Page 172 of Of Nine So Bold

But dammit, I couldn’t handle much more of this, and from the looks on the faces of all my friends, I wasn’t alone.

I just hoped the gods would give us time.

44

MELISANDRE

Every nation was mine.

Except one.

Seated on my throne with shadows hanging thick all around, I listened to the distant lullaby of screams and whimpers, whispers and shouts elicited by my pawns throughout the world. They occupied every neighboring nation now. Every province. They’d even stolen into the Wild Lands, seeking any stragglers mad enough to flee in that direction. My apple trees were there too, following the contortions of ley lines beneath that cursed territory, draining its volatile magic into me.

I felt it all.Sawit all.

“It is practically like being one of the gods, is it not, my pet?”

My teeth clenched. “Silence.”

He chuckled. “True, it’s notquite.The gods wouldn’t be thwarted by a silly little thing like the Wall of Erenelle.”

Beneath my hand, the golden arm of the throne cracked.

“Oh well,” he sighed. “Perhaps you weren’t meant to be anything more thanmostlya queen.”

I shoved to my feet, stalking away from the broken throne. Slivers of nothingness wafted away as I moved, scattering in theair and drifting up through the windows and out into the city to spread throughout the land.

“After all,” Alaric mused, his voice following me as if he paced right at my side. “You can’t precisely say you rule the world when somewhere likeErenellestill resists you.”

“Erenelle isnothing,” I growled.

“Exactly, pet. Itisnothing. A fallen nation of ghosts and burned cities. So why haven’t you been able to overthrow it?”

I snarled, inarticulate with rage. I was sick of his goading. Of his taunts and jibes. He wasn’t evenreal, just a trick played by the Voidborn to twist my mind.

My footsteps came to a stop.

He… he was just a trick of the mind, wasn’t he? Ofmymind. Which meant my mind was the one taunting me. Goading me. My mind was doing all of this.

So wasn’t itmoremad to argue with it? With… myself?

“Those bastards,” I whispered. “They… they want me to doubt myself. To resist whatIwant myself to do.”

It was so obvious. So clear that I couldn’t believe they’d succeeded in deceiving me about it for so long.

I looked down, flinching a bit to find the grotesque sword Alaric had once claimed now gripped in my hand. In the blade, my own face stared back at me, damn near dumbstruck by the obviousness of the truth. “I am the queen of this world.Me.Every ruler is dead or hiding or mine now. I’ve bent every one of their nations to my rule.”

The image blurred strangely, and now Alaric’s face stared back at me. But since he was my own mind taunting me, I wasn’t sure that mattered either way.

“All but one, pet. Or can you not feel the change in the air? The shift in the wall that says not all is as it seems anymore?”

What the hell was he babbling about?

I scowled. If Alaric was simply a representation ofme, then I already knew what he spoke of. I had only to concentrate and the answer would become…

My breath caught. It was true. Far to the south of my trees, I could feel how the energy of that damned barrierhadchanged. Parted, at least briefly, only to close again.

Someone had passed through the Wall of Erenelle.

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