Page 46 of The Shadow Path
Your uncle is waiting.
“Do you think they noticed that I disappeared from the banquet?”
“Yes.” Dru’s eyes were still closed. “Ballroom politics. You’ll have to answer for your absence.”
“And the destruction of the troll market?”
Dru seemed to shrug. “Harold should thank you for that.”
Cadell circled slowly, Mared right behind him. Moments later, Carys and Dru were gently placed in the middle of the castle yard, and Cadell transformed soon after, followed by Mared, who immediately walked to Dafydd’s side.
“In Modron’s name, I am relieved that you are safe.” Dafydd walked to Carys and embraced her. “I was about to send Anwyn and Dylan to search for you.”
Her Shadowlands cousins stood back, their shoulders back and arms at attention, still dressed in their banquet finery.
Carys, on the other hand, had a ripped dress covered in troll and fae blood, scorched at the edges and with mud at the hem six inches deep.
Anwyn and Dylan looked super excited as they looked down their noses at her.
Hoping the trolls might finish me off?Carys didn’t think her cousins would’ve been all that disappointed if she’d met an untimely end.
“Right.” She stood up straight. “So the Crow Mother kind of trapped me at the banquet. I had to go with her to pay back a favor.” She tried to smooth her dress over her legs. “But things got a little… fiery.”
Anwyn glanced at Dru. “You consort with fae?”
Everything about the woman irked Carys. “Oh, I don’t consort with them,” she said. “But I do help them chop off troll legs when the occasion calls for it.” She walked over to Dru and knelt at his side.
The fae man, for his part, was still on the ground, staring into the fire as silver bled from his jaw. He seemed not to notice that he was in the presence of the Cymric king and a cadre of nêr ddraig or surrounded by dragons.
“Dru?”
He was whispering into the flames in some strange tongue, and Carys didn’t know if he needed help or simply—as he claimed before—to be left alone to heal.
“Dru.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “What do you need?”
He rolled over, placed his lips to the earth, and whispered, “Dewch ataf fi.”
Come to me?
Carys recognized the Cymric phrase. Who was Dru calling?
Carys heard horses in the distance, and it sounded like a company of soldiers was riding toward them. From the forest, wolves bayed, and the flames in the bonfire leaped to the sky.
Lachlan and a group of Alban soldiers dressed in blue-and-white uniforms rode into Dafydd’s courtyard and circled the fire, and Duncan rode with them. The blacksmith wore a black coat, his formal kilt, and a stormy scowl.
“Carys!” Duncan bellowed across the yard. “Where the hell have you been?”
“We were worried.” Lachlan was about to dismount, but then he looked at the ground. “What is that?”
Carys was kneeling next to Dru when she felt it. There was a hum in the ground beneath her, and though Duncan dismounted and ran to her, she couldn’t take her eyes from the earth.
“Carys!” Duncan threw his arms around her and pulled her away from Dru. “Earth magic. He’s calling for earth magic. Stay back.”
The land seemed to breathe up and out, and silver threads that looked like roots emerged from the soil, glowing and rising, rising, rising under Carys’s hands.
Every human in the courtyard stopped and stared as the ground beneath them sighed like a tired mother.
“Carys?” Lachlan called her name. “Are you?—”
