Page 225 of Of Nine So Bold

She’d broken this. Torn it to pieces in her battle to take control of it. But at the core of that dark cloud, there was still light.

She hadn’t yet claimed it all.

Casimir’s magic and Byron’s surged inside me, and my vision changed. Where before I’d seen a dark cloud, now there were pieces and fragments of spells. A map of magic, and a puzzle too. I could see places where the ley linesshouldhave been, and places where they could still reach the core of the nexus beyond the darkness.

If I did this just right.

With the magic of my scholar and vampire as my guides, I reached out for the severed ley lines.

It felt like wrapping my hands around a bolt of lightning. Worse.

I was burning. Dying. All of reality was ending and beginning and bleeding out, and I was too.

The demon’s strength surged through me. Byron and Casimir’s skill with magic too. Clay’s power cooled me, and Lars’s gifts made sure I didn’t burn. Dex’s energy urged the ley lines to grow while Niko and Ozias fought to hold the earth steady.

I wouldn’t die.

Drawing the ley lines with me, I sent my power into the darkness, threading it like a needle through the shifting cloud. Ahead, the light grew stronger and brighter the closer I came.

But the ground was shaking, and despite our efforts, my body was held in place by the fresh roots of a tree still fighting for its life.

I was running out of time.

“Please,” I whispered. “Please hold on.”

I drew the ley lines past the dark and into the light.

Magic surged around me, blinding and brilliant, as the ley lines connected to the nexus again. It blasted outward, driving back the darkness, shaking her hold.

She’d broken this to take power over it.

It wasn’t broken anymore.

But she wasn’t through yet.

My eyes flew open as the earth shuddered so hard, it fractured the roots holding my hand in place.

“You…” Melisandre stood where she’d been, her gaze on the ground like she could see straight through to the nexus. “You little…” A chuckle escaped her.

Of every reaction she could have had,thatchilled me the most.

Her voice became a snarl. “This world ismine.”

“No, it isn’t. Stepmother, you have to stop?—”

“It isn’t?” Her eyes snapped over to mine, and another tiny laugh left her. “You think you can just say it… itisn’t,and that will be that?” Her eyes skipped over the courtyard again, finding my men. Maybe even seeing the thrum of the link between us all.

Her humor faded into a grim certainty. “It isn’t. It…” A strange sort of peace came into her voice. “It isn’t. But it always was sosmall,anyway.”

Wariness prickled through my veins. Behind her, the Voidborn had left off attacking my men. They’d simplystopped. As one, they turned to where my stepmother and I stood. Their glowing eyes locked on Melisandre with a look that chilled me.

Anticipation.

“He told me that, you know,” she continued. “He said it, over and over again, even though I couldn’t see it. But he was right.” Hate and rage twisted her face when she turned back to me, like the words were bitter and terrible but true. “Alaric wasright.”

I fought the urge to retreat from the look in her eyes. It wasn’t sane. It didn’t even seem like she was actually seeing me.

On the far side of the courtyard, my men were weaving past the Voidborn as fast as they could, trying to reach me but clearly wary as hell at the battle that had just stopped for no reason they could see.

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