Page 127 of Kingdoms of Night

Aspectral form shot out of the eagle carving, Black Annis with a massive hooked beak protruding from her face as her tattered black cloak became wings.

He clawed her across her face and sank his teeth into a wing.

A feathered chunk of flesh tore off in his mouth. Hot blue-black blood spurted out, coating his face and soaking down his neck.

We help!Hawthorn and Buttercup lunged in and snapped at her, twice making their mark while Idalno shuffled around the cottage.

Black Annis howled with laughter as she slammed into the wall. Her body disappeared into a swath of dense smoke that snaked into a lion carving.

“Oh, so clever. So clever indeed,” her disembodied voice said. “Yet you can’t answer my riddles. Such a pretty clever boy with his pretty clever dogs. All protecting the pretty mouthy girl. Now what are you looking for, dearie? Or are you too afraid to fight me?”

Idalno slammed a cupboard shut. “Plants! Why don’t you have any plants?”

“Plants?” Black Annis’s voice chortled. “Why in all of Faerie would I have plants, dearie? Well, keep looking. I’m sure you’ll find something interesting in those cupboards. Or perhaps in the oven. Why don’t you crawl in there and have a good look?”

All the cupboard doors flung open, and so did the oven door. The coals within glowed molten orange.

Black Annis was entering the wall’s animal carvings and taking on their forms. They had to destroy them, starting with the most dangerous ones.

“Solve the riddle, Idalno,” Feron shouted. He ripped the lion carving out of the wall and cast it aside.

Across the cottage, blue eyes lit up in a dragon carving.Hawthorn, Buttercup—!

They bounded toward it.

Chew off all the faces.He dug his claws into a badger carving. Drawers slid open and slammed closed, Idalno rifling through each space.

“Why aren’t you solving the riddle?” he called from across the room, lunging toward the next wall.

Idalno shot him a glare. “I can do two things at once!”

Black Annis laughed again. The eye on a boar head lit up directly across from him.

He snarled, raising his claws.

“Aren’t you the feisty one?” Black Annis charged out. Massive yellow tusks protruded from her mouth and her hideous blue snout.

He ducked her vicious tusks and landed a heavy blow against her back.

An iron claw nicked his shoulder with a stinging cut.

The wolves tore at her legs. As a strip of flesh ripped away, she staggered. Their jaws snapped shut through smoke as she snaked into another statue.

Why wasn’t she pressing her advantage?

“Oh! I know the answer, I know the answer!” Idalno shouted, waving her hands. “It’s fear! That’s what she wants to use to kill us!”

“Seems like she’s trying to use a lot more than that,” he bit out around a mouthful of wolf carving.

A large platter careened through the air at his head. He dropped as it flew by. Where had that come from?

A heavy pewter stein slammed into his jaw, rippling a swell of pain through his face.

“Well done, well done. Such a pity you solved that one first, though. It won’t help you quite as much. Though it does help you understand why I do what I do. There can be no boredom where there’s fear.”

He rubbed his face, wiping the blood away. “Can you repeat the first riddle?”

“Sorry. I don’t chew anything twice.”

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