Free The Raven Queen by Che Golden Page A

die because of him.’
    Her heart melted and Maddy touched Nero’s head gently with the tips of her fingers. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered anyhow, Nero,’ she said. ‘Liadan sent the dullahan after me, wanted to make sure that I and the whole of Tír na nÓg knew she is trying to kill me. Now that I am a subject of the Autumn Court, it’s an act of war. I was going to end up here whatever you tried to do to stop it.’
    â€˜Come here to me, Nero,’ said Roisin. ‘Let me get some of that rubbish out of your fur.’
    The wolf padded over to Roisin and the pair of them sank down to the ground together. He put his head in her lap and closed his eyes with a sigh of contentment as Roisin’s deft fingers worked clumps of mud and twigs out of his fur.
    â€˜I don’t like this,’ said Danny.
    â€˜Do I look like I’m turning cartwheels?’ asked Maddy.
    â€˜But it’s like you said – you were going to end up in here no matter what,’ said Danny. ‘Being tied to a Tuatha monarch just seems to make you more vulnerable, notless. And I don’t like feeling shoved into a corner.’
    â€˜Ah, but you know what they say about cornered animals,’ said Maddy. ‘They always fight hardest.’
    â€˜That’s because they’re desperate, Maddy,’ said Danny. ‘I don’t think that’s a good thing.’
    â€˜Well, it sounds like the two of you are on track for one of your usual mature, reasonable discussions,’ said Roisin cheerfully. ‘Or as I like to call them, arguments.’ She stood up and Nero climbed to his feet, shaking himself briskly. ‘Why don’t we just keep moving and see what happens?’
    â€˜Why?’ asked Danny.
    â€˜Because that’s what we’ve always done before and it’s never failed to get us into a fight,’ said Roisin. ‘So I say we head for where all the problems start – Liadan’s White Tower.’
    Roisin walked away down the hill with Nero trotting by her side. Maddy and Danny looked at each other and Maddy shrugged. ‘She’s right. Might as well go and spy on Liadan and see what she’s up to.’
    â€˜It would be nice if, just once, we could have something like a plan,’ said Danny.
    â€˜Never gonna happen,’ said Maddy cheerfully, as she followed Roisin down the hill.

    Any cheerfulness Maddy might have felt, no matter how fleeting, was soon crushed by walking in the stricken forest. She had never been anywhere so quiet. Every living thing had fled or died – not even the buzz of insect wings disturbed the silence. She was almost terrified to walk, cringing at the sounds charred wood made as it collapsed beneath the soles of her trainers, and she hated the puffs of ash that floated up as they walked. She could tell by the way Danny and Roisin were wincing that they felt the same way. They could not even see the sky. Everything was covered by a cloud of acrid smoke that hung low enough to drift around her head in tendrils. Spots of soot danced in the air and quickly coated her skin and clothes, while the smoke slipped insidiously into her nostrils and her mouth, drying her eyeballs and making every flickering movement of her eyes feel scratchy. It was not long before all three of them were coughing, their eyes red and streaming. Nero kept pausing to wipe at his face with his foreleg, trying to clear his eyes.
    Everything was fragile to the touch. At one point Maddy stumbled and put her hand against a huge oak tree to brace herself. That simple touch caused a chunk of its bark to slough off beneath her fingers and crumble to ash. She looked up at it in horror. Was its dryad, the little faerie that lived in the heart of the tree, stillalive, curled up somewhere inside, suffering agonizing burns? Could it speak? Could it still feel anything, even the wound Maddy had just inflicted, or had pain sent its mind to