Night Fae by Meg Xuemei X.
Chapter 9
I ambled beside Rydstrom as he led me toward the black-stoned temple, his fingers entwined with mine. All of us would have to walk through the Court of Nightmares to reach the Realm of Night and Dreams.
A dozen Night knights flanked their king and me and guarded our backs. My parents, with blindfolds covering half of their faces, were placed in the center of the formation, each with a knight guiding them. It wasn’t that Rydstrom didn’t trust my parents or was trying to give them a hard time. No one, except Rydstrom’s warriors and his high Fae nobles, could pass through the Court of Nightmares, where nightmarish creatures roamed the black temple, without their minds being compromised, or even irrevocably damaged. If my parents saw the nightmare, they’d never unsee it again, and it would be with them until it drove them to deep despair and madness.
Beautiful yet terrible faerie wasn’t the place for mere mortals, and the Court of Nightmares was the worst in all Elfame. Yet the Night City, bordered and shielded by the Court of Nightmares, had become the safest place for my siblings, considering the rampant spread of Pestilence in the human realm and the fact that they’d become a target to an evil queen.
When the Night knights brought my siblings into their most protected city, they made my siblings drink a magical potion and then carried the unconscious children through the temple to protect their minds.
Rydstrom glanced at me with concern as we stepped through the Temple’s vast iron gate. I did not wear a blindfold. I was the Night King’s mate. His mark burned on me as forcefully as mine was imprinted on him.
If I was to be both the Dawn Queen and the Night Queen, now was the time to act like it. I wouldn’t be intimidated by the nightmarish creatures, even though my pulse spiked and anxiety knotted my gut. Rydstrom’s subjects would be mine, too, as I’d rule them one day. That was, if I survived the Wild Hunt and returned.
Shadows of monsters beyond one’s imagination appeared on the walls on either side of me, watching us, and I tried not to look at them despite their menace thickening the air in the dark temple. Shapeless things that exuded brutal violence and insatiable hunger emerged from the ceiling. They shifted like flame, darkness, or liquid, registering directly in my mind rather than my eyes. I’d dealt with beasts of fang and claw, but these monsters were the most dreadful I’d encountered.
Their abysmal darkness pressed into me, wanting to bury me alive in a cocoon of nightmares.
My throat went dry as terror rose in my chest, but I couldn’t ask Rydstrom to shield me if I wanted to be his equal. And he knew he had to let me do this alone, as this would make an impression as to how his queen made her entry into his court.
I snarled silently and shoved back the creatures’ aggression instead of bowing down, which only ignited their curiosity and evoked further challenge.
An abyss of terror bore down on me in black, hard waves. Peril permeated every inch of the air. Dad and Mom, the bravest mages I’d ever known, shuddered and gasped at the onslaught, even though it wasn’t meant for them and it hadn’t slammed into them directly.
The guards pressed closer to my parents to shield them.
“Never take off your blindfolds, no matter what you hear or imagine you see,” Drake told my parents. “One glimpse of their ancient, raw power will destroy even most immortals’ minds.”
My parents nodded.
“Don’t believe what you feel, either,” I added to encourage them. “Brush it off like it’s an annoying spiderweb.”
A whirl of darkness closed in on me like a dark hurricane meant to raze the world to the ground and rip me apart. Before I could react, its claws sank into my being, the nightmare so thick it choked me. But I didn’t grab my throat as it expected me to but stared into its deadly essence.
A streak of dark light sliced into my consciousness like a fallen star, and a buried genetic memory swirled to life with a spark of dark fire.
Death is your domain, an alien voice hummed on the fringe of my mind, carrying magic that didn’t belong to this world.
I couldn’t grasp the meaning, but I knew the voice spoke the truth, and the nightmare creatures had made a wrong move and underestimated me. They’d soon be humbled and learn that their darkness and nightmares had no effect on me.
Hell is your home, the voice chimed, wreathed in hellfire as if it indeed came from Hell.
That, I reject, I answered, and then suddenly, without meaning to, I laughed. Like someone laughing at a funeral, I knew it was utterly inappropriate yet couldn’t help it.
“Ileana?” Rydstrom asked beside me, but he didn’t slow his pace.
“Were you laughing at us, girl?” a terrible voice straight from a haunting nightmare demanded from a corner in the impenetrable darkness.
The knights tensed, and my parents stepped closer to me, wanting to shield me from any nightmares.
“Ileana is your future queen, Basilisk,” Rydstrom hissed. “Back off.”
“Neither Basilisk nor any of the rest has ever talked to anyone besides our king before,” Drake whispered.
“Basilisk, right?” I asked lightly. “I know what you are. I know what you all are.” I paused and pulled Rydstrom to a stop with me. Every knight skidded to a halt, forming a protective formation around me and my parents. But I didn’t need protection. I gazed into the faces of the nightmares all around me. “You’re eaters of all living things, ancient as the earth and more powerful than Hell’s creatures. Even before I looked at you, I’d already had enough scares. Ever since I learned about the existence of the supernaturals, of the things that go bump in the night, of a usurper queen who wants my head on a spike. But I’m not afraid of you. You’re the things of nightmares, but you also have deep honor.”
They’d accepted Rydstrom as their king and sworn their allegiance when he was a child, because he never sought to rule or control them, and they’d guarded his realm faithfully ever since.
“I laughed because of a new discovery,” I continued as we resumed our march. “I also laughed in appreciation that you might be terrifying nightmares, but that is toward our enemies. To us, you’re the faithful guardians of our realm. You’re the first defense line, and no one can pass through you to invade the Realm of Night and Dreams. I laughed because I appreciate the perfection and beauty of the design of my mate’s court—the nightmares safeguard peace and lovely dreams.”
A moment of silence rippled across the temple, and Rydstrom squeezed my hand gently, heat and approval in his midnight eyes that shone with starlight and nightmares all at once.
“You spoiled our fun, Queen Ileana,” another voice said grouchily.
“Too bad, Scylla,” I answered, discovering her name easily as I probed them with my power.
The nightmares shuddered, perceiving my own kind of darkness within my light and fire. I entered their hive mind, even though they weren’t like any other living thing. For a breath, I wondered if Rydstrom could sense this and know I also had my own dark secrets, or if he’d known it all along as my mate and mighty King of the Nightmares but had been waiting for me to come clean.
The kings and I had talked about some things, but secrets were like intimacy and couldn’t be forced. Despite our mating bond, we hadn’t known each other for long. I had never peeked into Rydstrom’s secrets, not even the tip of the iceberg.
As if answering my thoughts, Rydstrom shifted into a twelve-foot-tall gargoyle, a form of pure nightmare. He lifted me in his vast claws, gazing down at me with uncertainty, yet heat and tenderness still swirled in his shadowed eyes.
He wasn’t sure how I was going to take this form of his, no longer the breathtakingly gorgeous Night King. But this was his true form in the Court of Nightmares. He wasn’t sure if I’d accept him, and he waited for my judgment.
“My beautiful nightmare, my king,” I said, smiling at him and leaning comfortably against his giant arm as I pulled up my legs. No matter what form he took, I desired him deeply. “Now, big guy—”
“Big guy?” he asked in an outlandish, cranky voice that could distort reality.
“You can put down your mate,” I insisted. “I can walk very well with my own feet.”
He chuckled, the sound like thunder, his eyes flashing with delight and shifting to a dark sapphire that seemed to contain the whole galaxy. The nightmare king slowly and gently put me down on the ground.
“Behold your queen,” he roared.
I shuddered in pleasure as I took in the rough sexiness of my giant, monstrous mate. I noticed that my parents, the knights, and the nightmare creatures all trembled, though for a different reason.
“The queen we’ve been waiting for,” Basilisk said in a chilling voice. “The Nightmare Queen will fight beside our king and lead us in battle and glory and blood.”
The nightmare creatures of all shapes and forms or formlessness let out a collective sigh of satisfaction that rumbled and chilled the temple.
My parents shuddered again, but I was elated to have a monstrous army at our command for the looming war. I’d won them over, and it wasn’t all luck.
We trudged through the black temple as the host of nightmares parted for us like a turbulent sea of shades and shadows.
Then the temple, no longer extending endlessly into the distance, became a magnificent court with open skylights and shiny black stone walls. Giants and warriors of nightmares stood in attendance with axes and spears and claws, ready for their king’s summons.
They bowed at Rydstrom and me and bellowed, “Our King and Queen.”
My mate’s giant claw steered the small of my back, and we stepped out of the Court of Nightmares into the starlight of the Realm of Night and Dreams.
