She took all of this in at first glance in a way that only an Immortal could, with unrestrained sensory awareness. But it was Roland, the prince, who captivated her attention.
Four stone steps covered in burgundy carpet rose to a platform on
which sat a great iron chair draped in a silver pelt. Wolf. He lounged more than sat in the chair, his right elbow propped on the arm, chin cupped in his palm. His legs were encased in black leather, booted to the knee. He wore no shirt. Dark tribal tattoos of the Nomads sprawled across his thick shoulders and halfway down his arms, made stark by the paleness of his skin.
His black hair hung devoid of braid or beads to pale shoulders strapped with the corded muscle of a warrior. Thick leather bands edged in gold wound around both wrists; three heavy chains joined at his sternum to carry a single large silver pendant embossed with a crescent moon that shone in the candlelight.
To a Corpse he would have been fearfully magnificent. But to Immortal eyes, he was nothing less than supreme. Maker and ruler. The giver and taker of Immortality.
He returned her rapt interest with mild boredom.
The woman who’d passed through the main chamber lounged on a low sofa nearby, her legs folded back to one side. With one hand she stroked the lion Jordin had seen last night, laying on the carpet just below her. Rings glinted on her hand, pale quartz the color of the sky. She was adorned all in white, the only one in Roland’s Lair who seemed to wear anything other than black.
The lion lifted its head the moment Jordin stepped in, watching her with far keener interest than either Roland or his queen. Its dull gold collar glinted in the candlelight.
The only other person in the room was a servant, standing at the end of the side table, hands folded, her pale arms in sharp contrast to the simple black silk of her gown, so like Jordin’s own. Behind her, a thick wooden door led ostensibly deeper into the lair.
“This is the one?” Roland said, chin in hand, dark nails as stark as his burgundy lips against that pale flesh.
Rislon bowed his head. “Yes, my prince.”
“The woman with no name who claims I sent her on a mission I know nothing about?”
Jordin felt herself inexplicably drawn to the voice. To the man who’d once rescued her from destitution and trained her as a champion. Who’d chosen Immortality and by all appearances had come into his full power.
But there was also an air of discontent about him. He had the look of a man no longer interested in his own world, driven to conquer a more significant one.
The one Feyn controlled.
Access to Feyn was the only advantage Jordin held, and that advantage was a slivered hope at best.
“Do you not recognize the girl you once brought to your tribe?” she said. “I served alongside your best warriors once.”
The words brought a wave of memory with them. Roland, her prince, as a newly made Mortal a decade ago, riding into camp, color high in his cheeks, the sky in his eyes. Dancing around the late-night fire, his braids wild down his back, a stallion of a prince among the other warriors. He had been the desire of every young Nomad girl. Roland, who happened upon her outside of camp one day in her late girlhood and asked if she was happy among his people. She had been flustered and flattered that he’d even remembered her name—what was she but an orphan girl he’d taken in as a castoff from a neighboring tribe? But then he’d noticed the sling in her hand, the pile of nearby stones, the tracks of frustrated tears on her face. He’d taught her how to fling them properly that day—no one else had thought an orphan worth the time. A year later, he set her first sword in her hand.
She’d adored him once. But staring at him now, she could not reconcile this brooding leader with that man. The prince she’d known was gone…. and soon the Immortal he’d become would be as well.
He stared at her. Recognition came slowly, but when it did, his entire demeanor shifted.
He slowly lowered his arm and stood. For several beats he stared, face drawn, cautious.
“I remember a girl I once made one of my own—only to lay down her loyalty and become Sovereign,” he said, eyes as hard as onyx set in gold.
“Now Immortal,” she said. And then, before he could voice judgment, she added, “It was either Immortality or death. My allegiance to the one we once both served runs deep, but I see no purpose in dying for him.”
“And yet you come to me. The one who brings death to all Sovereigns.”
“Do I look like a Sovereign to you? I’m surprised you would use that name to describe anyone but yourself. Or Feyn, who now holds that office.”
He ran an appraising gaze down her body. Again, she felt like little more than a slave to be inspected for worthiness. But didn’t he have the right? Roland wasn’t only prince, but her prince now.
The thought should have repelled her. It did not.
A finger of fear traced her spine. He was Roland, the one she’d come to kill. Yet standing before him now, the very notion felt treasonous. Insane. She could no more kill him than kill herself.
And then it struck her: all of the Rippers had surely come to life through Roland’s blood, not directly through Jonathan’s blood as Roland himself had. And by extension, so had she now.
“Come closer,” he said.
She took a stiff step toward the center of the room.
“Closer.”
She hesitated and then took three more steps, forced now to look up at his face.
Roland descended the steps with muscular fluidity. She’d known Roland in his former state as an exceedingly ruthless warrior, able to best ten men in hand-to-hand battle, perfect in his use of Mortal sense. She harbored no illusions that he was now any less ruthless or skilled. On the contrary, those arms and hands that moved with such deceptive ease would be more deadly than ever. If he drew his
sword now, she might not even realize that he’d struck her until his blade was halfway through her neck.
The thought sent her blood racing, but not out of fear.
“If I didn’t know your kind was so opposed to killing, I might think you were here in a vain attempt to assassinate me,” he said.
“As you see for yourself, I am Immortal. I have no compunction against killing Dark Bloods or Sovereigns, who have no hope for redemption. But I do not kill my own kind.”
He crossed his arms and paced a step to his right. Whatever boredom had possessed him earlier was gone. The queen, Talia, watched Jordin through the veil of her elsewhere gaze, idly stroking the fur of her young lion.
“Why have you come, beautiful girl?” she said in a soft tone that sounded more like a purr than a voice. “If not to make an attempt on the life of my prince?”
“To give him the keys to the kingdom he desires,” Jordin said.
“And what are these keys?”
Jordin looked Roland squarely in the eye. “I can show him a way into the Citadel where he can take Feyn’s head from her shoulders and the ring from her hand.”
He smiled slightly. It was not warm. “Such a bold claim.”
“And yet you know that I, the one you yourself trained, have never lied to her prince.”
“If you knew a way to approach Feyn, you would have used it already.”
“Sovereigns do not possess the same skills as Immortals. Nor do they have the numbers. They are three dozen elderly and young, hiding, hungry, and hunted by both Feyn and your Rippers. Sovereign blood will soon be extinct.”
“And Rom”—he said it as one voices a name not spoken in years—“does he know of your plot to infiltrate my lair?”
“He’s being held captive in Feyn’s dungeons. But yes, he knows it’s the only way.”
Roland lifted a brow.
He studied her for a moment and then circled around her, his gaze traveling over her again. The hardness was gone from his face, replaced by curiosity. She’d offered him direct access to his only true enemy, but he had no reason to take her seriously.
“So my enemy comes to give me Feyn’s head on a platter,” he said. “Knowing full well that if I take the throne there will be nothing to stop me from exterminating the Sovereigns. I can’t imagine Rom would like that.” His fingers touched her hair as he crossed behind her. “My queen is right. You’re more beautiful than I remember.”
“You don’t know Rom,” she said, her throat suddenly dry. “He speaks only well of you.”
“Of course he does. He’s at my mercy.” He rounded her, dark eyes glittering with the hardness of one who knows no fear. “As are you.”
“As am I,” she said softly.
“I have your unquestioned loyalty, is that it? We aren’t Dark Bloods, you know. Immortals are fully capable of treachery.”
“I’ve seen nothing but loyalty here,” she said.
“I’ve earned their loyalty. And they’ve earned mine. But you have not.”
Her heart was hammering against her ribs. Surely he could hear it. “How would you have me prove it?”
“You will tell me the way to Feyn now.”
Jordin hesitated, knowing that the truth could end her life. Now. This moment.
“I can’t,” she said at last.
“No? Why not.”
“Because I can’t remember.”
“You can’t remember.” He gave a wry smirk. “Did you hear that, my queen? She says she can’t remember what she came to tell us.”
His face darkened, the smirk gone.
“Don’t toy with me.”
Jordin blinked, surprised by the hardness of his tone. The absolute bitterness in it. And she saw that beneath his veneer of power and passion, Roland lived in misery. He was surrounded in luxury, by beauty, and for as much as he possessed, he could not enjoy the Immortality he clung to with iron claws. For all the apparent loyalty of his Rippers, could he believe the love of a single one?
In that moment she knew that he held no advantage. The man before her had no more found abundant life since Jonathan’s passing than she.
“It bothers you, doesn’t it?” Jordin said. “Having so much life and still feeling so powerless to grasp what you seek.”
The muscles along his jaw bunched. “I have more life than you can possibly imagine.”
“What is life if you can’t find peace in it?”
His eyes narrowed. “Only Corpses rest in peace.”
“So we once said. It must be a terrible thing to live a thousand years in misery. Maybe Immortality is better called Hades.”
Roland held her in a dark stare, and she considered the possibility that he might fly into a rage and rip her to shreds.
“You have everything this world has to offer,” she said. “Everything except the throne. And when you have that, you’ll still be as miserable because in reality you seek true life and peace. Power won’t give you either.”
“The kind of peace you’ve known?” he demanded. “Cowering in hiding while those of your kind are picked off one by one? Is this Jonathan’s rule of love in your hearts?”
Jordin didn’t know what to say. His words rang as true as her own. So she said the only thing she knew: the truth.
“Sovereigns are as miserable as you seem to be.”
Her confession seemed to cut him off at the knees. She continued quickly. “Which is why I’m here. We once shared food at the same fire and fought a common enemy to save the life Jonathan brought to us. I’ve done everything I believed was right, and what has it brought
me? A wretched existence, surrounded by death. I have nothing more to lose. So now I come to the same prince who once saved me from the wasteland.”
“To ask for something in exchange for a promise you can’t deliver.”
“But I can deliver.”
“How?”
“By becoming Sovereign again.”
Maker, she hoped it was true.
Just then the door behind her opened and she heard the footfall of two entering the chamber. She didn’t turn. Her eyes remained fixed on Roland.
His eyes flicked over her shoulder. He turned toward the side table, calmly took the goblet from the servant, who had apparently already made sure it was full, and took a long drink with his back still turned to them. The two arrivals walked toward him at the table with only an offhanded glance her way.
“No sign,” one of them said—a woman. Jordin knew that voice, tried to place it….
“Whoever they were, they must have escaped into the city,” the woman continued. A warrior in the customary black of the Ripper, there was something about the posture of her stance, the ease with which she carried herself that was both more regal and casual around Roland than the others.
The man beside her was older, with long gray hair and a beard as white as his skin, dressed in a black robe rather than battle dress. Someone with authority. When he spoke, Jordin recognized his gravelly voice immediately.
“If the heretics have taken to open attacks on us, we must eliminate them. We don’t need this thorn in our side. We should have cut them all down a year ago when we had them in our grasp.”
This was Seriph, the council member Jordin had once served under when they had all been Mortal.
“Seriph has a point, my prince,” the woman said. “I would send Cain and his twenty to hunt them down. One by one if we must.”
“That won’t be necessary, sister,” Roland said. “The Sovereigns are no longer a problem.”
Jordin started. Michael. Roland’s sister.
“As you said when you demanded we spare some last time,” Michael said. “And now they’ve killed Jalarod. His sister is furious with grief.”
Jalarod. The name of the Immortal Jordin had killed. A moment’s horror passed through her—perhaps because she now shared Jalarod’s blood. The faceless Immortal had a name and family. They mourned their dead as Dark Bloods could not.
They’d always wondered why the Immortals had pulled back before killing them all. Now Jordin knew: Roland had ordered they spare some. He wanted them crippled and immobilized, not vanquished.
Roland turned and offered Jordin a halfhearted gaze. “I already have Jalarod’s killer. She’s one of us.” There was no mistaking the irony in his words.
Michael and Seriph turned as one to stare at her. Michael went very still as recognition filled her face.
“Jordin.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” Seriph demanded.
“Jordin has defected,” Roland said. “And, being the warrior I taught her to be, she did what was necessary to acquire our blood. Unfortunate, but rather ingenious. More important, she can lead us to the others. Her loyalty now rests with me. Isn’t that right?”