11. Melisandre

11

MELISANDRE

V eins of magic flowed up through the nexus and into the royal tree, feeding pure unadulterated power into me. Though I stood where I’d been, my hand on its trunk at the heart of the castle courtyard, my mind was not so limited by mere physicality.

I could feel everything. See everything. Throughout Aneira, smaller nexuses fell to my will one after the other while my trees, my apples, tracked the ley lines coursing through the ground, twisting and warping the landscape, the people, the world.

In Aneira…

In Cioloren…

In Gentresqua…

National borders meant nothing. Neither did their silly magical defenses. None could stand against me.

Except one.

My teeth ground as the shimmering force of Erenelle’s border wall resisted my onslaught. Even now, that infuriating country wouldn’t break. Every spell I’d turned against it all these years said that no one was even still alive within its borders, the entire nation reduced to a wasteland populated only by ghosts.

Their wall sheltered nothing . Yet still it wouldn’t fall.

Seething, I pressed my hand harder to the trunk of the apple tree and turned my attention away from that dead nation. When the entire world bent to my will, I would deal with Erenelle. Or perhaps I would leave it as a graveyard, a testimony to the fact the only outcome of resisting me would be subjugation or death.

And until that day…

I smiled as, one by one, humans anywhere near the ley lines succumbed to my spell, becoming my pawns. My subjects in the truest sense. For years, they’d bent their knee to me or others in fealty. In respect, feigned or real. But whether that honor had once been truth or lie no longer mattered.

Now their entire beings would bend, and I would be the only one they served. All because they took one little bite of an?—

I paused as a tiny speck of light glinted in the dark night of my power.

Gwyneira was here.

Amusement rippled through my expansive awareness. Like a snow-white gnat flying at the edge of my vision, her presence flitted about, as lost and helpless as a feather in a storm.

The child could no more control magic than she could learn to breathe underwater. So some fragment of the magic in Lumilia’s ley lines must have drawn her here, pulling her hapless awareness away from her body and out into the maelstrom of my power.

It would be her destruction.

“The so-called Nine ,” I scoffed. “And how easy it is to simply snuff you out.”

My magic drew down upon her location. Already, some of the humans with her had made themselves my subjects. It was nothing to shove the melting remnants of one of their feeble minds out of the way of my will, erasing all that was left of the commoner called Jakob and replacing that with me.

Sight, blurry and wild, became clear to me, revealing the scene. My trees. My apples. Humans, giants, and a vampire were surrounded by them all. Some strange slip of smoke darted around as if it was alive and possessed its own mind.

But up above the head of my pawn…

Disgust filled me. That child was so helpless, she was being carried . But the creature holding her was… odd.

Wait. Was that a demon ? How had she come across that ?

I chuckled to myself. Several decades ago, there’d been rumor one might have slipped into this world, but the stories had never been substantiated and the Jeweled Coven eventually dismissed it all as the fantasy of villagers who’d had one too many drinks. Prior to that, demonkind hadn’t been seen in centuries. Not outside of fading illustrations on crumbling manuscripts.

But, oh, to make that creature my subject…

I focused more power upon the lulling song of my spell. The monster’s face twisted with resistance, but the struggle was fruitless. I could already see I was winning. Demon or not, he would bend to my will.

And as for the pathetic girl in his arms…

My subject’s lips curled when mine did. “I see you, Gwyneira,” I said.

At my command, the man leapt.

The demon’s wings beat harder as he fought to rise in the air. My pawn grabbed the creature’s ankle and began dragging him back to earth anyway.

Anticipation shivered through me. I could feel this demon’s power. It was like staring into the heart of a volcano.

Forget bending him to my will. I would consume this power. Drain it. Make it part of my essence the way I’d done with?—

Me.

I flinched. What the?—

Rage twisted the demon’s face. With more force than he should still have been capable of summoning, he kicked my subject’s grip away.

“Mine,” the vicious beast snarled.

Cursing to myself, I refocused on claiming my victory. The demon could actually talk, and he dared use his words to resist me.

When I killed Gwyneira, perhaps I would make him watch.

“Dead,” I promised him.

I smiled as I made my pawn speak my spell out into the air. Meanwhile, I could feel the Voidborn still hiding out inside one of the other humans. That insidious spy of mine was biding its time, pretending quite convincingly to be horrified by what was occurring.

Once my magic was done destroying this pathetic excuse for the supposed Nine , the Voidborn would make sure any of the humans left were bent to my will.

What an overblown fairytale this prophecy had been.

“No…” Gwyneira’s little presence in the infinite dark whispered the plea at the same time as her dying body did. Crystalline glints of light drifted around her, like specks of dust glittering in moonlight.

Her presence melted away, lost to the darkness completely.

Contempt filled me. That was it, then. She’d thought to challenge me, and in the end, she was no more permanent than a snowflake on the breeze.

What a pathetic little?—

Pet.

I tensed at the sibilant whisper. That… that wasn’t possible.

My awareness jolted as the connection to my pawn disappeared in a splash of blood and pain. But my link to the others held, and through the eyes of my other subjects, I saw my pawn’s head fly while his body tumbled from the branches, the two parts ripped asunder by the demon’s claws.

The rough whisper of a chuckle rasped like grit-filled smoke across my skin.

No. Alaric was gone. Dead. I’d consumed his power and?—

Taken it.

Bound it.

Used it.

Made it you.

No!

Outrage flooded me—because I would be damned if I allowed space inside myself for fear. Hatred was my power. My strength. The thing others feared and scorned. The thing that I embraced.

My hatred had burned that bastard once. It would stop whatever game Gwyneira’s allies were playing to make me think I heard him now.

Like poisonous water, my fury rushed out into my subjects. In only a heartbeat, they leapt at anyone around them who had yet to bend to my will. More and more, my power spread through the humans, while Gwyneira’s allies shouted and fought and scrambled to stay alive.

But I would destroy them. They dared to stand against me, to try to manipulate me, and for that I would?—

Fire slammed down upon my forest.

I stumbled backward from the apple tree in the castle courtyard, my awareness reeling between Lumilia and the forest where Gwyneira’s allies should have died. This was more than ordinary flame.

It was the nature of fire itself, and it wanted to devour me.

I screamed.

My connection to my subjects near Gwyneira fragmented like a broken mirror, showing pieces of the scene but nothing whole. Still, my pawns served me, trying to tear down her allies, fighting to reach her and destroy that girl who didn’t deserve anyone’s loyalty.

But the fire was everywhere.

The connection to my subjects in the forest vanished as the fire consumed them completely. My power withdrew from the trees as the trunks and branches and roots all died, leaving only ashes in the fissures I’d torn through the soil. Throughout the land, the rest of my subjects paused, their eyes turning in the direction of that distant, dying forest as if they too were appalled by what Gwyneira’s monstrous allies had done.

Shivers racked me while the pain of the forest’s burning faded away.

A hiss-click came from one of the Voidborn. A question of what had just happened.

Without looking at him, I flung my hand out. Bones snapped. Organs squished. The slip of shadow tried to flee, only to evaporate as I pinned him in the light of the rising sun.

Silence followed the thud of the dead body hitting the ground.

A shudder rolled through me. “Harran.”

The silence remained.

“Harran!”

Another several seconds ticked past, and then hurried footsteps rushed across the cobblestone courtyard. “Yes, Your Majesty?”

“Where were you?”

“C-cleaning the library. It’s really rather dusty since most of the staff no longer?—”

“Quiet. Find me a mirror.”

“A mirror?”

My head twitched toward him in irritation, though my eyes didn’t leave the west.

“Yes, Majesty. Right away.” His footsteps fled the courtyard.

My jaw clenched and my fangs bared. Behind me, no Voidborn made a single sound. No human nor creature did either.

And there wasn’t a damned trace of Alaric’s voice to be heard.

Because of course there wasn’t.

I straightened in the light of the rising sun, its radiance unable to burn me as it danced across the gold and silver glints in my skin. I’d defeated that eel-faced bastard. I’d consumed the blood of Gwyneira’s angel and defeated the light of the sun as well.

And when this was done, I would stand upon the grave that held all her men.

“If you survive the dark, Gwyneira,” I whispered, “know this. Demons die. And so will you.”