Crown of Moonlight (Court of Midnight and Deception #2) - K.M. Shea Page 0,96
out of the mansion, and Whiskers and Muffin appeared from the maze shadows where they’d been lounging.
Blue Moon charged back through the gate, the shades and glooms behind him.
“Something’s wrong with the Night Realm,” I said. “Get Chase, Rigel, and the guards, and come through after us—Solstice, wait for them before you come after us.”
“What are you going to do?” Indigo demanded as Skye started shouting into her phone.
“I’m going to find out what’s going on.” I grimly threw myself on Eclipse’s back. The mare’s spine was bony and uncomfortable to sit on, and I didn’t have a helmet, but there wasn’t time to remedy either situation at the moment, so I’d have to deal with it.
I clung to Eclipse’s neck as the mare turned in a tight circle. “Let’s go,” I urged her.
She shot through the gate, taking me to the Night Realm before I’d even had the chance to register the gate’s magic.
The realm was in chaos.
The ground shook, and a horrible, whistling noise that sounded like the wind screaming through trees violently sliced through the air. Night mares—both mine and the ones that had chosen to remain wild—were galloping around. I even saw Bagel and Fax in the mix.
I turned Eclipse in a circle before I saw it: the monster.
With a pale, paper white skull that glowed in the darkness of the Night Realm, and feathers and fur the same color as blood, the monster was a sickening mash of animals. The skull of a cow was melded to the front shoulders that resembled a lion. Its legs turned into the clawed feet of a hawk, and its torso narrowed into a scaled and feathered tail that was vaguely reminiscent of a snake. Two sets of antelope horns jutted out of its skull, and a pair of prominent fangs jutted from its jaws.
It was massive—easily as big as a two-story house—and shadows danced and writhed around it, connecting the body parts together to form the entire creature.
It was dead—magic was powering it. The sticky, whispery sensation of fae magic brushed my mind, but as it had been for the snakes that attacked me in the theater, the shadow monsters that attacked me at the supernatural market, and the monster Myron set on me in the Midsummer Derby, I could feel another magic underneath it. An ancient, foreign magic that felt simultaneously wild and controlled. It was sharp like the edge of a blade, and filled the air so strongly it made my teeth ache as the thing jerked around like a puppet on strings.
But how did it get here?
I activated my prism and started filtering the wild magic in the air.
“Of course, you’d overestimate your abilities and try to fight that thing.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Leila
I whipped Eclipse around and was shocked to find Fell, holding the bridle of a glowing sun stallion, standing behind me. “Fell?” I said. “What are you doing here?”
Fell smirked at me. “I brought that,” he nodded to the creature. “It’s my gift to you. I saw it in the Autumn Realm and decided, since you’re intent on playing hero, you could deal with it. Though you won’t be able to.”
I wanted to grab the Autumn King by the collar of his shirt, but the monster exhaled on a clump of trees, instantly turning it into ash.
Clearly, I had bigger issues to deal with. “What is it?”
Fell scoffed. “That ignorant, are you? Of course you would be—”
“Fell!” I shouted. “Just tell me what it is and how to beat it!”
“It’s animated by shadow magic—the same kind from the movie theater.” Lord Linus stepped through the gate, Chase and the others right behind him.
The fae lord’s eyes locked on the monster with worry. “But it looks like it’s been combined with necromancy of some sort. Beating it is going to be next to impossible given its size.”
“How would I defeat something like that, then?” I asked.
Lord Linus rubbed his chin and shook his head. “Beheading would be the simplest matter, but unless you can get yourself a sword big enough to stab through its limbs, it won’t work on a monster that size.”
“Light, possibly,” Chase said. He looped a lead rope around Fax’s neck, and then a second around Bagel’s, securing the less fierce geldings for their safety. “The shadow snakes reacted negatively to light.”
Lord Linus shook his head. “The amount of light you’d need would be extraordinary.”
“I’m calling in my men. We’ll get multiple warriors on it,” Chase said.