44. Melisandre

44

MELISANDRE

E very 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. Saw it all.

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

My teeth clenched. “Silence.”

He chuckled. “True, it’s not quite. 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 than mostly a queen.”

I shoved to my feet, stalking away from the broken throne. Slivers of nothingness wafted away as I moved, scattering in the air 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 like Erenelle still resists you.”

“Erenelle is nothing ,” I growled.

“Exactly, pet. It is nothing. 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 even real , 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? Of my mind. Which meant my mind was the one taunting me. Goading me. My mind was doing all of this.

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

“Those bastards,” I whispered. “They… they want me to doubt myself. To resist what I want 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 of me , 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 barrier had changed. Parted, at least briefly, only to close again.

Someone had passed through the Wall of Erenelle.

How had I missed that?

“It occurs to me,” Alaric commented idly. “That your stepdaughter is still missing.” In the blade, he regarded me pointedly. “Or is she?”

No.

A shriek of rage tore from me. “That is not possi?—”

“Anything is possible, pet. Or have you already forgotten all the realms I showed you? Trust me when I say all the permutations of reality and possibility exceed even your wildest dreams.”

“Gwyneira could not?—”

“Maybe it’s not her. Maybe it’s someone else. But the point remains the wall has been breached, and not by you.” He shook his head with such theatrical sadness, I wanted to murder him again. “Powerful queen you may be, but someone out there is obviously more powerful than even you fancy yourself to be.”

I made a furious noise. “It’s not enough to taunt me, now you have to rhyme as well?”

He chuckled. “Why not? If you’re going to fail, I might as well find another way to entertain myself.”

“I am not failing!” I flung the blade away. It hit the wall hard enough to send chips of stone flying before the metal clattered to the marble floor.

My entire body shook. How dare this bastard—this damn creation of my own mind —speak to me like I wasn’t queen of this whole realm?

“ Almost the whole realm.” Alaric’s tiny voice came from the blade by the base of the wall.

I spun away, striding toward my throne again. That was a better place from which to think anyway.

Proudly, I took my seat once more.

I was queen. Of Aneira and Gentresqua and the entire damn world.

There was no one more powerful than me.

“Then why do you hold yourself back?”

I raised my hand to knock aside the silver throne to my right, only to pause. The brushed metal held a strange shadow, like more than his face was present in the dull reflective surface.

Like a shadow of his body was there as well, seated idly beside me.

I shuddered, lowering my hand. I was striking at shadows when I’d already confirmed it was my own mind speaking, not the ghost of a dead bastard I’d defeated.

But he— I —had a point. “How am I holding myself back?”

He chuckled, the shadow moving like he’d shifted position on the throne to converse with me. “By not taking full advantage of what you’ve already made. Think about it, pet. You have all my power. You’ve created these beautifully toxic apple trees throughout the land. And if you simply let those trees of yours dig deeper and spread farther , you could do more than twist the ley lines. You could shred that wall, conquer what remains of this world, and reach out into all the other worlds beyond this one as well. You could conquer so much more than one silly little realm.”

I eyed the strange shadow. “That would tear this world apart.”

He scoffed. “And you’re meant for more than this anyway. You always have been. You don’t need to limit yourself to only this petty world. Not when you could rule over so many more.” The shadow leaned closer. “You could be an empress. A goddess. The goddess, above which none can stand. Surely that’s better than restraining yourself to being a mere queen. ”

I was silent, my eyes narrowing with suspicion at his pretty words. But was that all they were? Mere flattery designed to manipulate me?

Or was my mind speaking truth to me instead?

“I can do both,” I said. “I will . I can destroy the wall and take those realms, but still rule as a goddess from this one as well.”

A trick of the light made it seem as if his metallic teeth glinted in the air, grinning.

“Prove it, pet.”