He’d spent years locked in a cage not much larger than he was himself, his tongue chopped out to keep him from speaking to the earth sylph who had been bound to him. Gel closed his eyes, not really wanting to remember that day any more than he did any of the days before it. He’d seen how much they had destroyed, including all of the nobility and even the emperor himself. He’d seen the battlers the day the queen had arrived. He’d been told it was a small hive past the gate, one badly depleted by predators, though Gel couldn’t imagine what kind of predator would threaten sylphs. The sylphs danced around it, calling those on the other side to come through and join them. In the center of the chamber, a circle of noncolor gleamed, floating a dozen feet above the ground. Not in Meridal, where even human beings were once sold as slaves and sylphs had been nothing more than property. They were ecstatic with the idea of being free, the joy of being allowed to do what they wanted and to interact as they never had before the queen came. Over by the far wall of the massive chamber, Gel sat on the floor with his arms across the tops of his knees and watched the sylphs play. Air, earth, water, fire, healing, and battle, they whirled in a mad happiness that had no music. Despite the fact it was once a place used to lure and trap their kind, the underground chamber they used was now a brilliantly lit place of joy. There were hundreds of them, a storm of colors swirling around each other in a glorious celebration of life. Uh, pun not intended, if you see what I mean by the end of it. I don't usually have the clean official final version of the book, so this might be a bit different from the published version (I'm talking maybe a word here or there and some formatting, I hope). Keep in mind, this is a cut/paste of the last doc version I have of the manuscript (frighteningly full of copy editor remarks and cuts that I've cropped out). That said, here's the prologue for book 4.

Books 1 and 2 always had them, but now 3 and 4 do as well. Pain in the butt! I've even put the excerpts for my last two books in the page descriptions, which is apparently something I totally forgot to do sooner.

Okay, I managed to fix my stupid book listing page.

Queen of the Sylphs by L.J. McDonald