Page 226 of Of Nine So Bold

“Stepmother, whatever you’re thinking, please don’t?—”

“There are whole worlds out there.” She cocked her head at me with a strangely mechanical curiosity that never reached the cold deadness in her eyes. “Did you know that? Wholerealmswhispering to one another. Telling stories to one another. And I… I really thought I could be satisfied ruling it all from thisonelittle world?”

Oh no.

“I am agoddess. I am beyond them and will overthrow them all. And you…” She gave a tiny giggle, like it was all so simple. “Why, you will be reduced to ash. The dust of your entire existence will be lost in the void, and if the other realms ever imagine you existed at all, it’ll be as barely more than the memory of a dream.” Her laughter turned cruel, a hint of the woman I knew coming back into her blue eyes. “Nothing left of Gwyneira and her men except a foolish… little…fairytale.”

She snapped her fingers. The ground shook as the tiny fissures of nothingness raced from the courtyard and the castle to converge behind her. The slivers of emptiness swirled together, spiraling in the air at her back until they merged into one inky black portal into oblivion.

“Gwyneira!” Dex ran toward me, the others on his heels and Casimir flying ahead of him.

All around the courtyard, Voidborn surged out of the monsters they’d inhabited. In a flood of black smoke, they dove into the portal.

“What the fuck?” Clay shouted.

“Justrun, dammit!” Lars snapped back.

A rumble came from the castle, and suddenly, vines and tendrils of rot surged across the courtyard.

“Ohhell.” Clay waved his arms, frantically urging the others on as they veered around the darkness and strained to reach my side. “Go, go, go!”

But the fungus-like ropes didn’t care about them. Climbing over each other, the vines piled higher behind my stepmother’s back until they could pass over the edge of the portal to the void.

The moment they touched that darkness, the earth itself groaned. Everywhere the vines rested began to crumble like sand.

Behind my stepmother, the void swelled larger. It wrapped around her like a black cloak and flowed over her like she was sinking into an inky pool.

And just before it embraced her completely, Melisandre’s lips curled into a vicious smile. “This, my pathetic little stepdaughter, is how your story ends.”

She flung her arms wide. Nothingness erupted around her in a wave.

There was no escape.

58

MELISANDRE

Every fragment of my essence sang with power. Every tiny piece that made me who I was finally, finally understood.

I was born to be a goddess.

And my victory was only beginning.

“It was a wretched little realm anyway, pet.”

Alaric walked beside me across the nothingness, admiring the ink-black vines growing from beyond the borders of the world I’d once bothered to call mine. At my back, they clawed past the edges of the portal I’d made. The castle still stood beyond it, though that wouldn’t last. With every passing moment, my power drained the energy out of that world, fueling the growth of my majesty across the void.

Thousands of tendrils of my power coursed out across the nothingness now. Millions, even. Each one would seek any crack, any weakness or flaw in the veils that surrounded the patheticrealityof the realms. Relentless and unstoppable, they would break open those barriers and pour into the worlds that glowed like a disgusting rainbow of stars against the beautiful, pure black night of oblivion.

And then the true fun would begin.

“It was,” I agreed.

Alaric smirked at me. “Did you really think yourhatredwould destroy me down in that tunnel weeks ago?”

“I won, didn’t I?”

“By making me more a part of you than I ever would have been otherwise. Bybecomingme to the point you sacrificed your entire realm and set yourself on a path to destroy countless more, on a scale evenwehave never yet achieved.” He chuckled. “Rather makes one wonder which of us truly won in the end, don’t you think?”

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