Two Twisted Crowns

“I’d be your King, but always your servant. Never your keeper.”

“You did not come all this way to yield to despair.”

“To anyone who’s ever felt lost in a wood. There is a strange sort of finding in losing.”

He was supposed to be clever. Clever men didn’t freeze to death for pride, thinking they could rewrite old wrongs. They certainly didn’t die believing their older brother—who had been nothing but a brute—would suddenly fight fairly.
Clever men died on their own terms. And if they were wary, clever, and good, they perhaps died in peace.
He, apparently, was none of the three.

He’d reached into women to find himself, when all he really wanted was for someone to look at him. To admit they knew what had happened to him as a boy and still hold him, unflinching, in their gaze.
The way Ione had last night.

“I’m not sorry he’s broken—only that it was not me doing the breaking.” Elm took a deep drink. “Does that make me wicked?”
“If it does, you and I are the same kind of wicked.”

“Insulted the tailor, have we?”
“The tailor?”
“Your attire.” His gaze swept down her body. “It’s… it’s a bit…”
Ione’s voice went flat. “Please, continue. I live and breathe to hear your opinion of my gown, Prince Renelm.”
“If you could even call it that.”

“I see Renelm did not put you in chains.”
Ione’s eyes flickered to Elm. “His methodology is dissimilar to your other son’s, Majesty.”

She looked like a storybook mermaid, washed ashore after a storm.

“I need your help, Prince. The knots have tightened with rainwater.”
“And you mistook me for your maid?”
“Don’t tell me you’re uncomfortable undressing a woman.”

“I think about how easy it would be to do horrible things if I felt I had a good reason.”

“Saying there must be another way does not make it so”

There is no weakness in pain

After a lifetime of feeling things so keenly, the numbness felt good.

Neither of them had apologized—not really. But an airing of truths, after so much malice, was the best they could do.

How exhausting it must be, wanting everyone to know how clever you are.

Midday, midnight—the hour meant little to Ravyn. All he knew of time was that he always seemed to be running out of it.

There is a strange sort of finding in losing.