Free The Raven Queen by Che Golden Page B

another place? The tree loomed over her, twisted and tortured, and gave no sign it even knew she was there. She dashed tears from her red eyes and kept moving.
    After a while they all stopped walking and simply stood and stared at each other.
    Roisin took a juddering breath. ‘I’ve never been anywhere so … so …’
    â€˜Dead,’ said Danny. Nero flopped on to his belly, put his head on his paws and whimpered.
    â€˜I did this,’ said Maddy, real tears coursing through the grime on her face. She wiped her cheeks with a filthy hand and simply spread more soot around.
    Roisin looked at her, her eyes softening with pity. ‘No, you didn’t.’
    â€˜Liadan wanted me to come back,’ said Maddy. ‘She’s torturing Fenris and she burned the forest to make sure that happened. So yes, I did this, it’s my fault. How many dryads are dead because of me?’
    â€˜She’s done this before, Maddy, when she first came to Tír na nÓg, remember?’ said Danny. ‘This is what she revels in, the death and the destruction. You are just an excuse for something she would do sooner or later.’
    â€˜Danny’s right,’ said Roisin. ‘What she really wants is a war with the Tuatha, a way to break out from Tír na nÓg and have no restraint on her powers. Having a go at you is just a way to make that happen.’
    â€˜She burnt the forest because it’s too close to the tower,’ said Nero.
    â€˜What?’ asked Maddy.
    Nero shrugged. ‘She’s always been frightened of the dryads, though I don’t think they ever understood that. So many of them, some working with such powerful trees, all of them solitary faeries owing allegiance to no court. They could have thrown their lot in with any Tuatha and come against her. She didn’t want that to happen so she burned them. They will be too weak to do anything to her now.’
    â€˜So this was just Liadan housekeeping before she started her war,’ said Roisin.
    â€˜But Fachtna spoke about the dryads like they were dirt,’ said Maddy. ‘To listen to her, you would have thought she was talking about something she scraped off the bottom of her boots.’
    â€˜People often show hatred of something they are frightened of, rather than admit they are scared,’ said Nero.
    â€˜The dryads could have fought back, they could have done her some damage,’ said Danny. ‘Why didn’t they?’
    â€œThey’ve never understood war,’ said Nero. ‘They are peaceful creatures who only strike if they are attacked. And they have no idea what it means to work together. They have no concept of being in a pack.’
    â€˜Poor things,’ said Maddy, looking at the blackened forest around her.
    â€˜They’ll survive,’ said Nero. ‘The younger ones might have perished, but the older trees will grow new shoots and renew themselves and their dryads will heal along with them.’
    Maddy thought of Fionn, the beautiful little silver-birch dryad. She and her tree had already survived one burning – had they both survived this?
    â€˜What are we supposed to do?’ said Roisin. ‘How are we supposed to fight this?’
    â€˜We can’t,’ said Danny. ‘Not on our own. Liadan has a whole army behind her and, no offence, Maddy, but being the Hound doesn’t seem worth much and nor does being part of Meabh’s court.’
    â€˜What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Maddy, feeling her temper rise as it so often did with Danny.
    Danny made a big show of pretending to think, frowning deeply and tapping at his forehead. ‘Well, being the Hound hasn’t given you any superpowers, unless you count being a faerie magnet, which I don’t, by the way, seeing as it utterly ruined
my
life. And as forbeing the subject of the Autumn Court and under their protection, I don’t see any Autumn Tuatha turning up