“That’s why you’re here, Renelm. You and Ione Hawthorn. I never wanted either of you—but you’ll make fine bargaining chips all the same.” Hauth laughed to himself. “Let’s hope the fire of your budding romance doesn’t snuff out in the dungeon.”
The King’s tumbler crashed onto the dais. He made a choking noise, his thick, brutish fingers clawing at his own throat. His face had gone red, mottled. Blood spiked over his eyes. He grasped for Hauth’s sleeve, his words wet and garbled. “H-help—”
“What’s wrong?” Elm regarded the flagon Linden had shoved into his hands, then the King’s empty goblet—drained of the wine he’d poured. His gaze shot to Hauth. “What have you done?”
Heads turned. A few courtiers stood from their seats, while others remained arrested in stillness, their attention fixed upon the dais.
Hauth pulled in a deep breath. “Ignore the King,” he said beneath his breath.
King Rowan hacked. His eyes were bulging now, the spit on his purple lips turning to froth. No one moved to help him. Not his servants or Destriers—not Baldwyn or the lords and ladies of Blunder who’d hurried to Stone to partake in his feasts. Their opinion of him, of his Rowan legacy, had made him into the King that he was. And now that he was choking, dying before them—
They would not even look at him. All of them, compelled by Hauth’s Scythe to deny him their notice.
Hauth watched his father struggle to breath with cold indifference, his nostrils laden with blood.
Elm was shouting. “Don’t do this!”
“It was not I,” Hauth said, nodding at the flagon in Elm’s hand, “who poisoned the King.”
Elm looked down at his father, that unfeeling, ungiving man—and felt a terrible, wrenching pity. The King’s mouth dripped blood, the great bear of a man passing through the veil.
But even with the death hounds stalking him, the bear had teeth. The King lunged forward, knocking Hauth to the ground. With blunt fingers, he tore at Hauth’s gold tunic, ripping free his Scythe Card—throwing it to the floor.
Salt fled Elm’s senses. He dropped the flagon.
Hauth flailed beneath the King’s weight, shoving and kicking him—trying to free himself. Quercus Rowan looked up one last time. His swollen hand fumbled along his own clothes now. He pulled something free from his doublet. Red as the rowan berry—as poisoned wine. The King’s Scythe Card.
He thrust it at Elm. “Take it.” His eyes rolled back and he dragged in a final, halting breath, then went still. His gilded crown of twisted rowan branches slipped from his brow.
The King of Blunder was dead.
Everyone moved at once. Screams filled the room, a surge of noise. Free of Hauth’s Scythe, half the courtiers tripped over one another to get out of the great hall while the other half pressed forward for a better look. Destriers lunged from shadow, caught in the tumult as they hurried toward the dais.
Hauth shouted above the bedlam, struggling yet to get out from beneath his father’s weight. “Arrest Prince Renelm—he’s used his Scythe on us—he’s poisoned the King!”
More screams. Fearful gazes turned on Elm.
Footsteps thundered behind him. Fingers shaking, Elm tapped his father’s Scythe three times and shut his eyes. The statuary of ice was waiting in the darkness. He pushed it out on a salt tide, just as he had in the throne room. Ice. Stone. Stillness. Silence. “Be still,” he said, homing in on everyone in the great hall—castle guards, courtiers, Destriers—everyone. Be still.
When he opened his eyes, the great hall was unmoving. Hundreds of people, frozen in place.
Needle-thin, a pain began in the corner of his mind.
He found Linden—ripped his stolen Scythe from the Destrier’s pocket—and shoved him on the floor. Ione was still at the table, frozen, half out of her chair. Elm rushed to her, pressed his forehead into her shoulder, breathed her. “Come with me.”
The bailey was empty. Even the stable boys, the guards in the tower, were frozen. Elm found his horse. “Can you ride without a saddle?”
Ione nodded. She reached up under his nose. When she pulled her hand back, his blood was on it.
They cantered into the night. And with every clack of hooves upon the road, the Scythe dragged a knife across Elm’s mind. His vision blurred, his hands shaking on his horse’s mane. “We’re far enough,” Ione said. “Let go of the Scythe, Elm.”
“The Destriers will catch up. We need to get you farther.” But a high-pitched whining sounded somewhere in his head, pain drilling into him until he couldn’t see.
He sucked in a breath, slumped, and fell off the horse.
Gravel flew, flashing past Elm’s face as he lay in the road. His horse whickered, and then Ione was there, kneeling next to him.
Elm reached for her neck, checking she still had her charm. “Don’t take the main roads,” he managed. “Find the others. Ravyn. Jespyr. The Shepherd King. If you cannot, keep to the mist—out of sight.” He kept his hand caged around his father’s Scythe. But the other—his own he’d reclaimed from Linden—he held out to her. “If anyone so much as looks at you wrong, use this.”
Ione didn’t move. “You’re not coming with me?”
With every breath, pain, like glass, cut deeper into Elm’s mind. “Hauth needs someone to barter with when Ravyn returns. And I cannot let it be you.” His voice hardened. “I’m not going to run away from him this time.”
He laced his fingers in Ione’s, pushing his Scythe into her hand. “I wish we could have had those hundred years, Hawthorn. I wish you could have been Queen.”
“I don’t care about being Queen.” She pulled him close—pressed quivering lips to his mouth. “You are not Hauth, and you are not the boy he tormented. It would be terribly unclever to die, just to prove it. Please, Elm. Come with me.”
Her kiss tasted like tears. Elm was lost to it. He pulled back. “Get on the horse and ride away, Ione.”
When her hazel eyes went blurry under his Scythe’s command, it took all of Elm not to look away. Ione got on his horse, spurred it, her hair catching moonlight, a dreamy yellow ribbon in the wind. She cried out, calling his name, ripping the last whole piece of his rotted-out heart to tatters.
Go, he commanded. Don’t look back.
She fought it. Damn her, she fought to look back. Tears burned Elm’s eyes. “See you in the woods,” he murmured. “Mud on my ankles.”
Blood slid from his nostrils, dripping into his mouth. He sat down on the road and bore the pain like he always had. Twenty minutes later, he finally tapped his father’s Scythe.
When the Destriers found him, Elm was looking up at the moon, bright and indifferent, worrying its way across the sky.
Chapter Forty-Three
Elspeth
The Nightmare stood in silence upon the shore. Ravyn had not returned. And Jespyr—the darkness nestled in her veins had stemmed. But her eyes remained closed, and her breathing was slow. Labored.