Page 111 of Kingdom of Ash

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.

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