A faint chuckle reached me in the silence. Frowning, I gazed toward the broken skull to see the body of the Evenfey, surrounded by bone bits and pieces of ice, lying where the monster had fallen. Its empty eye sockets turned toward us as we approached, and another chuckle escaped the much smaller deer skull.
“Too late,” it whispered. “You are still too late. The ritual is complete. The king rises again, and will enshroud this world in a million fears and terrors when he comes. There is no one with the power to break the summoning circle when he is so close. Evenfey,” it whispered, turning its skull slightly to look at Nyx, “when the king arrives, tell him I was proud to serve.”
Its body flattened, becoming as a literal shadow, before melting into the floor and vanishing. The naked deer skull clattered as it hit the rocks and lay there, lifeless and staring.
Behind us on the dais, the circle of runes flared.
The Nightmare King was coming.
17
THE CIRCLE BREAKS
I sprinted up the steps to the platform, hearing the others close behind. The entire dais was glowing now, runes and symbols almost too bright to look at. They snapped and flared as we stepped onto the dais, filling the air with an ominous humming sound.
I could feel the glamour coming off the platform, swirling in the air around us. The maelstrom of rage, hate, and fear that suffused every inch of this place. I could feel it clawing at me, phantom talons digging into my mind, urging me to use it, to pull all that anger from the air and bend it to my will.
“Okay, so how do we turn this off?” Puck wondered, looking frantically around the circle. “Where’s the switch to shut this ride down?”
I shook myself free of the choking fury, clearing my mind. “There is no switch,” I said. “We have to break it. The entire platform. Shatter the dais and disrupt the runes. That should end it.”
“You sure, ice-boy?”
Impatience flared. “We don’t have time to wonder about this,” I said. “The Nightmare King is almost here. Break the circle and interrupt the summoning, and we finish this now.”
Puck shrugged, then drew his daggers, Summer glamour sparking around him. “If you say so. Though, from what that Evenfey told Meghan earlier, this might be harder than we think. We might have to bring out the big guns.”
“Wait.”
We paused, turning to Nyx, who stood at the edge of the dais, a conflicted look on her face. “Something is wrong,” she confessed, staring at the glowing ring around us. “I don’t like this.”
Meghan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I...don’t know.” Nyx shook her head in frustration. “But this whole place...it feels familiar. I don’t think we’re supposed to be here.” She hesitated, then added, “I don’t think we should tamper with the seal.”
I narrowed my eyes. “That Evenfey said you were one of them,” I said in a lethally quiet voice. “Maybe it feels familiar because you subconsciously want the Nightmare King to return.” Nyx stared at me, her expression blank, and my anger flickered to life. “Or maybe it’s not subconscious at all.”
“Hey, ice-boy.” Puck stepped forward, his own eyes narrowed in warning. “What are you trying to say? Whatever it is, I don’t think I like it.”
I ignored him, staring at the Forgotten instead. It would have been easier for her, I realized, to infiltrate our plans from the beginning. We knew nothing about the Lady’s assassin, only that she had allegedly pledged herself to Keirran. She could have been with the Evenfey from the start, and we wouldn’t have known until it was too late.
Nyx met my gaze calmly, her expression giving nothing away. “I have been with you from the beginning,” she stated in a cool, practical voice. “Before we knew about the Evenfey, or InSite, or this place of power. I don’t know why this feels familiar, or why the Evenfey says that I am like him. All I know is that I have sworn myself to the King of the Forgotten, and he has ordered me to aid you however I can.”
“She’s not a spy, ice-boy,” Puck added, glaring at me. “All she suggested was that maybe we don’t smash sites of power willy-nilly, which frankly sounds like pretty sound advice to me.”
“Please stop, all of you.” Meghan’s voice, though calm, was steely, as the Iron Queen coming to the forefront again. “There’s no time—we need to make a decision now. Ash...” Her blue eyes met mine and softened. “I know you’re angry, but Nyx has a point. There is a lot of power coming from this thing, and...” She hesitated, brow furrowing. “I have a weird feeling about this, too. I can’t explain it, but this whole place feels forbidden. There’s this nagging sensation, like we’re not supposed to be here. Maybe we shouldn’t tamper with what we don’t understand. We don’t really know what will happen if we destroy the circle.”
I took a breath to stifle the anger and impatience that immediately rose up within. I didn’t want to argue with Meghan, but I was tired. I was tired of saving my world from things that wanted to destroy it. I was tired of terrible forces always threatening my family. “We can’t take that chance,” I said coldly. “The Nightmare King is coming, and this circle is summoning him. We destroy it now, we put a stop to this whole thing.”
“Do not be hasty, prince.” Grimalkin leaped onto the circle with us. The fur of his tail stood on end, and his golden eyes were a little wild. “There is powerful magic here, as the queen said. I do not believe destroying the seal is a sound plan.”
The rage inside was reaching a breaking point. “Do you know what this is, Grimalkin?” I demanded, and the cait sith narrowed his eyes at me.
“No.” His tail lashed, annoyed with the admission. “But it feels familiar. As if I have been here before. Which only means that the memory of it has been deliberately blocked or sealed. And if it has been blocked, then it was for a reason. I do not believe we should meddle with the circle until we know exactly what we are dealing with.”
“Enough!” The runes surrounding the dais flared red, casting everything in crimson light, and my waning temper finally snapped. “I will not stand here and argue when the Nightmare King is waking up in front of us,” I told all four of them. “If you will not destroy the seal, then I will do it myself.”
I opened myself to the maelstrom of glamour, and power rushed into me. The anger and fear of the mortal world, all drawn into this spot. My Unseelie nature howled in response, stronger than ever. I stretched a hand over the dais, and saw blue-black veins crawling up my arms, pulsing beneath my skin. Power roared in my ears, filling my senses. I shaped that anger into what I wanted and yanked it into the open.
A rumble went through the chamber, and the ground trembled. Meghan and Puck took a step back, eyes widening, as a huge ice spike surged up through the ground. The stone dais split with a deafening crack as the enormous shard pushed its way into the air, parting rock and earth as it rose toward the ceiling. We all leaped back as the two halves of the dais tumbled away, then ground to a halt on the stones. The runes flared once more then winked out, plunging us into darkness.