Page 126 of Boundless

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 atstatuesgaining 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 ofmetal,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 manyof 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—atthem, 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 thathehadn’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 beenasleepwhen 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 hitme.These animals here were the same as theshadows 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.

thirty-nine

It waschaos from the start.

Hil saidattack,and not even loudly, and those animals that had come alive shot forward, straight into the morvekai and the fake king and queen and the soldiers who were still there—and Lyall.

Lyall, who had his hands lit up and pushed them back as they came—a fox, a wolf, and a raven, and they fell, slammed against the ground. They were attacked by the morvekai, too, but they did not bleed. When one of them cut the head off a brown fox, it had already turned to a statue before the two pieces hit the floor rolling. Pieces of marble or whatever the hell they were—notanimals anymore.

Ravens flew, and the edges of their feathers really cut, but the morvekai bled black.Oldblood. Thick, too thick to be normal. Like fucking tar.

Lyall’s golden light pulsated among the chaos, and the fake king and queen were now standing behind the ordinary soldiers, too, hands to their mouths, arms interlinked as they watched in horror and screamed something at someone behind them—thestaff membersoutsidethe throne room doors, who’d gathered to watch.

The morvekai refused to go down, and the animals refused to stop, and more and more of them ended up as pieces of marble on the dais, and my magic gnawed at my insides, demanding action.

Death.

The fake king Lox, who was almost at the doors, and who controlled the morvekai.