Page 2 of Of Nine So Bold

I tightened my magical grip, making his body spasm. “Icontrol reality.”

“Yourreality…” A choked howl left the shifter’s mouth as the Voidborn attempted to flee and couldn’t. “You…usedAlaric. Made his knowledge… his power… part of you.”

“Imagine what I could do to you, then.”

The man’s head shook. He was merely a puppet of the Voidborn within, and when that creature bared its teeth at me, the shifter did too. “We are… anti-life. We are… beyond mere death. You made amistake… consuming him.”

With an irritated sound, I snapped my fingers. The Voidborn’s scream joined the shifter’s as the man’s limbs suddenly contorted beyond the limits of his joints and his organs collapsed.

The body dropped like a sack of bloodied meat to the floor. Fragmented wisps of the Voidborn’s smoke drifted from the corpse, but still the dying creature made the dead man’s lips move. “Madness… comes… for you.”

The last of the smoke faded.

“Anyone else wish to accuse your queen of impending insanity?” I asked the remaining Voidborn.

The creatures were silent.

“I thought not.”

A tentative knock came at the door to my chambers.

“Highness?” Harran’s nervous voice carried past the spells covering the thick wood. The gray-haired palace steward still lived—and remained human—if only to deal with the irritating populace who’d survived the arrival of the Voidborn in Lumilia.

I’d kill him eventually. But the man was useful in a way, and such a coward that, for now, it was rather entertaining to watch this defender of Aneiran propriety flounder as I tore his understanding of order and decency apart.

“The, um…” Harran’s feet shuffled on the tile. “Your people wish to know if it’s safe to, uh… to venture outside now that your… yourguestsseem to have stopped their, um… their…”

I restrained an amused scoff, watching him flail about in the search for a word besidesattack. “Only if they wish to be eaten. Now, has any word come from my Huntsmen?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

My mouth tightened as I turned back to the window. I’d sent my Huntsmen out mere moments after I defeated Alaric, though of course I hadn’t let them go alone. Voidborn hid within several of the soldiers in their company.

The creatures were being recalcitrant. They gave me only what information I demanded, nothing more.

I’d learned they’d had some success with their mission. They’d captured one of Gwyneira’s Erenlian allies. A young man who could have been mistaken for a human, if one were a fool. But thanks to the soldiers’ incompetence and the cowardice of the Voidborn, my irritating stepdaughter remained at large with several other giants and the descendent of an angel in tow.

A hiss-click sound left an orc beside the door. “The Nine chase the boy. The girl leads them.”

And then there wasthatnonsense.

With effort, I pushed my irritation down, though my hand still tightened around the hilt of the sword that lay on the windowsill. It was an ugly weapon, with a grotesque face on its hilt and too much bulk to be fitting of a queen.

But it was also the sword Alaric claimed as a souvenir when he’d marched me like a puppet across this land. Thus it was a lovely reminder to the Voidborn that it was bymyhand he’d died.

I gave the orc a contemptuous glance. “The Nine are a ridiculous fairytale, and my pathetic stepdaughter couldn’t lead agoose, let alone anything to threaten us. If my Huntsmen don’t find her, my trap will snare her, or she’ll die when my plans come to fruition. She has no way out, and thus she and her allies are irrelevant. I will prove that to you.”

Harran cast a confused look at me and the orcs alike. I ignored him.

The orc’s glowing eyes narrowed. “How?”

They would learn not to question me soon.

Reaching for a glass bowl at the center of a nearby table, I lifted out an apple with crimson, unblemished skin. For every single day of the past nineteen years that I’d pretended to be the loving wife of the king and stepmother to Gwyneira, a servant had placed these fruits upon a table in my chambers. They were the symbol of the queen of Aneira, after all. A symbol that went back generations until no one could remember why it had even become such a thing in the first place.

And that, in its way, was the entire point.

“Do you know why the witches believe apples are at the heart of so many stories?” I asked mildly.

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