Hoping to see her again, Ash asks Sidhean for another favor: to help her attend a ball at the castle, at which it is rumored the prince will choose his future bride. However, Ash begins to fall in love with the beautiful, strong Kaisa. Ash agrees, thinking it is her chance to finally leave her stepmother and enter the faerie kingdom. Sidhean agrees but tells Ash there is a price to pay: if he grants her wish she will belong to him. However, afraid that her stepmother will not allow her to go, Ash asks Sidhean for help and a disguise. Ash and Kaisa form an immediate and deep friendship, and eventually Kaisa teaches Ash to ride a horse and invites her to the King's Hunt. One day, Ash meets Kaisa-a noblewoman and the King's Huntress.

but even though Ash begs him to keep her by his side in the faerie realm he always tells her it is not time. Eventually Sidhean gifts Ash with a beautiful cloak and a pendant. Sidhean warns Ash not to use this path and to stop seeking him out but Ash does not listen and seeks him out multiple times. One night, the mysterious and sinister fairy prince Sidhean (pronounced Sheen) finds Ash wandering through the woods on an enchanted path that connects Ash's new home to her old one, where her mother was buried. Ash wishes that fairies will take her away to their world where all her dreams will come true just like she once wished as a little girl. Ash's sole source of comfort is reading fairy tales by firelight each night. The stepmother also declares that in order to earn her keep, Ash will serve as a servant in her home, as she has to lay off the rest of the staff because she can no longer afford to keep them. Soon after they move in though, Ash's father becomes gravely ill, and instead of allowing the Greenwitch to care for him, Ash's stepmother takes him to the city to be treated by their Philosophers, who bleed him and cause his death, as the Greenwich warned they would.Īfter her father's death, Ash's stepmother discovers he was deeply in debt, and sells Ash's childhood home to try and pay off some of his debts. Some time after Ash's mother dies, her father, a merchant, goes on a business trip and returns married to a woman with two daughters, the eldest of these is Ana who is Ash's age. The twist arrives when Ash falls in love with the King's respected huntress Kaisa, after she has made a commitment to dark fairy prince Sidhean.Īisling (pronounced Ash-ling), known as Ash to her friends, is a teenage girl whose mother was once apprenticed to the local Greenwitch. The novel centers around the familiar story of Cinderella, her father recently remarried, and lamenting the misery of her new life with stepsisters and a stepmother. It is a reworking of the Cinderella fairy tale that reimagines the title character, Ash, as a lesbian teenager. Ash is a young adult fantasy lesbian novel by Malinda Lo first published in 2009.

Huntress malinda lo