Page 27 of Of Nine So Bold

Ignoring the way their glowing eyes tracked me, I walked up to the tree. Beneath my feet, I swore the roots shivered, while the leaves quivered in fear when I rested my fingertips on the mottled flesh of a single apple within my reach.

I smiled. Like the damned castle, this tree was right to fear me. Everything should. Between my magic and the power I’d taken in when I killed Alaric?—

A shiver crawled over my skin between my shoulder blades.

Alarmed, I spun, scanning the crowd.

The orcs and harpies and all manner of creatures remained as they had been, their glowing eyes trained on me and the tree alike. Harran was long gone, off to attend to some insufferably domestic task or other.

What had that been? Some traitor lurking in my midst? Any of these creatures would happily kill me given the chance. But that was hardly a threat.

I’d destroyed Alaric. I’d destroy them too.

A chill crept over my skin again, like cold and inhuman fingers tracing down my spine. The slow and steady rhythm of my heart began to speed up.

No. No, that bastard wasgone.What I’d done to him was more than death. It wasannihilation.

My muscles twitched, as if a bug had landed on my arm and instinct made me flinch to dislodge it. Whirling back to face the tree, I glanced down surreptitiously, but my body was of course the same. No insect was upon me. Nothing in this world woulddaretouch me.

On the sword in my grip, the gruesome face carved into the hilt writhed.

A short breath of alarm stuttered into my lungs.

I stilled the reaction quickly, not moving. Between one eye blink and the next, the face was still again, as if it had never moved at all.

I ground my teeth. Obviously, this was a trick of the light. Admittedly, there wasn’t much, given that it was night and the moon and stars were shrouded by clouds. But torches still burned by the gate and in the castle. Any one of them could have made the face appear to move in the darkness.

Enough of this foolishness.

Resolutely, I returned my attention to the apple tree. Passing beneath its branches, I lifted my free hand and rested my fingertips on the cold, rough bark of the trunk.

Even though anyothertree should have been forced by its nature to remain motionless, I sworethistree still tried to recoil from my touch.

I smiled and sent my power rushing into it, down through it, racing along the corridors and avenues of its being into its roots.

Riding the flow of its energy into the earth.

My smile grew. I’d been right.

This gnarled old tree was so much more than merely a tree. Its roots stretched deep into the earth. Its apples grew even in the depths of winter. And that was because over these many years of growing directly above a powerful nexus,storyhad been at work, twisting and changing the tree’s nature, both with the power of apples and through its identity as the symbol of the Aneiran queen.

But Alaric hadn’t foreseen this. He’d thought the best way to control the nexus—to control everything—was to go deep into the earth. To descend through the castle and draw as close to the nexusphysicallyas possible in order to strike.

Such linear, literal strategists, all of them.

Thiswas true power.

I closed my eyes, letting my consciousness descend with my magic into the earth. In my mind, the glow of the nexus appeared, a swirling mass of bright light and deep shadow that grew larger the closer I came. Broken ley lines were scattered around it, irrelevant. They bled their light out into the earth like torn veins, their connection to the nexus severed when Alaric had attacked. Those that remained were striated with my darkness.

And that darkness writhed as if recognizing me.

Carefully, delicately, I began to weave my spell, sending my will into the shadow and infusing it with the power of story and belief. Pulses of dark energy surged out from the nexus, pumping like blood from a poisoned heart into the remaining ley lines that traced their sinuous paths out from Lumilia and into the rest of the land.

In the distance, I felt the mountains tremble. Felt the trees and rivers shiver with fear.

And I laughed.

The Voidborn saw only straight lines to their targets. I saw a web that gave a thousand routes to victory. A forest that would carpet the world in my might, crushing my enemies no matter where they might hide.

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