Page 78 of Dance of Kings and Thieves

Her words lifted the hair on my arms. Jaw tight, I stood.

“I believe your queens and the ambassador were the ones to kill the younglings,” Eryka said.

“What makes you sure?” Valen shoved past Gunnar and glared at Eryka. His anger was not truly directed at the fae princess, more at the bleeding world.

“Ari Sekundär knows how to kill a sluagh.” Eryka pointed to the stab wounds in the back of one sluagh’s head. “I believe they fought them off, but I hope to the gods the sluagh den did not take them. They would be lost in grief at the deaths of their young. You can see the bite marks. They were marked by their families. I must warn you, grown sluagh are some of the deadliest fae.”

“Malin is alive.”

“Yes. I know it too.” Eryka looked around the clearing. “I think they either fled or were . . . taken by something else before the den found them.”

My instinct was to turn toward fear, but there was a sliver of hope in the words. Ari knew how to kill the sluagh. All signs pointed to the truth that they’d successfully killed and fled. I had to believe that with Ari’s experience in the South, with Malin and Elise’s skill in survival, they ran somewhere to hide.

They were out there in the darkness. Somewhere.

In the branches overhead, the caw of a raven disturbed the melancholy. The bird bobbed its head, fluttered off the tree branch, and circled one of the overgrown paths into the deeper grove.

The raven perched once more on the branch, crying at us.

It repeated the movement twice before Eryka touched my arm. “Follow it.”

“I’m not following a—” Words cut off when I turned to face her. The whites of her eyes had glazed over until her stare was milky and cloudy.

“She’s star speaking,” Gunnar whispered. He looked to the branches. “Follow the damn bird, Kase.”

A raven. Now we were following birds. The Southern folk were strange. But Eryka’s odd trances hadn’t led us into grave danger yet.

“This way,” I shouted and cut through the wooded path the raven had circled.

The trek was uphill. A length or two down the path, our breaths were ragged, and my legs ached from the rocky path. At long last, the path opened into a flat space in a thick grove of aspen and evergreens.

I held up a fist, halting the others.

In the center of the grove a mound of dirt wasmoving.

“What is it?” Valen crouched beside me.

“Something is there in the soil.”

We said nothing, watching as the dirt spilled down like a small hill forming in the ground. I jolted when, all at once, a head popped out of the ground. By the hells, it was another troll. This one was daintier than the thick, bulbous troll I’d killed. A female by the shape. Still with the thick, floppy ears and large nose, but her fingers were not as wide and her stature less broad.

The troll wiggled herself half out of her hole and sniffed the air.

I expected the woman to slip back underground, but after a moment she whipped her oddly glowing eyes in our direction. Hells, not our direction she looked right at us.

“Smell ye.” She sniffed loudly until it turned into a throaty snort. “Said I could find ye. Putrid blood and earth blood. And—” The troll sniffed the air again. She furrowed her brow and pressed a hand to her mouth. “Oh, little starlight? Is it true?”

“Wait. I know her.” Eryka shoved her way through.

“Stop.” I tried to grapple for the princess, but she had already sprinted out of reach.

“Hodag!”

“Little starlight!” Hodag grunted. Eryka was not large, but when the troll woman wrapped the fae in her bulky arms, her forehead only hit Eryka’s chest. “Never thought to be seeing you ever.”

“Hodag.” Eryka turned to the trees. “She was a nursemaid for the royal children in the South. A friend.”

“Do you trust her?” Valen asked.