58. Melisandre

58

MELISANDRE

E very 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 pathetic reality of 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 your hatred would 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. By becoming me to the point you sacrificed your entire realm and set yourself on a path to destroy countless more, on a scale even we have never yet achieved.” He chuckled. “Rather makes one wonder which of us truly won in the end, don’t you think?”

I scoffed with disgust. “ I did.”

He made a thoughtful sound. “We’ll see.”

Temper flaring, I turned to him. “I grew beyond my world, Alaric. That’s the truth of it. And your ridiculous nitpicking won’t change the fact I crushed you into nothing when I?—”

Light flickered at the corner of my eye.

“I think you’ll find, pet, that you haven’t won quite yet. Look.”

My gaze followed to where he pointed.

In the distance, an eight-pointed star glimmered. A light as bright and clear as a diamond shone at its heart.

“She’s still fighting you,” Alaric commented. “The Nine all are.”

“ How ?” The word tore from me like a growled curse. “The void took her. She couldn’t survive that. None of them could.”

“And yet.” He gestured like the truth was self-explanatory.

Fury stole my words.

Alaric only chuckled. “Vampires are our creation, pet. Brought back to some semblance of life and thus made into vessels for us, same as the orcs or harpies or shifters whose species had once died out only to have us resurrect them. Enough of our power exists within them to let them last a fraction longer in the emptiness than most—a fact I once used to my advantage when you were thrown into the void, if you recall. Besides, there are worlds within worlds, and the Nine are one unto themselves. Over and over, they acted to create the reality they thought should be, until they bent their very world around them. It happens like that sometimes in these petty little realms. Someone rises up so high, they start to embody the energy of the realm itself. But… ” He smiled. “That doesn’t mean they can’t be broken—and through them, break everything.”

“But I already did that,” I snarled.

“Almost. Would you like to see how it truly ends?”

He started forward. Seething, I trailed him.

Gwyneira’s little star began to take on definition, revealing the glowing forms of her little band of irritants standing on a ghostly remnant of the world I’d destroyed. At their back, a hint of dull light shone, like a memory of the portal I’d opened. Vines of my power still extended from it, growing out into the darkness.

But all around the pathetic Nine, fragments of light drifted like she and her men were on the edge of disintegrating into dust and snow.

Alaric smiled to see it. “Remember what I once told you, pet. The Nine aren’t this world’s salvation.” His soulless eyes met mine, and his metallic teeth glinted in the dying light. “They are its downfall.”