Page 75 of The Howling
“I thought they were fighting in the Night Lands. Reavely said it was demons, Reivers he called them.”
“The Reivers were the creatures helping out Lord Soulis. What he was fighting was another faction of the Faerie in their original forms.”
“He and Linton were fighting Faerie for the Faerie? How do you know?”
“No one asks the Hedley Kow anything, but I know many things,” she says enigmatically. “To be in the right place at the right time is one of them.”
That, I cannot deny.
“Given the Faerie are a bunch of twats, why is one faction fighting the other?”
“The Night Lands are debatable lands,” Lilburn says. “They hold the older magic, the older Faerie who didn’t want to gobeyond the veil like Queen Mab and the others. They didn’t think it was right to take humans or to reveal the Yeavering to the human world.”
“So”—I attempt to wrap my head around what she’s telling me—“they’re sort of good Faerie? And Reavely, Linton, and others were sent to kill them?”
“No Faerie is a good Faerie,” Lilburn says, her voice low. “Some are less worse than others and none can be trusted.”
“The Night Lands are the battleground, and one the current cohort of Faerie don’t want to dirty their hands with?”
“I knew I liked you,” Lilburn says with her customary grin. “You’re smart as a whip.”
“As a thirty-four-year-old woman, I will take that praise.” I roll my eyes.
“Nothing but a youngster.” Lilburn laughs. “I’m three hundred of your human years old, and I’m just getting started.”
“You’re three hundred years old? Wow,” I say, and she puffs up a little. “I wouldn’t have said you were a day over four hundred,” I add with a sidelong look at her.
Lilburn growls under her breath at me. “Your Barghest is welcome to you, when we get to Vindolanda, just you wait.”
I laugh because if I don’t, one hundred percent, I am going to cry.
REAVELY
I’m bound, not with iron, but with some other metal I don’t recognise. Presumably so it doesn’t pose a risk to Lord Soulis and any of his cronies.
Now the wolfsbane has finally cleared from my senses, I can scent at least five of them, three, including Lord Soulis, were in Guyzance’s dungeon, wanting my assistance in the Night Lands.
Why any Faerie would end up imprisoned there is an entirely other story, and not one I am interested in. I simply want to get free and get to my mate before Lord Soulis does.
I still cannot scent her at all. Given my nose is sensitive enough to detect the Reivers, the Faerie, and the damned Bluecap, if I cannot smell her, then she is not here.
My clever mate has given this Faerie Lord the slip, and it has filled my heart with hope.
Even if the presence of Linton fills it with hate. I should have never trusted an assassin, or a Bluecap, so willing to toss me aside in his pursuit of whatever it is Bluecaps want.
We fought side by side and yet he hands me over to the Faerie…
“You do know you’re saying all of this out loud,” Linton says in my ear, loudly.
I recoil from him.
“Why wouldn’t I, traitor?” I snarl.
“I am no traitor,” Linton huffs, kicking at where my wrists are bound.
“Then why did you help Lord Soulis?”
“Why do you think I helped him?”
