1 BURNED TO ASH

The Hallow Woods

The Realm of Albia

THE TIME TO seek justice had come.

Not for the dead who burned before him, but for a past that couldn’t be silenced any longer.

Standing back from the large pyre, Cailean watched the flames devour the corpses of those who’d ridden north with him—Prince Kennan among them.

Although the afternoon sky was overcast, sweat trickled down his back. The heat of the fire was searing, and after spending most of the day dragging bodies into a mound, exhaustion dragged down at him, settling deep into his bones.

Yet, inside, he seethed.

Skaal sat at his side, watching the hungry flames. The fae hound, a huge dog—at least four times the size of a wolf—with a shaggy dark-green coat and glowing golden eyes, was his shadow.

Around them lay the ruins of the Marav encampment, tents trampled into the damp, peaty earth. After combing the dead, in the hope someone might have been left alive, he’d set all the horses free, leaving them to make their way out of the Hallow Woods. Dark, oily smoke wreathed up above the treetops. The druidic wards had long since fallen, and on the fringes of the clearing where he stood, the cruel whispers of The Slew tormented him.

Cailean ignored them. The Unforgiven were weaker in daylight, although the malevolent spirits wouldn’t touch him anyway, for they fed on fear—and he wasn’t afraid.

Instead, an old rage—one he’d ignored for too long—writhed in his belly.

And all the while, the fire sizzled and popped. The char of burning bodies made his bile rise, but he remained at the fireside.

He owed the dead that, at least.

The High King would seek reckoning against the Shee for this, yet Cailean was done with it. Enough. For years, he’d been Talorc mac Brude’s servant, but no longer.

He wouldn’t be going home this time. When the High King learned of his son’s death, he’d be incensed, maddened by grief. He’d be looking for someone to blame, and Cailean wasn’t going to offer himself up as a sacrifice.

Aye, his career was over. Everything he’d worked so hard for was gone. The pyre before him wasn’t just incinerating bodies—but his old life.

It had taken this massacre to tear down the walls he’d spent two decades shoring up.

It had taken her .

He cut his gaze back to the fire then, his hands fisting at his sides.

Bree Fellshadow.

Heat swept over him, hotter than the blistering fire he stood before, as he recalled how thoroughly his wife had deceived him.

Until a few days ago, she’d been Fia—the Maid of Albia he’d ordered when the High King insisted that he take a bride—but then she’d tracked him into the Hallow Woods and taken off her mask. His wife was one of the Shee, who’d taken Marav form: an assassin sent to spy on the enemy.

He should have run her through with his sword as soon as she told him the truth. But instead, like a shit-brained fool, he’d taken Bree to The Ring of Caith, on this Mid-Summer Fire’s morn, and sent her back to her people through the standing stones.

And, all the while, she’d known the Shee had already hit this camp and slaughtered everyone in it.

Cailean dragged a hand down his face before giving his head a shake.

He couldn’t let himself think about that bitch, and how easily he’d fallen under her spell. There wasn’t any point in trying to get even with her either. Bree was now back in Sheehallion, where she belonged.

Three large crows, drawn by the odor of roasting bodies, flapped down from the pale sky, perching on the branch of an old pine. Among druids, the sight of three ravens or crows together was a sign of new beginnings: the end of one chapter and the start of another.

He glared at the carrion birds. “You’re too late,” he muttered. “There will be no flesh for you to feast on today.”

He waited there by the fire for a while longer, watching as the bodies burned to ash. Eventually, he cast Skaal another glance. She’d remained loyally at his side while the fire smoldered, silently waiting. Meanwhile, a few yards behind him his stallion, Feannag, also waited. His dog and his horse—they were all he had.

And the hunger for revenge that made his gut ache. It was time to deal out long-overdue justice.

“Are you ready to go north, lass?” he asked Skaal.

The fae hound cocked her head as if she understood him. Of course, she didn’t though. Such a notion was ridiculous.

“Come on then.” Turning, he strode across to his horse, skirting around a clump of listing gravestones. And in the shadows, back from the clearing that had once been the Marav camp, The Slew stirred, hissing at him.

Once again, Cailean barely heard them.

Instead, he mounted Feannag and turned him toward the overgrown path that wound its way north, where the shadows of great mountains rose into the sky: the heart of The Uplands. Skaal trotted at his side.

They left the dead behind them.