Thrice.
Wind ripped over the sea’s salted lip. It blew into Ravyn’s face, blinding him. The Spirit spoke once more in her vast, stormy voice. “I watched you in the mist, Ravyn Yew. Tasted your blood. Stripped away your stony armor.” Her gaze shifted between him and the Nightmare. “You have traveled to the heart of my wood at the edge of Taxus’s crook, like a lamb to slaughter.”
Ravyn’s jaw set. “I’m not a lamb.”
Her silver eyes traced him—knew him. “Yet you are determined to die like one, come Solstice.”
Behind them, the Nightmare let out a sharp hiss. “What does she mean?”
When Ravyn looked back into the Nightmare’s yellow eyes, he knew, somehow, he was looking into Elspeth’s as well. “You must know,” he said, “that I was never going to allow the King to spill her blood to unite the Deck.”
The Nightmare was still a long while. Then, so quiet it might have been waves upon the shore, he said, “You would bleed in Elspeth’s place? In my place?”
Ravyn straightened his shoulders and spoke with enough conviction to reach every one of the Nightmare’s five hundred years. “Yes.”
He turned to the Spirit of the Wood. “Blood is the price to unite the Deck. To lift the mist and heal the infection. Your price. And I will gladly pay it. Gladly die. I’ve been dying piece by piece since Emory grew sick.” His throat constricted. “I have died tenfold since Elspeth disappeared. And now your mist has claimed my sister. So do not speak to me of cost, Spirit.” His eyes fell to the Twin Alders in her claw. “I am leaving here with that Card. Or I am not leaving at all.”
Her lips peeled over jagged teeth. She breathed in, and the sound of water upon the shore disappeared, as if sucked into her mouth.
All was silent.
The Spirit held Ravyn in her unblinking silver gaze, then lunged forward, her claw catching his hand. With incredible strength, she pulled him off the shore into the frigid sea. Ravyn was afforded only a brief glance back at the Nightmare and Jespyr before the Sprint plunged him beneath water, the salty tide slipping over his head.
When Ravyn opened his eyes, he wasn’t underwater—he wasn’t even wet. He was standing in a field of snow. Jespyr and the Nightmare were gone. It was just him, alone, with the Spirit of the Wood.
Birds called overhead. Not the caw of ravens or crows, but songbirds. The sweet tune of larks. Wings fluttered above a meadow coated in snow. When Ravyn looked up, his breath caught.
It was clearly winter. But he’d never seen the sky so blue, the light so strong—entirely unencumbered by mist. It stole the breath from him, the beauty of it.
“Where are we?”
“Eight hundred years in the past,” came the Spirit’s dissonant reply.
“Why?
She let go of his hand and stalked through the snow. “Magic has little use for time. I walk through centuries like they were my own garden.” Her eyes fixed on Ravyn over her shoulder. “Human life is short. You are not as a tree, stoic and unyielding, but a butterfly. Delicate, fleeting. Inconsequential.”
Ravyn shook his head. Lamb, butterfly. The Shepherd King had described the Spirit of the Wood in The Old Book of Alders as neither kin, foe, nor friend. He might have saved ink and called her what she truly was. A proper asshole.
Her tail flicked, as if she knew his thoughts. She opened her claws. Beside the Twin Alders, eleven other Providence Cards appeared in her palm. They floated in front of Ravyn, suspended in air, turning with the slow flourishes of the Spirit’s finger. “The Cards. The mist. The blood,” she said. “They are all woven together, their balance delicate, like a silken web.”
“Which makes you the spider.”
She smiled at that. “The Shepherd King was clever, imaginative. No ordinary soul could have made such a varying, intricate Deck. He knew neither virtue, nor love, greater than his want for these Cards.” She snapped her fingers, and the Cards came rushing back into her claws. “Are you the same, Ravyn Yew?”
Measure your words carefully with her. They may be your last.
Ravyn took a deep breath. “I’m a thief. A liar. Most would find my virtue lacking.”
“And your love?”
Ravyn’s chest tightened. If he were to close his eyes, he knew what he would see. His parents’ faces, bent as they read books in silence by the library fire. Elm and Jespyr and Emory, riding on horseback down the forest road. Elspeth, sitting across from him at Castle Yew’s table, pink in her cheeks as she smiled at him from behind a teacup. “I have something of love in me.”
With another snap of the Spirit’s fingers, the Deck was gone, leaving only the Twin Alders in her claws. “Then I will make you an offer. Leave this Card with me, and I will save the people you love. Your siblings shall be free of the infection. Elspeth Spindle will be released from the Shepherd King, body and mind.” She drew a claw through snow. “And the Rowan Prince shall be saved from his almost certain, ruinous fate.”
Birds were still chirping—the sun still on Ravyn’s face. But he was cold all over, the only sound to reach him the thrum of his unsteady pulse. “What fate should Elm need saving from?”
The Spirit did nothing but watch him through unblinking silver eyes.
“I should know what I’m agreeing to.”
Silence was her only reply.
The ever-present tremor in Ravyn’s hands quickened. When he spoke, his words clung to the back of his neck. “Then I have no choice but to save them myself come Solstice. With the Twin Alders Card.”
Dark fur and wide, unyielding eyes made it difficult to discern emotion upon the Spirit of the Wood’s face. But by the momentary twitch of her ears—the flick of her tail—Ravyn was certain she was displeased with his answer.
“You spoke of me, once,” she murmured. “You were walking through the Black Forest on your way to steal Wayland Pine’s Iron Gate Card. You led the party, but your gaze was cast back. To Elspeth Spindle.”
Ravyn pressed his lips together. “I remember. “
“You said to her, ‘Magic sways, like salt water on a tide. I believe the Spirit is the moon, commanding the tide. She pulls us in, but also sets us free. She is neither good nor evil. She is magic—balance. Eternal.’”
The wind in the meadow picked up. The Spirit’s voice grew louder. “I would have all of Blunder believe the same. And so, Ravyn Yew, my second offer to you is the throne.”
When Ravyn did not speak, a snarl touched the edge of her voice. “You have the makings of a great King. Measured, careful. Wary of balance. You need not go back to Stone and bow before your uncle—no more lying or stealing or pretending. Find your own virtue, keep your own rules.” She nodded at the Card in her claws. “Leave the Twin Alders Card with me, and I shall make you Blunder’s King in Quercus Rowan’s stead.”
“You do not have the power to do that.”