Chapter 38 #2
Soldiers, morvekai, and the fake king Lox were trying to make it to their feet, much farther away from me now than they had been, while Lyall and the woman Codessa were fixing their clothes, their bloodshot eyes on me, no smiles left on their faces.
There was no blood on any of them, and I thought the most that magical burst had done was push them back, but no. There was more of it hanging onto them, the edges of their coats and their chins, and their hands—the white shimmer that seemed to melt into them, and it was slowing them down.
I blinked, and I wasn’t just seeing things, but all of them were moving as if in slow motion, just like King Helem had done. I’d meant to stop him then, had focused my magic on him for that purpose, but it had worked the same way now.
“Any brilliant plans you’d like to share with me right about now?”
A hand on my arm and Hil pulled me back, up toward those wide wooden stairs, closer to the throne chair.
“Rune,” I said, eyes on Lyall as he forced himself to move forward with his teeth gritted and his hands lit up brighter by the second. “We wait for Rune, and we get out of here.”
A pause.
Hil let go of my arm as I tried to see behind the morvekai, toward the doors, hoping I’d catch a glimpse of Maera as she ran to search for Rune.
But she wasn’t there.
“We can’t leave, Nilah.” Hil’s voice pierced through my mind. He sounded serious, too, like he couldn’t see what the hell was happening here. He couldn’t see we were ambushed. There was no way out.
“We can and we will. We just—”
“Enough with the games,” Lyall said, his voice rising with every word, and he was back to moving almost normally now as he slowly stepped closer to the dais.
“You’re a pathetic excuse for a king, Sunny,” Hil said, and my insides twisted violently because I knew what Lyall was capable of just fine. What he’d been capable of since he was a little boy.
Lyall paused for a moment. Looked up at Hil. Smiled like a deranged fucking lunatic. “And you’re a dead man walking.”
“Attack!” screamed the fake queen, finger pointed toward us. “Kill them! Rip them to pieces!”
Safe to assume she was mad judging by her screaming alone. You didn’t even have to look at her face. The fake king was at it, too, whispering, his hands glowing, though much softer than before. But the most important thing were the morvekai.
They were moving, coming toward us—slowly. So fucking slowly, like they really were robots and they were running out of energy or fuel, or whatever it was that drove them.
“Move!” shouted the fake queen at Lox, but Lyall wasn’t waiting for the morvekai. There was light in his hands. He had obviously gathered himself much more quickly than the others, and now his golden light was shooting for us.
It was too late to stop it, I knew that. But my magic was there, and I was going to use it, even if I couldn’t hit him in time.
Except a second before the light slammed against me, I was pushed to the side hard. It was impossible to keep my balance, so I fell.
As I fell, I saw it when that golden light hit Hil right on the chest.
He’d pushed me out of the way. He’d taken the hit in my stead, straight from Lyall’s hands.
When I hit the wooden stairs on my side, my eyes didn’t even blink because I was too focused on Hil, how the magic threw him back, burned the front of his shirt completely before he landed right onto the throne chair.
His eyes were closed, his arms over the armrests the only thing holding him up, and there was blood on him everywhere—on his chest and trickling from his nose, even dripping down his arm.
A scream built up in me and I found myself holding onto the edge of the stair as I tried to make it to my feet, to get to Hil before Lyall.
Lyall—who was laughing that awful sound as he stepped onto the first stair of the dais. That same evil laugh that had remained in my head since the night he ordered Rune to stab me.
Too late, too late, too late, insisted a voice in my head even when I made it to my feet, because Lyall was there, and so were the morvekai.
All of them had made it closer, and they were not moving at their full speed yet, but they were much faster now than a moment ago.
Especially when they pulled out weapons—swords and axes and knives and spears. Their dead eyes were on Hil.
I ran without a plan. Lyall’s hands were glowing, and so were mine.
Hil was just starting to blink his eyes slowly, move his hands.
I ran up the stairs and in front of him, and I felt the heat of Lyall’s magic as my own rose in front of me, blinding light against blinding light crashing against each other now. Magic on magic. Silver on gold.
Fuck, I was weak.
Lyall couldn’t get to me, and by the time my magic lost strength, so did his, but my legs were so weak that they let go. I fell on my ass as the light disappeared into thin air, and Lyall and the five morvekai were already on the second set of stairs, coming closer.
“Nilah,” Hil said, and I looked up to find him dragging himself toward me, holding his bleeding arm near his torso, reaching his other for me. I took it and even when he pulled me to my feet, I held onto it for a moment longer to make sure I wouldn’t fall again.
“This ends here. This court is ours. We fought for it. We bled for it,” the woman said from behind the morvekai, standing side by side with her husband, or whoever he was. Imposters, both of them. “Kill them, now!”
Once more, I saw my whole life flashing before my eyes, not because this woman ordered my death, but because Lyall wouldn’t hesitate to deliver it.
I had magic still, and I could maybe cover us from another attack—but what then?
When they came again and again, when the morvekai unleashed those swords and axes and fucking hammers on us with their monstrous muscles—what was I going to do then?
Nothing.
I could do nothing, that much was perfectly clear.
But I’d be damned if I didn’t try until my last breath. At least Maera would find Rune, help him out of wherever they’d put him. Until then, I’d continue to make Lyall as miserable as I possibly could.
“Nilah, step back,” Hil said as he moved toward the throne chair himself, but my hands were lit up, and my eyes locked on Lyall, and I wanted to make him bleed so badly I felt like my magic heard my wish and it was going to fulfill it.
This fucker had almost killed me—the first time when I was only five years old.
“There’s no walking away,” I said, more to myself than to Hil. I thought we might be able to escape, but it was impossible. They were all there, all watching us, all ready, and it was just the two of us. No way out.
“Nilah,” Hil said, and I was moving, but I was putting myself between him and Lyall and the morvekai.
I would try to push them back again because I had magic.
It ran in me, rushed through my veins, and it could.
I could throw them all at the door once more.
Maybe all hope isn’t lost, whispered a weak voice in my head, and I hung onto it even if I knew it was bullshit.
“You’re not going to win,” I told Lyall, and I sounded like I believed it. Maybe I did—he still had to defeat Rune, and Rune had a whole kingdom at his back. An army—two armies. That of the Frozen Court, too.
“We’ll see about that, won’t we?” said Lyall in a slow whisper as he moved his hands in a circle, the light under his skin intensifying right before our eyes.
That was okay. The white light slipping from under my skin was still brighter, even though my hands were shaking.
“Nilah, stop,” Hil said from behind me again. “Look, Nilah—look…”
I didn’t, not at first.
But Lyall did.
He looked up at Hil, and then to the side, and he stopped moving. The morvekai had stopped moving, too, though I couldn’t really tell where their dead eyes were focused, but I had to turn my head, too.
Hil was smiling.
It completely threw me off, that smile, because it wasn’t mischievous. It was just genuine.
Hil was pointing the hand of his wounded arm left, and his blood was dripping down to the floor as he did, and I followed the blood. Then followed the finger.
Then saw the statues of the animals to the side of the large helmet coming to life.
The world lost all sense for me in those seconds. I was looking at statues gaining color and fur and eyes and claws and wings—I was witnessing it in real time, and they weren’t the only ones.
The same thing was happening with the statues on the other side of the helmet, too.
Statues coming to life right before my eyes, and the best I could do was watch.
They had color and fur and feathers. They had eyes, all dark, all round, all without pupils. Stags and foxes, wolves bigger than Maera’s, and enormous ravens with the tips of their wings made of metal, if my eyes were seeing right.
They were moving, walking toward us, and I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t scared shitless.
An arm wrapped around my torso and pulled me back, and I’d have jumped or reacted any other day, even though I knew it was Hil.
But I was frozen, so he pulled me back with ease as the animals—so many of them—come from behind the helmet, from inside the fucking walls, and spread out in front of us.
In front of Hil and me.
They created a wall between us and Lyall and the rest.
“What is this?” someone asked when the animals stopped, stood still, looked ahead—at them, their backs turned to us.
“What the hell is this—I am the queen in this palace! What is this?!” The fake queen screamed at the top of her lungs. Nobody had an answer, and to look at Lyall’s face as he took in the animals that had been statues until a moment ago, you knew that he hadn’t expected this, either.
Had Hil?
I looked up at him, and he was still smiling. “My blood,” he whispered. “My blood on the throne.” Indeed, his blood was still wet on the armrest, dripping down the chair’s leg, too, a small pool of it on the floor “They just…they woke up.”
They woke up. Like these animals had been alive all along, like they’d just been asleep when they were statues.
Lyall’s eyes moved to mine for a split second, and I saw his fear. I saw his concern.
I saw the moment the realization hit him, and it was the same when it hit me.
These animals here were the same as the shadows in the Midnight Palace—created to protect the royals.
I was sure the Seelie Court had something of its own, too, in the throne room for protection, and so did the Ice Palace.
Killing us now wasn’t going to be as easy as Lyall thought.
That’s why he took a step back, like he was thinking about retreating.
Like he’d already decided as he looked at the black spheres these animals had for eyes.
So many of them—at least fifteen wolves, and twice as many foxes, and eight stags with incredibly large antlers that stood to the sides because they wouldn’t fit on the stairs, and the ravens resting on them.
The large ass ravens and owls resting on antlers and on the backs of wolves.
No sound. No movement.
The fake queen opened her mouth to scream again.
Hil said, “Attack,” before she could.
The longest five minutes of my life began the next second.