Page 26 of Of Nine So Bold

Even the Erenlian prisoners I’d ordered the soldiers to drive against it.

Even the soldiers themselves.

Old irritation rose again at the memory. I would have sent hundreds at that barrier. Thousands, even, if that was what it took to defeat the thing that dared to stand in my path. But after the first dozen or so deaths, I’d been forced to stop testing. The king had gotten squeamish. He didn’t like ordering his soldiers to die against a wall that never changed, and he believed the Erenlian prisoners were better used in the mines, rather than dying “pointlessly.”

Fool. It was his fault that damned wall still stood around Erenelle, sealing away whatever remained inside and taunting me with its refusal to fall.

But until now, I’d never seen that magic around one of the giants themselves, andthat…

My fingertips pressed against one another harder.

That shouldn’t have been possible.

A sliver of light pierced the darkened throne room. “Y-your Majesty?”

Harran peered around the doorway, his aging body silhouetted by the chandeliers burning in the hall. At the sight of my orcs standing on either side of the door, he audibly gulped, but propriety demanded he step farther inside now that he knew I was likely here. His watery eyes squinted in the darkness as he walked toward the throne, and his veiny hands wrungthemselves like he would strangle his own fingers from fear. “If… If I may, Your Majesty…?”

I contemplated draining him just to be rid of him, but I would only need to find someone else to fill his place. After all, I needed to keepsomeof the city’s inhabitants around to feed myself and my servants. I couldn’t be bothered to speak to the human cattle at any given moment, and my vampires and orcs couldn’t either—the former because they couldn’t go out in daylight to enforce my commands, and the latter because they could barely speak at all.

Thus the annoying steward lived another day.

“What?” I replied.

“Your subjects are restless once again. Yourallieshave… Well, they seem to beeatingthe dead. Several of the living they captured too. Your subjects wish to know if this will continue, and if not, when your allies might be leaving?”

The Voidborn hissed in my mind, wondering the latter as well.

Fools. All of them. Daring to question me…

But sitting here gained me nothing.

“Very well.” I rose to my feet. “I shall answer their concerns.”

Swiftly, I took up the sword from where it rested against the smaller throne at my side. This ridiculous nation had set that silver seat aside for the queen, just as the one opposite it was meant for the first-born heir of whatevermaleruler they had at the time. Had I followed their rules, I would have been expected to sit as regent to their precious Gwyneira, leaving the golden throne empty until the day she married some fool who would take her father’s place.

And that idiot child would have gone along with it. She was complacent. Dull. Pathologically trusting, to the point of never questioning any of the countless lies I fed her over the years. In truth, I doubted Gwyneira could even hold an original thoughtin her head, much less recognize one if someone presented it to her. She would have no sooner rebelled against giving up power to her husband as her people expected than she’d have grown wings and flown to the moon.

But then, all of Aneira was like that. Countless sheep merrily trotting along paths that saidthis was right, this was wrong. Not one would step beyond the lines some long-dead king had put in place for reasons no one living still knew.

Little did they know howvulnerablethat made them.

They’d spent years being taught to fear anything outside their precious lines. Anything that wasn’t like them or that didn’t fit into the world as they’d been taught to see it. But fear was a beautiful, vicious tool. Twisted just right, it could be aimed by the person who controlled that fear at any target they wished.

I should know. Years before, I’d manipulated their king into starting a war thatshouldhave delivered to me the magic of Erenelle. But now—oh,now—I would turn this nation into a wheel of blood and death that would roll over the world and bring itallunder my control.

I had no intention of leaving Aneira.

Not when everything I needed was here.

Harran stumbled out of my way as I strode from my throne room and down the hall toward the castle courtyard.

Dozens of orcs and harpies and other monstrous creatures were waiting outside.

The crowd of beasts parted, clearing my path to the gnarled and aging apple tree that stood inside a large circle of stone and dirt at the center of the courtyard. None of the Voidborn-possessed monsters had come near it, which was just as well. No matter how long other apple trees lived, this particular one was so old, I had never found someone who could tell me its true age. But these creatures would likely kill it.

In all honesty, given what I’d told the Voidborn about apples—along with the fact a few of the dark crimson winter fruits still clung to the tree’s branches—it was somewhat surprising the creatures hadn’t decided to try gnawing on it already.

The Voidborn had a tendency, I’d realized, to beincrediblyliteral.

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