Page 125 of Of Nine So Bold

Whispers of truth that entered the other realms as myths. Legends.

Fairytales.

“You can hear them, can’t you, pet?” He hummed low with awe. “All those worlds whereyourstory could be told.”

Anticipation shivered through me.

His voice became a murmur, as if he stood at my ear. “You know what you need to do. Let this realm die. Let it burn and light the way to your destiny.”

Yes.

Wait… no.

“What?” I straightened, pulling back from the abyss. “I am the rightful rulerof this realm. I am itsqueen. What good does it do me as ash?”

Alaric was silent for a moment, but the strangest awareness of movement prickled at my senses, as if the insufferable bastard paced a thoughtful circle around me.

A vexed noise left me. That wasn’t possible, and I wouldn’t allow himorthis place to make me think otherwise.

The light and sound of my realm tugged at me, and this time, I let it draw me back.

If only for now.

“You seek to distract me,” I spat at Alaric as the ruins of a city street in Lumilia appeared fully around me once more. Burned buildings lined the road on either side, soot and fading bloodstains smudging the crumbling walls. By contrast, my velvet dress and fur-lined cloak glistened in the thin rays of sunlight that pierced the smoky, overcast sky, their color all the more vibrant for the darkness from which I’d just come.

Slivers of warped air floated around me.

My breath caught. I lifted an arm, staring.

They weren’t slivers of warped air. They were… nothing. Hair-thin spaces beyond pure darkness, in which light and substance simply didn’t exist. They floated away from me like dandelion seeds on a breeze.

“I don’t seek to distract you, pet,” Alaric said calmly.

I looked up. In the glass fragments of a broken window, he smiled, wisps of this same endless darkness dancing aroundhim. “I only seek to help you become what you were always meant to be.”

33

GWYNEIRA

“Hewhat?” I stared at Roan. “How can he not let you into Erenelle?”

Roan glowered in that way I swore only he could, glaring in the direction of the duke as if he would personally wrap the man in darkness and leave him screaming for all eternity.

And quite frankly, I approved. After how my giants had debated and agonized about returning to their home country, for the duke toforbidthem…

“He says we’re a ‘security risk,’” Roan growled with disgust.

“A security…” A breath left me, cold certainty suddenly taking the place of my shock. I’d seen the way Duke Ensid looked at me when my giants took me into the forest. “Or is it thatIam?”

His glower dimmed into a wince. “Not justyou. All of us. Because we’re dwarves and you and Casimir are ‘outsiders.’”

“Ah, a bigotanda nationalist,” Casimir commented dryly. “How lovely.”

Roan’s eyes twitched to him, a look on his face like he both agreed andhatedagreeing with the vampire, all at the same time.

“No.” I shook my head, starting into the crowd of dwarves. “I’m not letting him lock you out after all of this. We all know what’s out there hunting for us, and if we’re trapped against this wall for hundreds of miles…”

I couldn’t finish. The thought of my stepmother sent chills down my spine. She’d come so close to grabbing me in the darkness, and if not for the gateway demons…

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