Page 229 of Of Nine So Bold

“Hello, daughter.” Eira extended her arms.

I was moving before I finished registering the impulse.

Her arms enfolded me like a warm blanket made of the softest down imaginable. I squeezed my eyes shut, tears prickling.

“You’re too close to the edge, my darling child.”

I sniffled, pulling back but not letting her go. “Where are we?”

“At the cusp of everything.”

I hesitated, confused.

“Arewe dead, then?” Casimir asked carefully.

My mother shook her head. “Not yet. Perhaps not at all. But youareat the farthest reaches of life, the edge before death’s fall.” Her eyes returned to mine. “The place where things are at their most true.”

She brushed my hair back from my cheek. “I am so proud of you, my beautiful girl.” She smiled at the others. ”Ofallof you. The brave seven I sent to my daughter. The strong eighth you found and who found you. Each of you are all I could have wished for my daughter and more.”

My giants smiled awkwardly, seeming flattered, while Casimir appeared touched and grateful. The demon fidgeted as if he didn’t know where to look, and at the sight, my mother’s smile became lovingly amused. “Even you, son of Jessora. I sent you too.”

The demon blinked, stunned.

A distant rumble carried through the night, making my breath catch with alarm.

My mother only sighed. “Melisandre has played a game so much more dangerous than she knows.” Eira gave a small, sad chuckle. “But that is her way. She was broken long before I knew her, and though that breaking wasn’t her fault, her choices are still hers alone. Sometimes, people take poison in an effort to cure their pain, but it only destroys whatever good was left inside beyond the breaking. In the end, they burn down everything because, after destroying themselves, destruction has become familiar. Welcome. It is all they know.”

“Is…” I faltered, but the question pressed at me. “Is that why she is so determined to kill me?”

Eira shook her head. “She never sawyou, precious one. And that isn’t your fault. A diamond does not cease to be a diamond simply because someone cannot recognize its value.” She took my hand. “Others do not exist as people to her, only as playthings and objects on a game board, because that’s what she believes the world to be. Yet because you are real and not a toy—and because you survived when she wanted her toy to die—she behaves like a child throwing a tantrum, obsessed with destroying you simply because you didn’t do as she wished.”

She rested her palm on my cheek. “I know that doesn’t make it hurt less, but your pain isreal. Nothing about Melisandre is, on so many levels now.” Eira’s mouth tightened. “But that doesn’t mean the damage she causes does not exist.”

The stars overhead changed. Their radiance spread until they weren’t lonely glimmers in the infinite dark, but pinpoints of brightness amid a fabric of light.

“Everything that exists has a reason,” my mother said. “Every story has a place where it was true. There are realms upon realms of reality. They always surround us, and all of them whisper to one another. Tell each other their stories. Their dreams. This is what Melisandre threatens, and what she will destroy if you don’t stop her now.”

Sound carried from the fabric of light, a distant lullaby of chimes and whispers, like the rushing of a sea deeper and more infinite than I could fathom. Images played out in the glowing radiance as if they had always been there,right there. They’d simply been beyond my ability to perceive them.

Worlds of fire. Of deep forests and brilliant sunlight. Of endless oceans, and of impossibly tall steel-and-glass towers that stretched into a brilliant blue sky. In each one, people lived and loved, fought and died, some of them looking like humans and some looking like nothing I’d ever dreamed.

But the tendrils of rot were coming for them all, creeping across the void. Already, they’d found the first little cracks along the barriers that separated one reality from another. With every little breach they found, the rot dug at it relentlessly, widening the gaps, breaking apart the boundaries, forcing their way into those realms.

So they could feed.

“How do we stop her?” I asked.

“You see what is true.” My mother’s smile turned sad. “And you shatter the sky.”

I stared, horrified. “What? That… what does thatmean? We can’t?—”

The growling returned, closer now, rumbling out from the darkness. Overhead, the glistening lights of the realms quivered as the rot climbed across them, making the barriers between them start to crumble.

“Go now, my precious ones. The lie Melisandre tells herself is still hunting you.” She took my hands. “She is not what she seems, and she never has been. Down at her core,sheis the flaw in all of their plans. The power she clings to is not hers, and it was taken from the very thing she cannot be.” Her gaze swept us all. “Everything you were and everything you are has broughtyou to this moment. Your bonds reflect those that hold together your world. Trust what you have become.”

All around us, the castle and the radiant light of the realms began to fall away like stardust, taking Eira with it.

“Mother!” I cried.

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