Page 233 of Of Nine So Bold

“We are like a nexus,” Casimir said suddenly.

I turned to him, confused. “What?”

“We are like our world. Our power. Our gifts, each of them like the elements of reality.”

“What’s your point, man?” Clay demanded.

Dex spoke up before the vampire could, his eyes on the surge of light coming our way. “We let it strike us first. Buffer the hit. Diffuse it so the world might survive.”

Clay and Lars stared at him, stunned. Byron turned away, shaking his head, and horror showed on Niko’s face when he turned to me, the loss Dex was proposing so clear in his eyes. The demon shuddered, anguish on his face, while that same feeling radiated through Ozias so strongly I could feel his beast howling inside.

My mouth opened, but I couldn’t find words. I knew what that meant, and the incredible likelihood of what would happen then.

We’d die.

I looked over my shoulder at the shadowy portal to our world. The color was gone. Nearly every detail had faded away.Everything my home had ever been was disappearing like a dying dream.

But maybe it didn’t have to go.

“Doomed are the Nine,” I whispered.

My heart breaking, I turned back to my men. “It’s the only hope for the world,” I said quietly, a tiny shrug making my shoulders rise and fall. “We have to try.”

They stared at me. But one by one, the sorrow faded into acceptance in their eyes.

The crackling light raced closer. It was almost here.

My men came toward me. Our arms wrapped around one another, holding us together.

The friends who’d become family.

The outsiders who’d made each other their home.

The princess who’d found a new life after being left to die in the snow.

“Do you think there was any truth to what Gwyneira’s mother said?” Niko asked. “That the realms tell each other their stories? That maybe we’ll go on somehow?”

Dex nodded. “I do.”

“Beyond any doubt,” Byron said, his green gaze unwavering on me.

Niko smiled at the answer. “Good.”

Tears burned in my eyes. “But I hope that, even if from now on and forever after we’re only a story, they know the truth too.”

“What’s that, princess?” Byron asked.

I smiled at him as the light swelled so bright, it was blinding. “That once upon a time, we were real.”

The blast struck.

60

GWYNEIRA

Birds chirped in the distance. Wings fluttered. Something hard and rough rested against my back.

“Princess?” an elderly voice called from far away. “Princess, can you hear me?”

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