Page 123 of Of Nine So Bold

I tore after him, my vampire speed more than making up for my shorter stature. We broke past the trees to see a crowd gathered in the distance at the base of the wall. Past the giants, I couldn’t see my men, though Roan still stood by the edge of the forest as if to keep anyone from heading our way.

“—and now you’re going to fucking dothis?” Clay’s furious voice carried over the crowd.

Alarm joined my dread. My feet sped up as I hurried toward Roan. “What’s happened?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Short version, then,” Dex demanded.

Roan’s jaw muscles clenched. “Duke Ensid has forbidden us from entering Erenelle.”

32

MELISANDRE

Agateway demon ripped Gwyneira away from me, and then she passed beyond the edge of the gateway itself.

In the darkness, I screamed with rage.

I’d had her. I’d been within inches of snuffing her life out forever, and then thatdamnamorphousthinghad the audacity to intervene.

“We should make him pay, don’t you agree, pet?”

Snarling inarticulately, I ignored him. Alaric was only a trick played by the Voidborn—though how the hell he’d managed to be here in this place too, I couldn’t imagine. The gateways weren’t the empty realms, nor were they my realm. Not precisely, anyway. A middle space just beyond reality but still attached to it, weaving through the gaps between whatwasand whatwasn’t, they should have been beyond the reach of Voidborn trickery.

But the creatures who called this place home certainly weren’t beyond the reach ofme.

Stretching out into the darkness again, I whipped my power through the between-space that formed the energy of a gateway. Tearing into it as if with claws, I didn’t stop until something caught, something writhed.

Something screamed.

I grinned. In my grip, the little gateway demon thrashed and squealed like a trapped piglet made only of energy. It wasn’t the larger wretch that had saved Gwyneira.

But it would do.

I shredded the shrieking gateway demon into nothing but ephemeral fragments of energy and dust.

“Well, that hardly satisfied,” Alaric commented dryly.

An irritated sound escaped me. “Be quiet.”

“You didn’t even catch the one responsible for thwarting you.”

“I did enough.” Irritation swelled. I shouldn’t be answering him, especially after he just ignored my command to be silent.

The arrogant bastard needed tofearme, not receive encouragement for disrespecting me.

He chuckled. “Do not misunderstand, pet. It is impressive that you can use my power to capture a gateway demon with your ‘bare hands,’ hypothetically speaking. But is that truly the limit of what you want to do? Frighten a few ethereal mice, when you could terrify lions?”

I didn’t respond.

His voice held his smile, even if I couldn’t see him. “Peer past the edge of the gateway, pet. Let me show you whatcouldbe yours.”

Damn the bastard for being so tempting. But that was the point, really. He would have me bend—even just a little—to his wishes, when in reality he was dead and gone. Nothing but a game played by the surviving Voidborn.

“Unless,” Alaric continued casually, “you’d rather hide from your true greatness and cower in your own little realm like Smelly Melly the pig farmer’s daughter once cowered from the village girls who terrified her?”

Rage twisted in my gut, hot and biting. How dare he use my past to taunt me?

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