Slowly, Fenrys stirred. His paws shifted beneath him, legs straining. And he rose.
“I don’t believe it,” Lorcan whispered. “I don’t …”
But there was Fenrys, standing before their now-kneeling queen. And there was Fenrys, inclining his head, shoulders dipping with him, one paw sweeping before the other. Bowing.
A ghost of a smile graced her mouth, gone before it ever took form.
Aelin remained kneeling, though. Even as Fenrys surveyed them, surprise and relief lighting his dark eyes. His gaze met Rowan’s, and Rowan smiled, bowing his head.
“Welcome to the court, pup,” he said, his voice thick.
Raw emotion rippled across that lupine face, and then Fenrys turned back to Aelin.
She was staring at nothing. Fenrys nudged her shoulder with his furry head.
She ran an idle hand through the wolf’s white coat. Rowan’s heart clenched.
Maeve had cleaved into Rowan’s own mind to trick his very instincts.
What had she done to her? What had she done these months?
“We need to go,” Gavriel said, his own voice thick as he took in Fenrys, standing proud and watchful beside Aelin. “We need to put distance between us and the camp, and find somewhere to halt for the night.” Where they’d reassess how and where to leave this kingdom. Heading into the forest, toward the mountains, would be their best bet. These trees offered plenty of coverage, and plenty of caves in which to hide.
“Can you walk?” Lorcan asked Fenrys.
Fenrys slid dark, baleful eyes to Lorcan.
Oh, that fight would come. That vengeance.
The wolf gave him a curt nod.
Elide reached for one of the packs stashed near the base of a tree. “Which way?”
But Rowan didn’t get to answer.
Silent as wraiths, they appeared across the glen. As if they’d simply sparked into existence in the shade of the foliage.
Little bodies, some pale, some black as night, some scaled. Mostly concealed, save for spindly fingers and wide, unblinking eyes.
Elide gasped. “The Little Folk.”
Elide hadn’t seen a whisper of the Little Folk since the days before Terrasen fell. Then, it had been flashes and rustling within Oakwald’s ancient shade. Never so many, never so openly.
Or as open as they would ever allow themselves to be.
The half dozen or so who had gathered across the clearing kept mostly hidden behind root and rock and cluster of leaves. None of the males moved, though Fenrys’s ears cocked toward them.
A miracle—that’s what had happened with the queen and the wolf.
Though Fenrys seemed drained, his eyes were clear as the Little Folk gathered.
Aelin barely looked toward them.
A pale, spindly hand rose over a moss-speckled boulder and curled. Come.
Rowan asked, voice like granite, “You wish us to follow you?”
Again, the hand made the motion. Come.
Gavriel murmured, “They know this forest better than even we do.”
“And you trust them?” Lorcan demanded.
Rowan’s eyes settled on Aelin. “They saved her life once.” That night Erawan’s assassin had returned for Aelin. “They will do so again now.”
Silent and unseen, they passed through the trees and rocks and streams of the ancient forest.
Rowan kept a step behind Aelin and Fenrys, Gavriel and Elide at the head of their party, Lorcan at the rear, as they followed the Little Folk.
Aelin had said nothing, done nothing except rise when they told her it was time to go. Rowan had offered her his cloak, and she’d allowed it to pass through her bubble of golden, clear flame to wrap around her naked body.
She clutched it at her chest as they walked, mile after mile, her feet bare. If the stones and roots of the forest hurt her, she didn’t so much as flinch. She only walked on, Fenrys at her side within that sphere of fire, as if they were two ghosts of memory.
A vision of old, striding through the trees, the queen and the wolf.
The others spoke rarely as the hours and miles passed. As the forested hills gave way to steeper inclines, the boulders larger, the rocks and trees broken in spots.
“From the ancient wars between the forest-spirits,” Gavriel whispered to Elide when he noticed her frowning at a hillside full of felled trunks and splintered stone. “Some are still waged by them, wholly unaware and unconcerned with the affairs of any realm but this.”
Rowan had never seen the race of ethereal beings far more ancient and secretive than even the Little Folk. But at his mountain home, set high in the range that they strode toward, he’d sometimes heard the shattering of rocks and trees on dark, moonless nights. When there was not a whisper of wind on the air, nor any storm to cause them.
So close—only twenty or so miles to the mountain house he’d built. He’d planned to take Aelin there one day, though it was nothing but long-vanished ashes. Just to show her where the house had been, where he’d buried Lyria. She was still up there, his mate-who-had-never-been.
And his true mate … She strode unwavering through the trees. No more than a wraith.
Still they followed the Little Folk, who beckoned from a tree, a rock, and shrub ahead, and then vanished. Behind Lorcan, a few others hid their trail with clever hands and small magics.
He prayed they had a place to stay for the night. A place where Aelin might sleep, and might remain protected from Maeve’s eyes once she realized she’d been tricked.
They were headed eastward—far from the coast. Rowan didn’t dare risk telling them they needed to find a port. He’d see where they led them tonight, and then craft their plan for returning to their own continent.
But when the Little Folk appeared before a gargantuan boulder, when they then vanished and reappeared in a sliver cut into the rock itself, bony hands beckoning from within, Rowan found himself balking.
The creature dwelling in the lake beneath Bald Mountain was a mild threat compared to the other things that still hunted in dark and forgotten places.
But the Little Folk beckoned again.
Lorcan appeared at his side. “It could be a trap.”
But Elide and Gavriel walked toward it, unfazed.
And behind them, Aelin continued as well. So Rowan followed her, as he would follow her until his last breath, and beyond it.
The cave mouth was tight, but soon opened into a larger passage. Aelin illuminated the space, bathing the black stone walls in a golden glow bright enough to see by.
But her flame was dwarfed when they entered a massive chamber. The ceiling stretched into gloom, but it was not the height of the chamber that made him halt.
Nooks and alcoves had been built into the side of the rock, some equipped with bedrolls, some with what seemed to be piles of clothes, and some with food. A small fire burned near one, and past it, tucked against the wall, a natural stone trough gleamed with water, courtesy of a small stream.
But farther into the cave, on the other side of the chamber, flowing right up to the black rock itself, a great lake stretched into the darkness.
There were countless subterranean lakes and rivers beneath these mountains—places so deep in the earth that even the Fae had not bothered or dared to explore.
This one, it seemed, the Little Folk had claimed for themselves, going so far as to outfit the space with sprawling birch branches against the walls. They’d hung small garlands and wreaths from the white limbs, and amongst the leaves, little bluish lights twinkled.
Magic—old, strange magic, those lights. Like they’d been plucked from the night sky.
Elide was surveying the space, awe written over her features. Gavriel and Lorcan, however, assessed it with a sharper, warier eye. Rowan did the same. The only exit seemed to be the one they’d entered through, and the lake stretched too far to discern if a shore lay beyond it.
Aelin did not pause as she strode for one of the glittering walls. There was none of her usual caution, no dart of her eyes as she weighed the exits and pitfalls, potential weapons to wield.
A trance—it was almost as if she had slipped into a trance, plunged into some depthless ocean inside herself and drifted so far down that they might as well have been birds soaring over its distant surface.
But she walked toward that wall, the birch branches artfully displayed across it. More of the Little Folk within, Rowan realized. Perched on the branches, clinging to them.