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“When I am king,” he began, voice seething with rage, “I will come for your seelie dog, Lonan. He found a way to kill the Brid, which means I can find a way to kill him. Enjoy your last perverted moments with him, warming his bed. Soon you’ll be warming mine.”
The threat to Ash’s life had me drawing my blade, my fingers infuriatingly numb and fumbling thanks to the wine. But before I could take even a step closer, Balor had melted into the darkness, vanishing among the trees.
I stared after him, impotent fury making me shake. I could go into the forest—I wasn’t physically trapped here the way Ash had been on unseelie. I could go after him and kill him right now.
But I was drunk, and Balor wasn’t a fool. I didn’t know if he’d come here with a plan. He could have poison on him to incapacitate me, to drag me back to unseelie. He could have a whole retinue of guards just waiting in the forest. Waiting for me to step foot outside of seelie land.
I couldn’t bear the thought of Ash returning to find me gone, with no word, no notice. Just gone. That was what made me take a step back, not forward. Away from the forest.
After an entire lifetime under my mother’s control, I was finally free of her. I finally had my name and was no longer living in her palace, under her rule.
Yet I was still trapped.
Chapter Nine
Ash
“You remember what I told you?” Nua’s soft voice was quiet in the still morning, gloomy dawn permeating the forest and turning everything a hazy violet. “About holding your glamour?”
I nodded as we walked between the trees, pulling my cloak tighter around my shoulders to ward off the chill. Cool mist swirled around my boots, making the leather feel damp and cold.
Nua had told me about the glamour Folk could hold in the presence of mortals, making us visible and human-looking. My dad and Mags had never seen any of the Folk who’d visited me as a child. Most mortals couldn’t see us, but some could. Nua said there were some mortals who had the Sight—those people who, for some reason, could see through the glamour anyway—so he wanted me to be prepared just in case.
We’d slept in a tree, taking turns to keep watch for any of the Carlin’s guards. We hadn’t seen any, but during the night, a pack of puca had skittered through the leaves beneath us, chattering to each other. Something big and hairy, walking on all fours, had padded between the trees a short distance away, its eyes glowing luminous green in the dark as it had looked up at me briefly, going still before continuing on its way.
Now, the forest was silent. The air felt thinner here, and the mist got thicker as we reached a wide natural pathway between the trees, their canopies arching over us and blocking out the sky to form a living hallway of sorts. Up ahead, I couldn’t see anything at all, the mist curling all the way to the upper branches and blocking out the path ahead.
“Is this where the unseelie brought me through?” I asked quietly, trying to remember that morning. Waking up in the cart, staring at the canopy above me, feeling old wheels bumping over uneven ground, my eyes still tight and bleary from crying for weeks.
“No, they have a separate path closer to their land.” Nua’s cloaked arm brushed mine as we walked, warm and comforting. “This is the path I used to take to visit you. It’s more hidden. Less well-used.”
“More hidden?” I looked over at him incredulously. “It’s huge.”
Nua chuckled, but cut himself off as he glanced around warily. He was tense. “But it’s still hard to find if you don’t know where to look. Folk can walk right past it and not realise it’s here. The forest has a way of shielding what it wants to.”
I shook my head, not bothering to answer because I still didn’t really understand how the forest worked. How it let you get from one place to another so quickly sometimes, whereas at others it felt like you had to walk for miles. How it was supposedly teeming with life, with solitary Folk, but I’d hardly seen any in the months I’d lived out here.
As if conjured by the thought, something low and smoky wound lazily between the trees to our left. I went tense, but Nua glanced over and didn’t react. As my muscles gradually unclenched, I looked over at the thing as it kept pace beside us.
It was small and wispy, and looked almost like a ball of smoke contained within a bubble. Swirls of grey and black marbled together, shifting continuously, a thin trail dissolving away to nothing behind it as it moved.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“A messenger for the Higher Spirits. It will follow us through and wait for us to make sure we come back.”
I glanced back over at it in alarm. “What… what will it do if we don’t come back?”
“It will tell the Higher Spirits.” Nua gave me a reassuring smile. “It’s to stop the Folk spilling out too much into the mortal world and trying to stay among the mortals. Nothing sinister, unless we try to stay on the other side. Then they would come for us.”
“What are the Higher Spirits?” I asked reluctantly, not sure I wanted to know.
“You’ve met some. Ogma is one. Fioda is another. They’re not just fae, they’re something other. Stronger and older. The oldest.”
I stared at him? “Fioda? But… she’s not a spirit.”
“They have physical forms they take. Like Gadleg, the mighty serpent. That’s the form she chooses to take to guard the Isle of Hybra.”
“What other ones are there?”
