you use to feel? Before the Maiden.”
“Everything. In terrible, wonderful excess. Joy, anger, compassion, revulsion—” Her voice chilled on the word. “Love. I knew them all so well. When the Maiden began to dull them, it frightened me—but it was also a reprieve. After a lifetime of feeling things so keenly, the numbness felt good.” She heaved a sigh. “But even that went away. And nothing felt good, or bad, anymore.”
She looked out onto the path ahead. “But I think about who I was before the Maiden. I try to make the same choices I used to make. I need to be able to live with myself when this facade”—she gestured to her face—“comes crashing down.”
“What about killing those highwaymen? I doubt that’s a choice the old Ione would make.”
A muscled feathered in her jaw. “If you believe that you understand who I was before the Maiden, just because you once saw me ride through the wood with mud on my ankles, then you are not as clever as you think you are.”
Elm cleared his throat. “And what happened the other night in the cellar? Is that something you’ll be able to live with?”
Ione’s chest swelled, a beautiful breath—an up-and-down sweep not even that horrid dress could confound. “That depends on you, Prince. Are you truly nothing like your brother? Or are you simply a gifted liar?”
He frowned. “I haven’t lied to you.”
“No?” She glanced up at him. “Then answer again. Did you know Elspeth was infected before she was arrested?”
The lie slammed into Elm’s teeth. I knew nothing of that. Only this time, he swallowed it. He looked into those brilliant hazel eyes and did not flinch. “I’ve known since Equinox.”
Ione stilled. “You didn’t turn her in.”
Elm gave a sweeping bow. “As you’ve noted, Miss Hawthorn—I’m a rotten Prince and a piss-poor Destrier. Must have slipped my mind.”
They walked in silence the rest of the way to the vault. Two guards stood watch, stiffening at their posts, heads dipping in rushed deference. Elm flicked his wrist at the door. “Open it.”
The door groaned, ancient, heavy. Elm’s father kept many things in Stone’s vaults. The histories of Rowan Kings. Gold.
Providence Cards.
The Shepherd King had said there were three Maiden Cards in the castle. One of which, Elm was certain, was here, in his father’s collection.
Like all the dark, cold places of Stone, the vaults felt dead to Elm. Shadows dogged him, memories and echoes. A shiver ran up his back, the old bruises on his knuckles stinging with new life. “My father’s collection should be near,” he said, the yawning space throwing his voice back at him—a thin, distorted echo.
The floor was cluttered and ill lit. Ione’s foot caught against a wooden chest. She swore, stumbling. When Elm offered her his hand, she glared down at it a moment. It was too dark to tell if there was a flush in her cheeks. But when Elm pulled her toward him, lacing their fingers together, he felt one in his own.
The King kept his Cards in a box as old as the castle itself. Cold, iron-forged—locked. Only three keys existed. His father had one. Aldys Beech, the treasurer, had another. And Elm, the second heir, a reluctant keeper of keys, had the third.
He handed Ione the torch and fumbled through the ring of keys. When he found the correct one, he slid it into the box. The latch ground to a slow, steady open.
Providence Cards waited inside, so seemingly innocent, as if men had not coveted and fought and stolen for them. They weren’t all there. The Scythes were with the Rowans. Hauth’s Scythe was in his chamber, along with the Nightmare Card. The Destriers had the Black Horses.
And of course, the Deck would always be incomplete without the Twin Alders Card.
“If Hauth was smart about hiding your Maiden, he’d have forced you put it somewhere you could not access alone. Does any of this look familiar?”
Ione cast her gaze around the vaults. “No.”
“I’m going to pull out the Prophet.” Elm glanced down at the box full of Cards. “There is a Maiden Card in there, too. If it is yours, and I reach in and touch it—”
“The magic will stop.”
“Is that what you want?”
Ione said nothing. She reached into the box. When she pulled out a pink Maiden Card, Elm heard her suck in a breath. It did something distressing to his chest, watching her shut her eyes as if she were bracing herself for something terrible. Once, twice, thrice, she tapped the Card. Everything went silent.
And Ione Hawthorn looked as she ever did. Unbearably beautiful. Unreachable.
It was the wrong Maiden Card.
Elm’s stomach dropped. Ione said nothing. If she felt disappointment, it didn’t show on her face. She simply handed the Maiden to him and watched, impassive, as he placed it back into the box.
Elm retrieved the Prophet, then the Mirror, and shoved them into his pocket. “It was a long shot.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. “Your hands are shaking.”
“I’m cold,” he ground out, slamming the box shut and locking it. “And I hate it down here.”
“Is there any place in Stone you don’t hate?”