Page 146 of Of Nine So Bold

“I mean… not exactly. We’re… Well, like I said. I don’t know. But we’re not the same.” A new thought occurred to me, one that felt almost like a peace offering. “But that’s why nature was so strange about me, right? Like you said back in the forest. Because the demon and I are like this.”

Niko was quiet for a moment. “Nature told me you had secrets, yes. That there was something odd about you. And it’sstill saying…” His brow furrowed. “I don’t know.Something. Like there’s almost anecho when I look at you, but… strange.”

Gwyneira glanced between us, a worried look on her face. “Do you know what he’s talking about?” she asked me.

I shook my head.

“But it’s not the demon,” Niko continued. “And I don’t think it’s a threat. I know how that sounds, coming from me. I’ve said that before and I… Well, anyway, I mean it.” He looked at Gwyneira earnestly. “I’d tell you if it did.”

The words sounded like a promise, and they made my heart ache.

Fuck, had she asked him about me before? Had he said she could trust me?

Probably.

And then the demon and I proved him wrong.

Niko turned back to me, and I scrambled to focus rather than spiral into self-recriminations again.

“The demon still feels likeyou, though,” he said, “at least in a way. Kind of like the two sides of a leaf, you know? Different and sort of distinct, but still the same leaf. Anyway, if thereisany truth to thisNinething, it wouldn’t make much sense for you and the demon to really be two different beings, right? Because that’d technically make us ten and…” He splayed his hands like it was obvious.

Or it meant that I wasn’t supposed to be part of their group at all.

I turned away, my stomach twisting into a knot.

“It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you,” Niko added.

I couldn’t respond to the obvious attempt at a peace offering. Not when his words had created a whole new angle of awful to thisthingthat the demon and I were.

What if we weren’t supposed to be part of Gwyneira’s… whatever it was? Because there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Gwyneira was at the heart of this, no matter what Ignatius thought about Casimir and the “center” of the Nine’s supposed power.

What if the ninth member of that group was someone else?Ruhlor some other fucking thing?

Or just the demon and not me?

There was no stopping the spiral of dread in my thoughts this time. The fucking demon didn’t even try. It just sat there in my head, silent, without a single gods-damned hint of what it was thinking.

Bastard.

But did I even want to be part of thisNinething? Did I really believeI—or the demon or whatever—was going to play a role in saving the whole fucking world?

Because if we were, then Niko’s argument that we weren’t really two beings made sense.

And mine didn’t.

“Roan?” Gwyneira prompted gently.

I didn’t care about saving the world, I realized. Not really. Not like a good person like Niko would.

I wanted to be part of thisNinething because Gwyneira was.

I only cared about saving her.

A dark wave of agreement came from the demon, but it felt strange. Like it came from something else living inside my head… but like an echo of my own too. Like the two of us were closer inside my skin than ever before.

My skin crawled, and internally, I retreated from the sensation. I couldn’t trust that.Wouldn’t.But I understood all the same.

We’d burn the world if that was what it took to protect her.

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