Page 49 of Of Nine So Bold

Shivers cascaded over my skin at the memory. Bright and crystalline energy, shining like a star in the eternal night. To the others, she’d been lost, and even Casimir’s gifts from the angels couldn’t find her light.

But she called to me.

Shealwayscalled to me, even in the darkest night, even in the empty realms themselves—or as near to them as anyone could survive. She was there.

I would cross them all to save her.

Footsteps came from the camp, pulling my eyes open again. Biting back a groan, I pushed away from the carriage, trying to stay upright on legs that felt as weak as grass blades. But thankfully, the footsteps moved away a moment later, and in relief, I sagged back against the black lacquered wall again.

I knew I’d need to face the others sooner or later, if only to find something to eat. But more than food, my body craved something I could never, ever give it. Something that surpassed even the intensity of my power touching her body when I cast the spell to protect her from the sunlight.

Something I never should have known in the first place, andthatwas the entire problem.

She ran through the palace, laughing, as her pigtails bounced against her back and her pet marmoset squeaked with alarm. The little brown creature with its white tufted ears was a gift from a trading vessel that had landed to the south last month. A pet for the princess, they’d said. She had adored it from the first moment she cradled it in her arms.

Servants jumped out of the way as she ran, some of the higher-ranking ones calling admonishments to be careful, but she ignored them all. The walls rang and echoed strangely with her laughter, the twists and turns of the castle bending the sound in a way that seemed wrong, but she never noticed. Even when the stones shifted beneath her feet to keep her from falling, it never struck her as odd.

It never would.

But the marmoset would only be a part of her life for a few months before it would disappear one day, never to be seen again. Her stepmother would claim it ran away and that the princess had been irresponsible with its care, and though in her memory, the princess believed her, there was no way the words could have been true. She’d treasured that creature, same as she treasured her friendships that would inexplicably always come to sudden ends and the letters she’d write to those friends that would never be returned.

She had been so trusting, never knowing she was putting her faith in a creature who was systematically isolating her and who would only ever see her as a pawn and as prey.

Time passed and the memories changed. She grew older, turning from a small child into a young woman. Seated with her legs curled up beneath her skirts, she nestled in a padded leather chair in the back corner of a library so beautiful, it should have made the gods weep. A stack of dusty tomes on Aneiran history sat on the polished wooden table beside her, assignments from her tutors. Another enormous book was in her lap, held up as if she was reading it intently.

But a second, smaller book rested secretly on its pages. One made of thin paper and held together by little more than string, as if it was scarcely worth binding. One she’d just found tucked away in a back corner of the library, hidden like contraband, its original owner unknown.

And that book… was magic.

Not magic like witches and giants wielded. Not the kind that, at the time of this memory, she still feared. No, this was the magic of possibilities. Of windows opening in her mind, revealing a life she could scarcely imagine living. A life where pleasure mattered. Where love mattered. Where women were more than mere ornaments to adorn the arms of men, bearing them children and managing their homes as if that could only ever be the extent of their dreams.

This book was the beginning, and there would be others. “Silly” romance stories she would find secreted away in the far corners of dusty shelves. Together, they would open her eyes to dreams and desires and beautiful possibilities she had never imagined. They’d form the cracks in the walls of Aneiran propriety and culture that would one day lead a princess to challenge her entire nation, all to save the lives of giants she’d only ever been taught to fear.

Together, these books would change the world.

A breath rushed from me, and I swiped a hand across my face, dashing away the prickling in my eyes. Gods, did sheknow how magnificent she was? Had anyone told her? This breathtaking woman who sought out books the ways others sought light and food and air? Who’d studied everything her tutors gave her and more, yet never let that be the end of what she learned?

I’d never felt awe for thegodsthe way I felt awe for her.

Sheltered in a life where she had every reason to conform to how she’d been taught to think, she’d still chosen a different way. Despite her tutors’ best efforts, she’d held strong to her secret conviction that there was more to reading than merely memorizing facts or her forebears’ ways of thinking. She’d clung to the belief there was beauty and love and creativity and worlds upon worlds to discover.

All within the pages of books.

It was so like, and yet unlike, my own road. I’d adored books and learning, stories and myth, ever since I was a small child in the massive halls of the Order. But for me, being part of the world of books meant making certain choices.

Ones that were the opposite of hers.

A sharp breath entered my lungs as thunder rumbled on the horizon, promising a storm to come. I shouldn’t have been able to see those things. I almost wished I hadn’t.

Except… it hurt to think that. No, it wasn’t right that I knew this about her. But now that I did, it was all so… dammit, sobeautifulthat I never wanted to let it go.

And so shameful that it burned like a hot coal in my hand.

Because while following her passion for knowledge and reading had led her to change the world, for me it meant turning my back on the very things she’d discovered in those precious books.

Love. Passion. Everything my treluria and I should have been able to share.

“Byron?”

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