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“Wait.” Elise grabbed Hodag’s arm. “Could someone topside help you dig a new opening?”
“Still many days. I dig deep.”
Elise’s eyes brightened. “I know someone who can dig deep into the earth too.”
A thrill squeezed my lungs until I couldn’t catch a deep breath as Elise directed Hodag to sniff out a group of folk who would have strange magic. The notion of foreign powers had the troll trembling with excitement. Her beady eyes didn’t blink as Elise gave her direction.
Hodag took a deep breath through her nose. “I smell them off you.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t understand.” Elise looked at Sofia.
“She wants to know if their magic will smell like you.”
“Like Ari,” Elise said. “He has fury. And some will have a scent like Malin.”
Hodag snorted and practically skipped around the room, sniffing our necks, hair, and hands. She winced for a moment at the long draw of my Alver blood, but her eyes gleamed when she went to the door.
“Can you find them?” I asked.
“Always find what I hunt,” Hodag said. “Now, stay.”
In the next breath, the troll sprinted from the room. Sofia cursed the gods.
“Food!” she shouted in the hallway. “You damn troll, we needfood.”
I ignored the pleas of the huldra and grinned at the open doorway.Soon. If Hodag was as skilled as she said, soon I would have Kase Eriksson back in my arms.
And we would have the first true step toward the queen’s ring.
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
THE NIGHTRENDER
The Black Palacewould know where we hid away in Jagged Grove soon enough.
The way we kept leaving a bloody trail in our wake, it would not be long before what was left of the Southern fae hiding out in the trees fled to the gates of the palace, screaming for protection.
Let them go. We would follow them there.
I’d not allowed myself to think it, but there was the looming chance that Malin had been snatched by skyds and dragged to the Black Palace. For all I knew, she might be in chains in the dungeon, being tortured.
My eyes clamped shut as I listened to the last wails of the winged blood fae we’d found spying on us in the trees. Valen had no luck getting answers from the beast. Vile creatures with their tattered wings and penchant for draining other fae folk dry of the blood in their veins. But tonight, we brought the death, we brought the blood.
There was no remorse, no feeling at all, as I listened to the king slaughter the fae with his axes.
“She is alive, Kase.” Niklas came to my side, his back to the slaughter.
“I know.” Alver vows. I’d never been more grateful Malin and I took our vows. In the deepest parts of my soul, I knew she lived. “But I do not know if she is in pain, if she suffers, and I feel my mind slipping into a dark place filled with violence.”
Niklas hung his head. A muscle pulsed on the hinge of his jaw.
“How did you do it, Nik?” The question was soft. A hint to the wretched cracks in my soul. As if part of me had been shredded to pieces, I could not sleep, eat, I could hardly breathe without Malin here. I faced my friend. “Junie was missing for over a turn. How did you do it?”
“You remember,” Niklas said. “You know what I was like. A walking corpse. All I could cling to was our vow. I knew she was alive, and as long as I knew that, I searched for her. The search, the hope, kept me moving.”
“All I feel is fear.”
“You are more than fear. You control it, but it does not mean fear must control you. Malin knows how to survive. As do Elise and Ari.”
