Were her senses sharper as well? It had been so long but yes, she thought so. She couldn’t remember ever tasting the air so strongly. Or feeling the pleasure of the breeze—the tiny grains of sand carried in it, the dryness of the air itself—crossing her skin with such intensity.
Her whole body hummed with sensory perception. A tuning fork, set on edge. But it brought her no peace. Instead she found it unsettling.
“Will you kill me?” Kaya said.
“Why would I do that?”
“I’m a Sovereign. Immortals hate Sovereigns.”
At the sound of that word, “Sovereign,” Jordin felt slight revulsion. Or perhaps it was just the stink from Kaya’s skin and breath.
“No, I don’t hate you. I’m a Sovereign at heart and always will be.”
Are you so certain? You missed this life….
She dismissed the thought, knelt to her pack, and pulled out the second jar of blood.
“Roll up your sleeve.”
T
HE RANGE of emotions that swept through Jordin in the wake of becoming Immortal came in like an unrelenting storm that only began to ebb near dawn. The feelings weren’t alien in the way emotion was to a Corpse coming to life for the first time, but they were devastatingly visceral and only intensified when she tried to resist them. And then again as she realized she didn’t really want to resist them.
She’d watched Kaya’s seroconversion with morbid fascination—particularly the paling of her skin. The girl might have passed for Brahmin royalty, her flesh had turned so white. She looked like a ghost in street clothes, her steps silent on the barren earth as they headed north in search of their new kind.
The first shockwaves of visceral emotion and of the color fleeing Jordin’s skin were subservient to the greatest change of all—the change in her senses. The entire volume of life had crescendoed in her ears. What she had barely heard or not heard at all just hours before came full fledged to her now: a cricket under a rock a hundred yards away, the wind sighing over the low hills, the trickle of a tiny stream a quarter mile east. The wasteland, lifeless to her before, crooned her secrets in majestic symphony.
She could see perfectly for a mile and make out the veins on an insect’s wings as it careened overhead. She could smell the scat of a
rodent on a far hill and taste the tang of a juniper’s berries brought to her on a breeze so faint she could feel it lift the tiny hairs on her neck.
Alive. So very much so that it terrified her, tempted her. But she wasn’t truly alive, was she? Not as a Sovereign was. Not as one who’d died with Jonathan in the communion of his blood. But with her senses blooming to almost unbearable highs, she couldn’t help but wonder why he had ever wanted them to leave such an exquisite existence.
Or had he?
These were the thoughts that plagued her now. Sovereigns taught that emotions other than love and peace were merely bodily reactions to thoughts—reactions that alerted them when something required resetting if those thoughts were negative, much in the same way that physical pain alerted a person that something might be wrong with his body. Change a thought, change the emotion. A practice that had become increasingly difficult as of late.
Now her emotions seemed to be running amuck, requiring far too much effort to control. She assumed Kaya felt the same as they walked side by side in introspective silence. The girl’s talkative nature had taken leave.
For a panicked moment, she wondered if she was losing her mind to the change.
No. She clung tenaciously to her truest identity as Sovereign. A weaker will might easily forget the value of Sovereignty in the headiness of becoming Immortal. No wonder Roland had only grown bolder as his kind had evolved, sure that they would live a thousand years barring death in battle or from disease. No wonder the Immortals had only increased in number while the Sovereign population had dwindled. Who could resist such an existence?
At Jordin’s insistence, they’d walked through the night. With any luck, they’d put themselves in the way of an Immortal patrol or raiding party, a task made easier in the darkness with their expanded sight.
But they found no one that night.
They’d stopped by a tiny watering hole to refill their canteens as the first gray of dawn tinged the eastern horizon.
“Jordin?” Kaya’s voice cut the silence for the first time in hours. It sounded different to Jordin’s ear since her conversion—sinuous, somehow, as the woman herself.
Jordin reached for her canteen.
“Are my eyes black?”
She glanced up at Kaya and immediately saw the change in her eyes.
Maker.
They’d gone black in the night, ringed by a golden burst as though they glowed from behind. Disturbing and strangely beautiful.
And far too similar to the eyes of the Dark Bloods.
That wasn’t the only change. Her lips were darker—they had deepened in color to a rich burgundy, as if stained by wine. Against the pallid skin of her face, they seemed to pout passion. Gone the flush of innocent pink on her cheek, the coral of her lips. She was stunningly seductive. Her tongue was darker as well, colored by the same rich wine as her lips.
Kaya lifted her hand and touched her fingers to her lips. “What’s wrong?”
Jordin’s gaze fell to the girl’s fingertips. Her nails had turned several shades darker than her lips, so they appeared nearly black.
She lifted her hands and saw that her own nails were the same. Marked. Altered in body, mind, and soul. Her heart was racing but not with fear or even with disgust. So this was what it was to be Immortal. A part of her eagerly embraced the transformation.
The more reasonable part of her felt defiled.
Kaya dropped to her knees and stared into the small pool’s glassy surface. “We have the eyes of Dark Bloods!”
“So it would appear.”
She might have expected a stronger reaction from the girl, but Kaya only stared at her dim reflection with strange wonderment.
“You don’t sound terribly disappointed,” Jordin said.
Kaya looked up at her. “It’s ghastly!”
But her tone wasn’t as sharp with disgust as it could have been. Or was Jordin only projecting her own hollow guilt onto the girl?
“Will we forget? What it means to be Sovereign—will we forget?”
“Never,” Jordin said. “I’ll die before I forget.” But she had heard her own hesitation before the answer.
They filled their canteens and bathed, doing their best to wash away any lingering Sovereign scent from their skin and hair. And then they slept for two hours against a large boulder near the watering hole before resuming their trek northeast, into the canyon lands.
She would have insisted they sleep longer, but they now had only five days to accomplish the impossible.
“THEY’VE SEEN US.”
“Yes,” Jordin said, gazing down the long valley from a rise overlooking a system of shallow gulches.
Danger had come to them at dusk.
They’d spent all day heading toward the northern road into Byzantium, knowing that Immortals routinely patrolled the supply routes into the city, intent on cutting them off.
The moment she’d picked up their scent, she’d climbed the tallest nearby rise and issued three long, high-pitched whistles in the direction of the faint odor. The call for help had been used by Nomads for decades—it was one she knew well. If the signal had failed, she would’ve tracked them on foot.
It never came to that. They’d been heard, and four of the black-clad warriors were riding toward them, shimmering specters on the horizon.
“How do we know they won’t hurt us?”
“We don’t. But there’s no reason to think they would. Unless you
begin acting strange.” She cast Kaya a firm stare. “I am the only one to speak, do you understand?”
“Of course.”
“No, not of course. One wrong word and you could get us killed. So you won’t speak at all. Just imagine that you’re a mute.”
“A mute Immortal.”
“Something like that. Follow me.”
Jordin started down the hill to cut the distance between them. Within five minutes the Immortals were fully formed riders on dark horses, their posture that of those who owned the world, warriors protecting their realm. In the wasteland, at least, it was true. Roland had carved out his world and ruled here free and supreme.
While Sovereigns cowered beneath Byzantium.
Jordin halted when they were a hundred meters off and let them come. She quickly reviewed their state. The markings on her bow and the steel of her arrowheads were of Sovereign design, so she’d buried them in the sand along with her pack. That left them with only the clothes they wore and their canteens. She’d hidden a single vial of blood in her canteen—with any luck it would go unnoticed.
Her mission had come to this moment. She had no idea how Roland organized his Immortals or what kind of persuasion might get her to him. She’d killed an Immortal—a feat she would have celebrated just last week. But today, with the hours growing short, it was only one step in an impossible journey. Now she would see her first Immortals face to face. Then she would know.
The leader of the patrol nudged his horse into a trot and approached at ease. He broke to his left and circled them once, ten paces distant, far enough to avoid attack, close enough to study them with every sense. Jordin couldn’t help but admire the surety with which he rode—it wasn’t caution but simple reason. His eyes peered at her through the slits in his head covering. An Immortal Ripper. A wraith disguised as a man.
Did she know him from her days as a Mortal? If so, he would recognize her as well, and she’d have to talk fast—and perhaps act faster. She reminded herself that she’d once been able to best the most skilled Mortal in combat. Whatever advances they enjoyed due to the change in them she also possessed.
The other three Immortals stopped five paces off, horses abreast. No one spoke until the leader completed his circuit and angled in closer.
“I can see that you have Immortal flesh,” the man said. “But I see nothing else Immortal about you.”
Jordin dipped her head in respect. “Then you serve our prince well.” She lifted her eyes and met his stare. “As do I.”
“As a lost vagabond in the wasteland?” one of the others said. “And what of the pretty one beside you?” His eyes shifted to Kaya. “You might serve him better by offering us your comforts.”
Heat flared up Jordin’s neck. But she would put the man’s simple lust to good use.
“I doubt he would allow it.”
“Then you don’t know our prince.”
“And you don’t know what we have to offer him in exchange for whatever service he desires. Unfortunately for you, what we have is for Roland alone, not for young studs in training.”
The air went still. She could actually hear the man’s heart beating, like the rhythmic throb of a moth’s wings in the air. Its rate did not fluctuate. The rider on her far left finally chuckled.
“You obviously don’t know who you’re speaking to. Sephan isn’t exactly young. He does, however, train the best of the prince’s coven. You should watch your tongue if you hope to keep it, pretty.”
“And here I thought Kaya was the pretty one,” Jordin said.
The leader nudged his horse a step forward. “Kaya, is it?” he said, looking down at the girl. “And what do you have to say for yourself, Kaya? What kind of service do you and your speaking friend here have to offer our prince?”
Kaya shot Jordin a quick glance, but the leader stepped in.
“Look at me, not her,” he said. “Your life’s in my hands now. What’s your friend’s name?”
Kaya stared at the tall rider as though he were the prince himself, seemingly captivated by those deeply drawing eyes, the sultry voice.
“I’m not free to tell you that,” Kaya said.
“Then neither will you be free to live.”
“She travels with me,” Jordin said. “I speak for us.”
“You are in my jurisdiction, and you will both answer my questions.”
“I mean no disrespect. I only say that I command Kaya as you command your men.”
“You command nothing but my attention, and even that’s wearing thin. Keep me interested, and you might do well.”
The man regarded Kaya again, dismissing Jordin.
“What’s your name?” Jordin asked before he could speak. “Roland will want to know who it was that so quickly dismissed the one he himself once trained to be champion. The one who now brings him news that will win him a war.”
Slowly the leader’s head swiveled back, his eyes betraying true interest for the first time. He glanced back at his men before casually pulling a knife from his belt. He tossed it into the sand at her feet.
“Show me,” he said.
“Which one would you have me kill?”
“Any you think you can.”
Stillness settled between them, broken only by the buzz of a fly and the swish of a horse’s tail. Jordin was suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to kill them all. How many Sovereigns had these very Immortals massacred a year earlier?
But attempting to kill any one—much less all—of them would only end tragically. They were battle hardened and keenly alert. And they were her way to Roland.
“Pick one,” she said.
“I give you that choice.”
“Without a direct order, I can’t kill any who serve my prince. But I can assure you that I’ve killed many Dark Bloods. They, not you, are my enemy.”
The commander sat in silence for an extended moment, then withdrew something from under his black cloak. An apple.
“Pick up the knife.”
Jordin bent for the blade, eyes never leaving his. She had straightened only halfway when he nonchalantly flipped the apple into the air.
Jordin let the world about her slow. Time slowed with it. The apple hung lazily in the shimmering air, a suspended thing, impossibly large. She felt one knee drop to the sand as she reacted without thought. She snapped her wrist to send the blade into the fruit, knowing already that her aim was true.
But even as the knife left her hand, she saw that the apple was only a distraction meant to test her true skills. The Immortal who’d commented on Kaya’s beauty was already flipping his gloved hand in a throw. A circular blade cut through the air with blazing speed.