59. Gwyneira

59

GWYNEIRA

A t the heart of oblivion, we were nearly gone. A ghostly scrap of dirt remained beneath our feet, as ephemeral as a dream. A shadow of the portal was at our backs, like a painting so sapped by time, the details had disappeared. Vines choked it, blocking our path and pulsing like they were draining the lifeblood of our realm. Our protection given by the Wall of Erenelle was eroding like glittering sand beneath a brutal wind.

And beyond us was only endless night.

“Stay together,” Dex said, scanning the darkness.

Lars nodded. “We’ll find a way out of this.”

His optimism was welcome—but I had no idea how to do that. Our bonds were holding for the moment, but the darkness before us had a weight, and it was intent upon crushing us like glass.

And we weren’t alone.

My breath caught at the realization. My senses wanted to rebel against this void. Everything in me wanted to run screaming from the dark. But horror riveted me here, watching the emptiness with the sudden knowledge something slithered in the void. Some great and hungry thing that knew exactly where we were.

And it was coming closer.

It was watching us as it writhed toward our position like an enormous snake twisting through the night, hissing mad words that chased themselves round and around without end.

Corruption is power is poison is victory is hunger is…

I strained for the distant traces of my connection to the nexus, desperate to pull us back into our world. But the vines had nearly drained it all, and void didn’t want to let us go.

“Anyone got a great plan for getting us out of here?” Clay prompted.

“Draw on our power, princess,” Dex said. “Use it to reach the nexus and bring us back.”

“I’m trying. I can’t seem to…” I trailed off, my eyes still riveted on darkness, seeking the thing coming our way.

“I suspect the issue is a bit more complicated,” Casimir said.

Hunching around the wounds on his chest, the demon made a wary sound. “Why is that, vampire?”

“Because,” Byron filled in, “with what the queen has done, I’m not sure anything remains to go back to.”

A growl left Ozias, displeasure in the sound.

“But—” Niko made a desperate noise.

My head shook. “I can feel it. Just… just a bit. But?—”

This isn’t the way, a gentle and loving voice whispered so softly, it was as if the speaker was right beside my ear.

The glittering light of our failing protections suddenly swept around us like snowflakes in the night. It washed away the void, taking the slithering beast and any fear too.

Suddenly, we were somewhere else entirely.

Old and familiar stones vibrated gently beneath my feet as if welcoming me. Each of my men still surrounded me. Together, we stood atop a high parapet, a crenelated wall of dark granite lining its edges. Sparks of silver glittered within the rocky surface like it held a million flecks of light. Moss grew in the spaces between each stone—and for a moment, the sight filled me with fear.

But this wasn’t my stepmother’s rot or decay. The little green curls glinted like they were made of emerald crystal, shimmering with life.

“What happened?” Niko whispered, his dark eyes wide.

I shook my head, speechless.

Clay glanced back and forth like he was checking something. “Are… are we dead ?”

“This is an unexpected afterlife, if so,” Byron replied skeptically.

My mouth moved, searching for words. “It’s my home.”

The others went silent.

I stepped forward, staring beyond us, overcome with awe. The sky danced with colors and light, like the brilliant glows I’d sometimes see in the northern sky, but without end. Amid it all, a sea of stars shone like diamonds, each of them brushed with shifting colors by the lights and glittering with endless majesty.

Yet the castle wasn’t diminished by the infinite beauty above. Age radiated from everything around me, like the moss knew of a time before time began and the stones remembered when they were mountains. What they were now was only a flickering moment in the journey of all they’d been—and all they’d someday be.

The heart of a mountain. The wall protecting us and keeping us from falling.

The dust at the center of a newborn star.

Endless. Infinite. Never beginning or ending. Simply… being.

“Welcome, my precious ones.”

I turned. A woman stood beyond us, a dress of stars drifting around her. Misty light rose from her long black hair and drifted in wisps into the brilliant night sky. Her red lips curled when she smiled, and her eyes were so knowing and calm, they instantly eased something inside me that had never known it had been in pain.

I’d only seen her in paintings. None had done her justice.

“Mother?” I whispered.

“Hello, daughter.” Eira extended her arms.

I was moving before I finished registering the impulse.

Her arms enfolded me like a warm blanket made of the softest down imaginable. I squeezed my eyes shut, tears prickling.

“You’re too close to the edge, my darling child.”

I sniffled, pulling back but not letting her go. “Where are we?”

“At the cusp of everything.”

I hesitated, confused.

“ Are we dead, then?” Casimir asked carefully.

My mother shook her head. “Not yet. Perhaps not at all. But you are at the farthest reaches of life, the edge before death’s fall.” Her eyes returned to mine. “The place where things are at their most true.”

She brushed my hair back from my cheek. “I am so proud of you, my beautiful girl.” She smiled at the others. ”Of all of you. The brave seven I sent to my daughter. The strong eighth you found and who found you. Each of you are all I could have wished for my daughter and more.”

My giants smiled awkwardly, seeming flattered, while Casimir appeared touched and grateful. The demon fidgeted as if he didn’t know where to look, and at the sight, my mother’s smile became lovingly amused. “Even you, son of Jessora. I sent you too.”

The demon blinked, stunned.

A distant rumble carried through the night, making my breath catch with alarm.

My mother only sighed. “Melisandre has played a game so much more dangerous than she knows.” Eira gave a small, sad chuckle. “But that is her way. She was broken long before I knew her, and though that breaking wasn’t her fault, her choices are still hers alone. Sometimes, people take poison in an effort to cure their pain, but it only destroys whatever good was left inside beyond the breaking. In the end, they burn down everything because, after destroying themselves, destruction has become familiar. Welcome. It is all they know.”

“Is…” I faltered, but the question pressed at me. “Is that why she is so determined to kill me?”

Eira shook her head. “She never saw you , precious one. And that isn’t your fault. A diamond does not cease to be a diamond simply because someone cannot recognize its value.” She took my hand. “Others do not exist as people to her, only as playthings and objects on a game board, because that’s what she believes the world to be. Yet because you are real and not a toy—and because you survived when she wanted her toy to die—she behaves like a child throwing a tantrum, obsessed with destroying you simply because you didn’t do as she wished.”

She rested her palm on my cheek. “I know that doesn’t make it hurt less, but your pain is real . Nothing about Melisandre is, on so many levels now.” Eira’s mouth tightened. “But that doesn’t mean the damage she causes does not exist.”

The stars overhead changed. Their radiance spread until they weren’t lonely glimmers in the infinite dark, but pinpoints of brightness amid a fabric of light.

“Everything that exists has a reason,” my mother said. “Every story has a place where it was true. There are realms upon realms of reality. They always surround us, and all of them whisper to one another. Tell each other their stories. Their dreams. This is what Melisandre threatens, and what she will destroy if you don’t stop her now.”

Sound carried from the fabric of light, a distant lullaby of chimes and whispers, like the rushing of a sea deeper and more infinite than I could fathom. Images played out in the glowing radiance as if they had always been there, right there . They’d simply been beyond my ability to perceive them.

Worlds of fire. Of deep forests and brilliant sunlight. Of endless oceans, and of impossibly tall steel-and-glass towers that stretched into a brilliant blue sky. In each one, people lived and loved, fought and died, some of them looking like humans and some looking like nothing I’d ever dreamed.

But the tendrils of rot were coming for them all, creeping across the void. Already, they’d found the first little cracks along the barriers that separated one reality from another. With every little breach they found, the rot dug at it relentlessly, widening the gaps, breaking apart the boundaries, forcing their way into those realms.

So they could feed.

“How do we stop her?” I asked.

“You see what is true.” My mother’s smile turned sad. “And you shatter the sky.”

I stared, horrified. “What? That… what does that mean ? We can’t?—”

The growling returned, closer now, rumbling out from the darkness. Overhead, the glistening lights of the realms quivered as the rot climbed across them, making the barriers between them start to crumble.

“Go now, my precious ones. The lie Melisandre tells herself is still hunting you.” She took my hands. “She is not what she seems, and she never has been. Down at her core, she is the flaw in all of their plans. The power she clings to is not hers, and it was taken from the very thing she cannot be.” Her gaze swept us all. “Everything you were and everything you are has brought you to this moment. Your bonds reflect those that hold together your world. Trust what you have become.”

All around us, the castle and the radiant light of the realms began to fall away like stardust, taking Eira with it.

“Mother!” I cried.

“I love you, my daughter. I always have.”

She faded like a dream.

And we stood once more at the edge of a nightmare.

The endless void surrounded the nine of us, with only a shadow of colorless dirt beneath our feet and the sliver of a portal at our backs. The vines still choked it and crawled out in every direction all across the emptiness, just as they had when we saw them from the parapet moments ago. Ghostly traces of the colors that had filled the sky moments before still drifted in the far distance, the glimmer of other realms inside them. But now the vines had reached them.

And already, the distant lights of other realms were starting to falter.

“We have to stop this,” Niko said.

Dex scanned it all, shaking his head. “I’m open to suggestions.”

A low, contemptuous chuckle came from the darkness. “Your world, your life is almost gone, Gwyneira. Why do you still bother to fight?”

I tensed. The hissing, clicking voice seemed made of thousands of smaller voices, all of them so twisted by hate and ravenous hunger that the sound of them made my skin crawl.

The Voidborn.

And my stepmother.

Out of the depths of the void, a monster slithered like a ghostly eel larger than the tallest of buildings and longer than my eyes could see. Scales darker than a moonless night wafted in and out of view like they were not quite fully present, while their edges glinted with silver like blades ready to slice. Smaller shadows with glowing eyes darted around its shifting surface, diving in and out of it like crazed wisps of smoke.

Voidborn. So many, they surpassed any hope of counting them all.

“The Nine,” the creature sneered as it wound around us. “ Saviors of the realm.”

The Voidborn flitting around its massive sides cackled.

“That, uh… that fucking thing is the queen, isn’t it?” Clay asked softly.

Lars nodded, his eyes on the creature. “Think so.”

“Dear gods ,” Niko whispered.

The creature slithered around the fading scrap of land on which we stood. “What fools you are.” Twisting sinuously, it veered wide of the dying glow of our world. “You saved nothing.”

“Much as I’m loving this encouragement,” Clay commented. “Anyone got any ideas?”

I didn’t respond, staring at the enormous monster winding around us. It seemed to have no end, and it circled us as if to surround us on every side—left, right, above or below. Yet for every time it coiled closer, it would then veer away.

“We pour our power into the gap to our world,” Dex said. “Fuel it enough to return and figure this out when we’re not on the edge of oblivion.”

“It won’t work, my friend,” Casimir replied. “Our world is being drained even now by powers from the void. If we pour our power into that, it will only drain us same as the nexuses.”

“So we…” Niko made a desperate noise. “We close it. That tear she made. We shut it somehow.”

“It’s our only connection to our world,” Byron countered. “Sever that and…”

“We’re trapped here,” Lars filled in. “And we die.”

The demon growled like he refused to accept that, while Ozias shuddered, grim horror radiating from him.

My heart ached.

“But we’ve lasted this long,” Niko argued, desperate hope in his voice. “These bonds between us… Everything we created in the temple…”

“The bonds we’ve forged may be a reflection of the nexuses of our world,” Casimir said. “But they have not changed reality. Whether it is through the portal closing or our world dying, once the energy of our world is fully gone, we won’t last. Even a nexus cannot withstand the absence of all things that is the void.”

My eyes tracked the monstrous creature circling us. How were we still alive? And why hadn’t it attacked yet? It had surrounded us entirely, yet it wasn’t constricting down. Was it just toying with us?

The eel drew closer and then pulled back again.

I blinked. The light from our world. That’s what it was avoiding. But why had it…

Casimir’s words registered. I turned quickly. “What did you say?”

“That even a nexus could not withstand the void.”

“No, about the… the reflection.” I turned, looking at the creature my stepmother had become, my mind racing. “And reality.” My mouth moved, searching for words. “Our bond is a reflection of our world. Our reality. Everything we are… and everything we were… We’re a mirror. But she…” I tracked the creature as it circled us again. “She’s broken.”

“Princess?” Dex prompted.

“Her lie is hunting us. That’s what my mother said. That she’s not what she seems and she never has been.” I stared at the massive eel as it coiled around us again. “And that she’s the flaw in all their plans.”

Giving my men a desperate look. “I… I have an idea. We don’t try to hit this . We aim for her.”

Casimir paused thoughtfully, while Byron’s eyes just skimmed back and forth across the ghostly dirt like he was running cross-references at high speed.

“What’s the difference, though?” Clay asked. “Her or this, it doesn’t?—”

“It does matter,” Byron said, looking up again. “Mirror, mirror…”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

“Then that’s good enough.” Dex nodded. “We’ll follow your lead.”

I reached for them. Their magic rushed into me instantly.

“Mm, what’s this?” the eel creature murmured. “You’ve decided to fight yet again? You truly do love to suffer, don’t you, Gwyneira?”

I turned to face the darkness. “Mirror, mirror,” I whispered. “Broken… now it lies.”

“The prophecy of the Nine?” My stepmother laughed. “How do you think that will stop me, you pathetic little fool?”

“Because you’re the broken mirror,” I said. “And this is how we reflect the truth.” Our magic surged out from me, aimed right at her. “This is how we shatter the skies.”

The power struck, and the vast creature she’d become flinched. But even though she faltered, the smaller shadows all around her only hissed and clicked as if cackling with glee.

“Idiotic child,” they taunted me. “You think to attack with this ? We feed on the energy of worlds. We feed on reality and consume it all.”

I smiled. “Except you need hers.”

Our power pierced into her shadows. The Voidborn swarmed, intent upon devouring it, fighting frantically to feast and not be scorched by its light.

But they couldn’t take it all. Couldn’t stop it from lancing through the darkness of her monstrous form like an arrow intent upon one target. One truth.

That she had always been the flaw in their plan, just as my mother said. Because no matter what power she drained from something else, what terror she wreaked on our world, or what kind of annihilating monstrosity she used Voidborn magic to become, at her core the reality of Melisandre was that she wasn’t strong.

She never had been.

Before she sacrificed her own humanity to take on the powers of a vampire, she was a witch caught in a system every bit as harsh and unjust as the bigotry of Erenelle or Aneira, who thought the only way to triumph over it was through sadism and bloodshed.

Before she stole a crown to call herself a queen, she was a woman so twisted and broken by cruelty, she’d decided the only way to overcome her suffering was through pettiness and hate.

Before she’d become the monster who murdered my mother and who tried to destroy our realm, she’d been a real thing, and the only power that had been hers was that she hated the world so much, she’d chosen to make a bargain with creatures who despised reality every bit as much as she did.

Her hatred was the only thing about herself she’d ever embraced in all her life. Out of everything she’d stolen or bargained to take, it was the only thing that had ever truly belonged to her from the start.

But nothing else did.

And that made her so very, very weak.

Our power slammed into the deepest, darkest part of the beast, past the layers of magic the Voidborn had given her, past everything she’d become. Down to the center of her essence where that one truth formed the original bedrock of everything she and the Voidborn had built. The central piece that was only, purely, and simply Melisandre.

The linchpin of their destruction. The real thing amid their unreality that they’d needed to access our world and make any of this possible.

The true core.

A scream tore from the heart of the beast, and deep within its darkness, something fractured like glass. Cracks spread through the monster, racing through its massive body, radiating out from the inside.

Until it shattered.

Hundreds of Voidborn scattered like leaves. The massive form of the snake began crumbling to dust in their wake, a cascade of disintegrating fragments that disappeared into nothing before they ever came close to the tiny scrap of reality where we stood.

At the edge of where the last remnants of our world touched the void, my stepmother stood. Shudders shook her. Countless hairline cracks covered her skin, her dress, even her hair, as if all she’d been was only a fragile, breaking shell. As the cracks spread, dust wafted from her body like all her power, all her existence was disintegrating into the hungry, empty dark. She reached for us only to lurch as her hands and arms began to turn to ash and crumble away.

Tiny wisps of smoke rose from within her as if emanating from every part of her essence. The ghost of glowing yellow eyes wavered before her, watching us above the eerie glint of long metal fangs.

I tensed, bracing for the shifting shadows to coalesce into a Voidborn.

But the yellow eyes grew dull, their glow fading as its misty form dissipated and blew away like smoke on a breeze.

A faint chuckle escaped my stepmother. “Told you… I won, Alaric.” Her gaze slid to me, and her lips curled into a weak sneer as the last of her began drifting off into oblivion. “But he was right about this too. The Nine do destroy the world.” Her voice became a whisper on the emptiness. “Such a wretched little realm anyway.”

And then she was gone.

Rumbling shook the void.

Clay made a nervous sound. “Anyone else have a bad feeling about…” The last of the dust of the massive creature my stepmother had been drifted away. “Oh, shit.”

The cracks that destroyed her hadn’t stopped. They’d continued out into the vines, radiating across the emptiness all the way to where the rot chewed at the other realms.

But now, from the inside out, those cracks were changing. In the distance, light suddenly pierced out from them, splintering the darkness like pure energy was breaking through the rotting surface of the vines. In a cascade, the fissures of light spread, all of them gaining speed.

And heading our way.

“We poured our power into the heart of anti-reality to summon reality back again,” Casimir said slowly. “And now… it’s coming.”

“All the energy of our realm.” Byron’s gaze tracked over the countless cracks of light racing toward us. “All at once.”

I stared in horror. “Oh gods. I didn’t?—”

“No,” Dex cut in. “You didn’t. We all did. The Nine are one, and”—he shook his head, watching the cascade race closer—“it was the only thing to do.”

“But this… this is okay, though, right?” Niko said, the hope in his voice doing nothing for the fear in his eyes. “It’ll just go into our realm and bring everything back… and that’ll be fine.”

Byron shook his head. “That is the power and essence of everything . Mountains. Oceans. All the people and anywhere the ley lines she corrupted could touch. And it’s going to hit one point of the world. Just one .”

“You know nature, my friend,” Casimir said. “Tell me, how well does a tree fare in the face of an avalanche?”

“Or a volcano,” Ozias murmured.

Niko turned, staring out at the light spearing the darkness. “Then what do we do?”

Desperate looks passed between us all. We’d stopped the Voidborn, yes. But the energy of an entire realm?

Light crackled through the dark vines of rot like lightning, racing closer.

“We are like a nexus,” Casimir said suddenly.

I turned to him, confused. “What?”

“We are like our world. Our power. Our gifts, each of them like the elements of reality.”

“What’s your point, man?” Clay demanded.

Dex spoke up before the vampire could, his eyes on the surge of light coming our way. “We let it strike us first. Buffer the hit. Diffuse it so the world might survive.”

Clay and Lars stared at him, stunned. Byron turned away, shaking his head, and horror showed on Niko’s face when he turned to me, the loss Dex was proposing so clear in his eyes. The demon shuddered, anguish on his face, while that same feeling radiated through Ozias so strongly I could feel his beast howling inside.

My mouth opened, but I couldn’t find words. I knew what that meant, and the incredible likelihood of what would happen then.

We’d die.

I looked over my shoulder at the shadowy portal to our world. The color was gone. Nearly every detail had faded away. Everything my home had ever been was disappearing like a dying dream.

But maybe it didn’t have to go.

“Doomed are the Nine,” I whispered.

My heart breaking, I turned back to my men. “It’s the only hope for the world,” I said quietly, a tiny shrug making my shoulders rise and fall. “We have to try.”

They stared at me. But one by one, the sorrow faded into acceptance in their eyes.

The crackling light raced closer. It was almost here.

My men came toward me. Our arms wrapped around one another, holding us together.

The friends who’d become family.

The outsiders who’d made each other their home.

The princess who’d found a new life after being left to die in the snow.

“Do you think there was any truth to what Gwyneira’s mother said?” Niko asked. “That the realms tell each other their stories? That maybe we’ll go on somehow?”

Dex nodded. “I do.”

“Beyond any doubt,” Byron said, his green gaze unwavering on me.

Niko smiled at the answer. “Good.”

Tears burned in my eyes. “But I hope that, even if from now on and forever after we’re only a story, they know the truth too.”

“What’s that, princess?” Byron asked.

I smiled at him as the light swelled so bright, it was blinding. “That once upon a time, we were real.”

The blast struck.