The Iron Vow

Book 3: Iron Fey: Evenfall

by Julie Kagawa

Genres: YA Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

Not Yet Available

Release date: May 9, 2023

Publisher: Inkyard Press

Print pages: 304

Sample

Prelude

Let me tell you a story.

The story of a girl who went into the land of faeries, met a prince, and fell in love.

She went on a journey to rescue her brother, and along the way, she learned many things about herself and the world around her. She learned her father was a faery king, which made her a faery princess. She discovered her best friend was a faery straight out of legend: Robin Goodfellow. Puck of the Summer Court. Once you meet him, you’ll never forget him.

On the way to rescue her brother, the girl met many strange and fantastic creatures. One of them was a talking cat, who agreed to help her in exchange for a “small favor.” The girl didn’t know it at the time, but she had stumbled upon one of the wisest and most infuriating creatures in all of Faery, and without him, she probably would have wandered in circles until she fell into a dragon’s cave or was eaten by a giant spider. If you are ever lost in the Nevernever, look for a gray cat with golden eyes, or call the name Grimalkin into the wind. Chances are, he’ll hear you. He might ask for the impossible, but he’ll always get you where you need to go.

But we’re getting off track, aren’t we? Let me start again, from the beginning.

The girl went into Faery completely unprepared, knowing nothing about any of the things that I just mentioned. It was there, in the Nevernever, that she met a Winter prince. His name was Ash, and he was the most beautiful, dangerous creature she had ever encountered. He was also the youngest son of Mab, Queen of the Winter Court, which made him her enemy. And the laws of the fey forbade them to be together. But the girl was young, and she didn’t care. She loved him, and though it took him a while to admit it, the prince loved her, as well. They faced many trials: terrible monsters, faery wars, kings and queens trying to tear them apart. Despite every obstacle and law and ominous faery warning, they fought with all their hearts to be together. But, sadly, their happily-ever-after was not to be.

The girl became a queen. A queen of the fey in the Iron Kingdom, and the prince could no longer be with her in her new realm because it was poisonous to him. And so, the prince went on a quest himself, a journey to find a way to be with the queen forever. His quest took him all the way to the End of the World, and he had to face unspeakable challenges, but in the end, he was triumphant and returned to the girl he loved. She was still waiting for him, in her realm of iron, and finally, at long last, they could be together. But the story isn’t over yet.

The girl and the prince got married, and after a time, had a son. They named him Keirran, and Keirran grew up to be a handsome prince himself. The Prince of the Iron Realm. The queen and her husband loved him very much, but a dark prophecy hung over the Iron Prince’s head. A prophecy that said he would betray his kingdom and bring about the destruction of the entire world of Faery. The Iron Prince became friends with the queen’s brother, Ethan, who was also grown up now, and Ethan’s beloved, a girl named Mackenzie St. James. The three of them had many adventures together in the land of the fey. But Keirran had fallen in love with a girl named Annwyl, a faery of the Summer Court, and the law said they could not be together. The Iron Prince tried to defy that law as his parents had done, but all his attempts failed. And so, as the prince gave into despair, the prophecy surrounding him came true. He betrayed his best friends, betrayed his parents and his kingdom, and tried to destroy the Nevernever.

A great war was fought, with the Iron Prince battling those he’d once called family. His parents were heartbroken, but they had to protect their kingdom from their own son. Many lives were lost, but in the end, the Iron Prince was saved by the very friends he had betrayed. Ethan, Kenzie, and the prince’s own love, Annwyl, faced the Iron Prince behind enemy lines, and somehow, they were able to bring him back. But the final battle was not without loss and, sadly, Annwyl sacrificed her existence to save the prince she loved so much. The Iron Prince returned home to face the consequences of his actions, and as punishment, was forever exiled from the N

evernever. He became King of the Forgotten and went on to rule a realm known as the Between, swearing to protect the world he’d once tried to destroy.

But the story isn’t over yet.

Several years after the great war, a monster appeared in the Between. A monster of nightmares that spread anger and fear to everything it touched. It threatened the Iron Prince’s kingdom, and the Iron Prince knew he needed help. He sent two messengers to the Iron Realm to ask for aid: Robin Goodfellow and a mysterious faery called Nyx. Nyx was a kind of faery no one had ever seen before, but she was beautiful and a deadly fighter, and she helped Puck reach the queen and the Winter prince in the Iron Realm. Together, the Iron Queen and her family confronted the monster and discovered the terrible truth. Long, long ago, there was another realm of Faery known as Evenfall. And Evenfall was home to a whole species of faeries called the Evenfey. The Evenfey were very much like the faeries of the Nevernever, except they were born of darker dreams and nightmares. They were ruled by a powerful entity known as the Nightmare King. But then, a selfish faery known as the Lady decided to seal Evenfall away, cutting the Evenfey off from the rest of the world.

This made the Nightmare King very angry. He fell into a deep sleep, and he dreamed of revenge. Of darkness and destruction, and vengeance against all fey, the Nevernever, and the entire world.

Years passed. The king slept on. But eventually, the seal to Evenfall weakened. The Nightmare King was waking up, still filled with rage toward Faery and the Nevernever. And so, to save their world, the girl and her companions decided to step through the weakened seal into Evenfall. To find the Nightmare King and stop him. Whatever that meant.

They didn’t know what awaited them on the other side. They didn’t realize that what they would discover would cause them to question everything.

But the story isn’t over yet.

In fact, this is just the beginning.

 

1EVENFALL

My name is Meghan Chase.

Queen of the Iron Fey. Ruler of the Iron Kingdom. Daughter of a human mother and the immortal faery king of the Summer Court. I have survived multiple wars, faced unspeakable evil, and stopped at least two End of the World prophecies.

None of that was quite as terrifying as where I stood right now.

The sky overhead was black. No stars, no moon. Trees surrounded us, bent and twisted as if in horrible pain. A flat gray luminance filtered through the trunks, turning them into skeletal silhouettes that seemed to move whenever you looked away. In the distance, I could make out things dangling from the branches: rotting cages and sacks that bulged as they swung lazily back and forth.

I shivered. Remember those horror movies that you love so much? Well, congratulations, now you’re in one.

A chill traced my spine. It was still out there, searching for us. I could feel its presence, old and patient, prowling through the trees. The monster that had been waiting for us the moment we’d set foot in this strange, terrible world. An Elder Nightmare, vicious and nearly unstoppable, that had attacked us as soon as we’d arrived. We’d managed to fight it off and escape, but not unscathed.

Clenching my jaw, I pressed a hand to my elbow. Beneath the bloody cloth I’d wrapped around my arm, my bones throbbed with pain. But even that was a small inconvenience compared to the bigger problem. If things had been normal, I would have healed myself by now, my fey glamour naturally restoring torn flesh and broken bones, staving off complete exhaustion and keeping me on my feet. But things were far from normal, and dread, yawning and terrible, had settled deep in my stomach.

There was no glamour in this place. None. It was a wasteland, barren and empty of magic. I could feel the deadness in the air, in the ground, in the trees around us. It made me sick. The Nevernever—the land of the fey—pulsed with magic; glamour existed in every tree and rock and living creature. It fueled our power, our very existence. It flowed from the mortal world into Faery from human dreams and emotions. From their loves, their fears, their passions and creativity.

This was nothing.

This was Evenfall.

Evenfall. A mirror realm to the Nevernever, Evenfall had existed alongside Faery since the very beginning. It was home to the species of faery known as the Evenfey. These were the true bogeymen, the monsters in the darkness. The Nightmares that everyone feared. The ruler of Evenfall was the immortal, immensely powerful Nightmare King, and even the fey of the Nevernever feared him.

So much so that, in the age before the courts rose to power, the strongest fey in the Nevernever made the terrible decision to seal Evenfall away from the world. Worse, they erased all memories that Evenfall, the Nightmare King, and the Evenfey had existed at all. Cut off from the glamour of the real world and the Nevernever, the fey of Evenfall were doomed to slowly Fade into nonexistence. Starving and forgotten, the Nightmare King fell into a coma-like sleep, and the fey of Evenfall vanished from the world.

Until recently, when the Evenfey had begun appearing again. No one knew how, or why, though it was suspected that the rising anger, division, and hatred in the world had been strong enough to reach the Nightmare King in his sleep. We—myself, Ash, Puck, Grimalkin, and Nyx—had been called to a place known as InSite, where it was rumored that the Evenfey had been gathering. Deep beneath the building, we’d found a circle of Evenfey attempting to raise the Nightmare King from his slumber. We intervened, only to discover we’d been tricked. Destroying the seal did not stop the ritual as we’d hoped. Instead, it tore open the way to Evenfall. And every faery on this side of the Nevernever—Summer, Winter, Iron, and Forgotten alike—now remembered Evenfall and the Nightmare King.

With the opening of the seal, the Nightmare King had stirred. He was waking up, and if he did, he would take his revenge on the Nevernever and the fey who’d sealed off his world. The Lady and her circle, those faeries of old, were no longer alive, but the Nightmare King wouldn't

care. He had gone mad in his dreams and would destroy the Nevernever, the courts, and possibly the real world as well.

We had to stop him. Even if the Nightmare King was unkillable, and our own powers were greatly diminished in his realm. Even though it meant traveling into Evenfall itself and seeing the exact horrors that awaited us on the other side.

A world with no glamour. A realm of Nightmares, where the fey were starved, twisted creatures from mankind’s darkest emotions. Where the king’s own nightmares had taken form and now roamed the land, preying on all they encountered. Somehow, we had to cross this nightmare world, find the Nightmare King, and either put him back to sleep or...

Or what? I frowned at my own thoughts. I didn’t like the idea of killing him. What would happen to Evenfall if we did? What would happen to the rest of the Evenfey? I didn’t know exactly what we would do when we found him, just knew that it was up to us—again—to save our world from destruction.

Even though we had no magic here.

I sensed his presence behind me before his strong but gentle touch warmed my back. Leaning into the caress, I glanced up. Ashallyn’darkmyr Tallyn, former prince of the Winter Court and my husband, gazed solemnly over my shoulder into the woods. His silver eyes scanned the shadows between the trunks, ever alert for threats, though the hand against my back was of silent support. I wanted to lean into him, to close my eyes and forget this terrible place existed. But I couldn’t. A queen had to remain strong, even if the only ones to see it were her family and closest friends. I was the Iron Queen. In this empty world bereft of glamour and magic, I had to give them hope.

“It’s still out there,” Ash murmured behind me.

I nodded. “I haven’t seen or heard it in a while, but I’m sure it’s still stalking us.” The Nightmare had chased us for a while after we had fled. Or, rather, when Keirran finally convinced the rest of us to retreat. It was not in the Iron Queen’s nature to run away, even less so for a warrior son of Winter and the infamous jester of the Summer Court. Ash, Puck, and I probably would have fought the creature until we killed it or it tore us apart, but the Forgotten King had reminded us that we had an important mission to accomplish. If we died here, there would be no one to stop the Nightmare King from waking up, and the Nevernever—and possibly the real world as well—would be doomed. Realizing this, we finally retreated, and eventually lost the Nightmare in the twisted forest surrounding us.

I didn’t like running away. Rulers of Faery did not give ground to their enemies. And I hated the fact that I was weak now. But Keirran had been right. Our mission was too important to waste time fighting. We were here to stop the Nightmare King and save the Nevernever. And somehow, we would do that, with no glamour, no allies, and no idea of how to accomplish anything.

“Has Nyx returned yet?” Ash asked, interrupting my bleak musings.

I shook my head. “Not yet.” The Evenfaery had left several minutes ago to scout the area, hoping to spot the Elder Nightmare before it found us. Nyx was

 unmatched at remaining unseen, and this was her world. We would have a better chance of avoiding the monster if we knew exactly where it was.

Cool fingers slid over my arm, brushing my elbow. “Come inside,” Ash urged. “Nyx will be back when she’s ready. There’s nothing we can do until then.”

“Yeah.” I sighed and let him lead me back into the cave. It wasn’t a large cavern, just a hole carved into a hillside, but it was sandy and dry and, most important, free of anything living in it.

A reddish-orange fire burned sullenly in the center of the cavern, lighting the interior. Puck sat cross-legged in front of it, feeding twigs into the flames. His bright red hair glowed in the flickering light, making it seem like his head was on fire. Opposite him, a fluffy gray cat lay comfortably on a flat rock, feet tucked into his chest, golden eyes half-closed in the dancing shadows.

I crouched in front of the small fire and spread my hands before it, letting the warmth seep into my cold fingers. “How’s everyone holding up?” I asked.

Puck’s green eyes met mine over the firelight. The gash on his forehead had stopped bleeding, though his left cheek still looked a bit bruised.

He shrugged and managed to dredge up his old devil-may-care grin. “Never better, princess. Who wouldn’t want to go gallivanting through a literal nightmare world filled with horrific monsters and no magic? I’m thinking of setting up a lovely vacation home in that grove of trees with the screaming heads.”

I gave a faint smile. Not even a literal nightmare world could stop Puck from making a joke about it. “Then you’d at least have a captive audience,” I replied, making him snort. “Sleeping might be a challenge, though.”

“Trust me, princess. No one is ever going to sleep in this place.”

Ash knelt beside me, deliberately close. I resisted the urge to lean into him. “You managed to get a fire going, at least,” he observed.

“Yeah.” Puck snapped his fingers, and a tiny flame appeared over his thumb for a split second before he snuffed it out. “By virtue of being me. This is it, though. This is how much glamour I have left, and it ain’t a lot. What about you two?”

Ash shook his head. “Mine is gone,” he said grimly. “I used the last of it fighting the Nightmare.”

“Princess?”

I sighed. “The same,” I admitted. “It took nearly everything I had to re-seal the portal to Evenfall. I have maybe enough for one more big attack, and then everything will be drained completely. I know Keirran is in the same boat. I’m not sure about Nyx.”

“So, we have no magic,” Puck said. “No glamour, no power, and we are in the literal plane of Faery hell.” He grimaced and scrubbed a hand through his crimson hair, making it stand on end. “Yeah, this is gonna be all kinds of fun.”

I clenched a fist. They were both putting on brave faces, but even though he hid it well, I could sense Ash’s fear. Without glamour, he was weake

r; still a skilled and deadly swordsman, with a few natural Faery perks that made him more dangerous than the strongest human, but he would not be able to bring the awesome power of his Winter magic to bear. I knew he was worried, not for himself, but for the rest of us. His greatest fear was that he wouldn’t be able to protect the ones he cared for.

I felt the same.

My hands shook. For so long now, I had felt the pulse of glamour in the very land around me. As a queen of Faery, I was connected to the Nevernever in ways that even the normal fey couldn’t comprehend. I had forgotten what it was like...to be a normal human.

“So, what does this mean?” I asked. “We can’t go back—if we open the portal again, the Nightmare King could wake up.”

“No,” Ash agreed. “We can’t go back. We have to keep going, find the Nightmare King, and end the threat he represents. One way or another.”

“It will not be as easy as that.” On the rock, Grimalkin raised his head, blinking slowly. “Evenfall has been cut off from the glamour of the real world and the Nevernever,” the cat explained. “I am not even sure how the realm has survived this long and not Faded away, much less the Evenfey themselves. But there is no natural glamour here, which means you will not be able to draw on the land to heal yourselves or fuel your powers. How do you propose to face the many Nightmares you will encounter, much less the Nightmare King himself?”

With a crunch of boots against rock, another figure stepped forward, firelight washing over his features. Silver hair and ice-blue eyes glimmered as Keirran, my son and the King of the Forgotten, melted out of the shadows to stand before us. Like his father, he was tall and graceful, with the pointed ears and sharp beauty of the fey, though his human blood softened his features somewhat.

“Nyx is returning,” he said, gazing at the mouth of the cave. Puck rose quickly to his feet. I caught the flash of relief on his face, a surge of emotion he wasn’t able to hide.

There was a ripple of moonlight at the cave entrance, and a slender figure dressed in black leather armor seemed to materialize from nothing. The Evenfey assassin glided noiselessly across the cavern, pale hair and yellow eyes glowing in the darkness. Not long ago, we had all thought Nyx to be a Forgotten, those faeries whose names and stories had faded from everyone’s memories. Now, though, we knew the truth. Nyx was an Evenfaery. Evenfall, this nightmarish, magic-barren world, had once been her home.

“The Elder Nightmare is gone,” she told us. “It left the edge of the forest and headed into the swamps. I don’t think it’s coming back.”

Keirran nodded. “Good.” He rubbed a hand over his forehead. “This is going to be hard enough without those monsters stalking us everywhere.” His blue eyes regarded the Evenfaery and softened with sympathy and concern. “Are you all right, Nyx?”

“No.” The Evenfaery shook her head. “Forgive me, your majesty, I am not. My memories of home are scattered, and some are just beginning to ret

urn, but...” Her gaze strayed to the mouth of the cave, and a haunted expression crossed her features. “Evenfall was not like this when I left. This is not the world I remember.”

Puck moved quietly behind the assassin and slipped his arms around her waist. For once, his eyes were serious as he leaned in. “I know what it’s like to be banished from home,” he told her solemnly. “But I can’t imagine coming back to the Nevernever and finding it...like this.”

Nyx sighed, and one of her hands rose to rest over Puck’s. “I had hope...for a moment,” she murmured. “When the seal was broken and I remembered what had happened, I had hope that maybe Evenfall had endured, even after all this time. But deep down, I knew that was foolish. Evenfall...” She shook her head. “It is still lost to me. My home is still gone.”

My jaw tightened. What had been done to the Evenfey was unforgivable. Nyx had been robbed of her memories, her world, and almost her entire existence because of what the Lady had done eons ago. And the worst part was, Nyx was right. We couldn’t fix this. To unseal Evenfall was to release the Nightmare King on the Nevernever and the rest of the world.

“Maybe we could talk to him.” Keirran sounded hopeful. “The Nightmare King. I know he’s been asleep for a long time, and I know he wants revenge on the Nevernever, but if we could reason with him, maybe we could come to some sort of understanding.”

“An understanding?” Grimalkin sniffed, fixing a bright gold gaze on all of us. “The Nightmare King is lost to madness,” he said. “You saw him, did you not? In the final battle below InSite? Even asleep and half-mad, he spoke to you through his Nightmare creature and warned of what would happen when he awoke. Do you not remember what he said?”

I did. I remembered that terrible moment when the hulking form of the Elder Nightmare turned, and I was suddenly staring into the eyes of something more ancient than I could comprehend.

“I will destroy all.” Even asleep, the Nightmare King had made the ground tremble with his words. “All dreams will die. This nightmare I find myself trapped in will finally end. I hear the ripples of the world above. I hear the voices calling. The screams, the anger, they pull me from this dream. Soon, I will be among them. Soon, all will know my rage. All will be darkness, and the ones who betrayed us will know nothing but terror. Wait for me, dreams. I will be there, soon.”

“If the Nightmare King wakes,” Grimalkin went on, “there will be no reasoning with him. That Nightmare King wants only to destroy and cover the world in darkness. I am afraid that, should you meet him in the waking world, he will not hear you.”

“So, the only solution is to kill him.” Keirran did not sound happy.

“That, or find a way to keep him from waking up,” Ash said. “Whatever we decide, we are going to have to find him, regardless. Nyx, is there someone who might know where the king is? Did Evenfall have a court?”

“It did,” Nyx replied slowly. “Not in the sense that Summer and Winter have courts

but the king did rule Evenfall from his castle in the Forest of Mist.”

“The Forest of Mist?” Puck repeated, and wrinkled his nose. “Typically, anything with mist in its description is either on some other weird plane of existence that doesn’t conform to normal space or is an absolute pain in the ass to find.”

“Have you ever been there, Nyx?” Keirran asked.

Nyx frowned. “Yes,” she said, as if memories were just starting to return. “I believe... I was at the castle a lot. I’m sorry, I am just starting to remember my life in Evenfall before the Lady, and some things are coming back slowly.” The assassin seemed to ponder the situation before she gave a solemn nod. “We need to find the Nightmare King,” she said. “That is the only certainty I know. I can guide you to the Forest of Mist to look for the castle, but I think it could be a long way. There is no guarantee the king will be there, but it is our best lead.”

“That sounds like a plan,” I said, and glanced out of the cave, where darkness still shrouded the land in night. “I would suggest we wait until daylight, but I’m guessing the sun never rises in a realm of nightmares.”

“You are very astute, your majesty,” Nyx said, and Puck groaned.

“Oh, I just love it when there’s no sun,” he muttered, and blew out a gusty breath before looking up with a wide grin. “Okay, well, since we don’t have to wait for a morning that will never arrive, I suppose there’s nothing left but to get on with it.”

---

“How has Evenfall survived with literally no glamour?” Keirran wondered as we followed Nyx through a forest that looked like every horror movie set in a dark, creepy wood. Skeletal trunks crowded us, branches and twigs reaching out like claws, snagging hair and clothes. The sky overhead was pitch-black, but the spaces between the trunks were lit with a flat gray light, outlining silhouettes and eerie shapes in the trees. I lost count of the times I thought I saw a figure in the corner of my vision, only to find nothing there when I turned my head. It was not, I decided, like being in the wyldwood, the great tangle of forest surrounding the Faery courts. The wyldwood was dim and murky, with vivid splashes of color against a perpetual gray backdrop. It, too, played tricks on your eyes, making you see movement or figures that might or might not really be there. But walking through the wyldwood felt...surreal was the best way to describe it. Like you were in a dream. The wyldwood was alive; it was dangerous, beautiful, and forced you to pay attention to it.

This place felt dead. Lifeless.

“I don’t know,” Nyx replied in answer to Keirran’s question. “When the Lady and her circle closed the way to Evenfall, they also erased it from everyone’s memories. They intended for the realm to Fade, along with the Nightmare King and every Evenfaery who lived here. It should have Faded away. Without glamour to sustain it, I don’t know how the realm survived.” She gazed around at the haunting forest, a pained look crossing her face. “This...is all wrong,

” she murmured. “I am glad to be home, that Evenfall still exists, but...it shouldn’t be here. The Evenfey shouldn’t be here. We should have Faded long ago.”

“Hey.” Puck stepped up, placing a hand on her shoulder. His green eyes were surprisingly intense as Nyx turned to him. “What does it matter?” he asked. “Who cares how it survived—it did. It took the Lady’s plans for genocide and spit in their face. And the Evenfey are still here. Despite everything, they’re hanging on.” One hand rose and pressed against her cheek. “So, no more talk of Fading, huh? You deserve to be here as much as anyone else. Evenfall survived, and the Evenfey still exist. Trying to figure out why things are in Faery is just a surefire way to give yourself a headache.”

Nyx arched one silver brow, though she gave him a faint smile. “Is this your solution to most things, Goodfellow? Ignore them and pretend they don’t exist?”

“Most things, yeah.” Puck shrugged. “I was going to offer to shove glamour down your throat if you started to Fade, but I might’ve ended up with a knife in the eye. Or the groin. And that just sounded painful.” Puck gave her a wry grimace before sobering. “You’re not allowed to Fade on us,” he told her. “If you start, just imagine me being sad and mopey for the rest of my life, until ice-boy gets so fed up he stabs an icicle through my heart to stop my whining.”

Beside me, Ash snorted. “If that was a viable choice, I would’ve done it years ago,” he muttered.

Nyx shook her head, then leaned forward and kissed Puck on the lips, very briefly. “I’ll keep it in mind,” she said in a soft voice, pulling back. “Though I will point out that, while we might not be in danger of Fading, without access to any glamour, things will be much more difficult.”

“And yet, you continue to stand here and keep talking,” Grimalkin said from atop an old stump, “instead of moving toward a solution. We will never find the Nightmare King if certain fey continue to...” He trailed off.

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense, Furball,” Puck said, turning toward the stump. “I assume you meant to say ‘be distracted’ but—oh, he’s gone.”

We all tensed, hands falling to our weapons. Everyone, even Nyx, knew that when the cat disappeared, something was coming.

Silence fell for several heartbeats. We backed into the shadows, watching and listening for sounds of pursuit.

My skin began to crawl. Something was moving through the distant trees. Something enormous and bulky that, impossibly, made no sound as it almost glided through the air. As it slid into the open, I bit my lip to keep the sudden fear and horror contained. I did not frighten easily anymore. I was Queen of the Iron Fey. I had lived in the Nevernever for a while now. Nowhere near as long as Ash or Puck, but I had seen my share of the weird, the scary, and the grotesque. I’d fought everything from dragons to trees to giant snakes. But this creature, much like the world around it, seemed to have come straight out of a nightmare.

It was longer than it was tall and had a body disturbingly reminiscent of a giant insect. Multiple jointed legs stuck out at strange angles, though w

hen I looked closer, I realized they weren’t legs at all but thin, bony arms with long fingers grasping at nothing as it crawled forward. The body itself looked pale and featureless, until I saw what it was made of.

Skulls, hundreds of them. Animal, human, and faery alike, all jumbled together into one massive, nightmarish beast of bones and teeth and empty eye sockets. Tendrils of hair and bits of fur trailed from the skulls, giving the creature a mangy appearance, and the smell of rot and grave dirt drifted toward us on the breeze. A distended neck, ending in the bleached skull of a horse, swung slowly from side to side.

Nobody moved. I don’t think anyone breathed.

The skull-insect thing continued into the forest, its terrible body shockingly graceful as it glided over the ground. It moved like it was half wraith, half maggot, squirming forward but somehow barely touching the tops of the bushes as it crawled. Its long neck swung toward us, the horse skull disturbingly small against the bloated body, and an eerie sound, like a wail being muffled by pillows, emerged from the gaping jaws.

I clenched my teeth and did not move a muscle, despite the chills running up and down my arms. I could feel Ash tense beside me, his entire body coiled and ready to strike. The creature continued its distorted wriggling flight into the darkness until it was no longer visible, but nobody relaxed for several long minutes after it had disappeared.

“Okay,” Puck whispered when we were sure the creature was well and truly gone. “What was that? Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Every beastie we run into is some sort of awful Nightmare monstrosity?”

“Nyx?” Keirran looked at the assassin. “What are we dealing with? Was that a fey or something else?”

“I...don’t know,” Nyx said, sounding concerned and frustrated. “I’m sorry, your majesty. I don’t think it was fey, but I’ve never seen it before.” She stared in the direction the monster had disappeared, eyes narrowed. “There were always disturbing creatures in Evenfall, but nothing like that. Unless I’ve forgotten more than I realized. However...”

She gazed around the forest, furrowing her smooth brow. “I am starting to recognize this place. If we keep going, we’ll reach the Sinking Swamp, and if I’m not mistaken, Stilt Town is close.”

“A town,” Ash repeated. “That could be helpful. But do you think anyone is still alive out here?”

“I don’t know,” Nyx replied. “But I would like to see for myself. If there are still Evenfey around, they would know more about what has happened to the realm in the time I’ve been gone. They might even know where the king is.”

I nodded. “Then we should try to find it.”

My heart was still pounding. Ash reached down and curled his hand around mine. I could feel the strength in his fingers, the silent comfort because he knew I was on edge, and I squeezed his hand. So far, Evenfall was proving to be horrifically disturbing, but at least Ash was with me. Nyx, Keirran, and Puck were here as well, ...