Free Lord's Fall by Thea Harrison

iconic trees towered around fifty feet tall, their gigantic thick limbs rippling outward in twisted sprays.
    A three-story mansion sprawled at the end of the avenue. Lirithriel House was a perfect example of Greek Revival architecture. The building was balanced and spare with a front gable design, Ionic grand columns, tall elegant windows and a spacious front portico. Built with a light yellow sandstone facade, the house was famed for its golden glow in the early morning hours.
    Behind the house lay extensive flower and herb gardens, complete with a labyrinth maze. Beyond that towered Lirithriel Wood, a dark massive presence that was so intense everyone in the car drew a collective breath. Land magic saturated the air, witchy and intoxicating. The lure of the Wood was so strong Pia could hardly look away. The wild creature that lived inside of her yearned to plunge into the tangled green mystery.
    The size of Lirithriel Wood was estimated at around eighty square miles, including a secluded stretch of beach between the barrier islands that dotted the coastline.
    The Wood was roughly a fifth of the size of its neighbor, the Francis Marion National Forest. In 1989 Hurricane Hugo had devastated the national forest until virtually none of its old growth survived, but Lirithriel Wood had somehow remained unscathed, dense and wild with ancient trees and a profuse tangle of undergrowth.
    Aerial photographs invariably showed an impenetrable canopy of green, the Wood so dense that little of the underlying landscape was visible. A river meandered to a coastal outlet, but it never seemed to run the same path from one photograph to the next.
    A river didn’t just change its course arbitrarily. Since the Wood contained the crossover passageway to the Elven Other land, speculation had it that the magic of the passageway warped both digital and chemical photos alike.
    Pia met Eva’s wide gaze in the rearview mirror. She was vaguely surprised that she managed to think of something coherent to say, as she asked, “Have you ever been here before?”
    The captain shook her head. “Never sensed anything like that in my life. Can see why people think the Wood is an actual entity.”
    James stirred in the front passenger seat. “I’ve heard it called the Bermuda Triangle of South Carolina. A company of Union soldiers disappeared around this area and they were never found again. That’s almost a hundred people who vanished into thin air.”
    “Didn’t the Elves adopt a laissez-faire attitude during the Civil War like all the other Elder Races?” asked Johnny. “I thought they claimed that the war was a purely human conflict.”
    James said, “I don’t think official politics would have had anything to do with those soldiers getting lost in that Wood, and if the Elves knew anything about what happened, they never said.”
    “Weird,” said Johnny. He turned off his video game and tucked it into a pack between his feet.
    Pia had also heard more modern stories of hikers who had gone missing in the Wood, to emerge confused and disoriented days later. Legend had it the Wood itself did not like uninvited guests.
    She glanced one more time at the avenue of enormous oaks. They weren’t quite the size of Angel Oak, which was located a short distance southwest from Charleston. Angel Oak was reputed to be the oldest living oak in America, perhaps the world. But these oaks had to be at least several hundred years old.
    Was it just her imagination, or did their branches stretch more toward the Wood than anything else? What would it be like for them to live so close to the Wood and yet unable to become a part of it? Or maybe they were close enough that they were a part of the Wood. Maybe they passed ancient secrets through the air with the rustling of their leaves, and she just didn’t have the ability to sense it.
    As the SUVs pulled around the wide circle in front of the mansion, the double doors opened. A tall, slim Elven woman dressed in a raw