“Get him off that table.”
“My liege, I’m not certain whether—”
“Seth. Radus.” She snapped her fingers. “Get him off.”
The Dark Bloods strode down the central aisle and up the side stair of the dais. They untied him and lifted him up.
“In the chair,” she said, pointing to the seat behind the table once occupied by the Sovereign.
Rom was unsteady on his feet as the pair hauled him to the chair and dropped him into it.
Once more, he looked from them to Corban and back to her, where his gaze lingered.
“Lower your eyes,” she said.
He hesitated and then looked at the floor.
For a long while she studied his drooping form, his arms draped like empty sleeves over the chair arms.
“So….,” she said, rounding the table to stand before him. “Now you’ve experienced what I once did. Do you know where you are?”
He remained silent. Surely he wasn’t able to resist her.
“Answer me!”
“Yes,” he said quietly. His voice was low and raw.
“And who I am?”
His answer came late, hardly more than a whisper. “Feyn.”
“And what are you now?”
“I….” She saw his eyes blink again, still fixed on the floor.
“Let me be more specific.
Whose
are you?”
He glanced up.
“Lower your eyes,” she snapped.
He dropped them again.
“Who do you belong to?”
“To you,” he said.
“Which makes me what to you?”
Slow again. Too slow. She felt her pulse quicken. Perhaps his making wasn’t complete.
“My maker,” he finally said in a quiet, rasping voice.
“Your maker. And as such you are bound to my word without compromise.”
She glanced at Corban, who was taking the scene in with interest. Seth and Radus stood off to the side.
“Now tell me.” She paced three steps before him and stopped. “Where are the rest of the Sovereigns?”
She could see his gaze turning this way and that, as though watching a rodent scurrying across the floor. A slight tremble shook his hands.
“I ask it again. Where are the rest of your people?”
The tremor ran up into his arms to his shoulders, as though he were straining against a great weight, muscles fatigued.
She tilted her head.
“Speak!”
He remained mute.
She shot a harsh glance at Corban, who quickly dropped his gaze.
“Was this not successful?”
“By all accounts, it was. But we’ve never turned a Sovereign. His body has converted, but his mind may take some time to complete, my liege.”
“How long?”
“Perhaps an hour. Perhaps longer.”
“Longer? We don’t have longer!”
“He claims the virus will be released—”
She cut him off with a half-raised hand and turned her attention back to Rom. The virus would be released in three days if he’d been telling the truth. The thought of it brought a chill to the back of her neck.
“So. You resist me. You resist the very blood in your veins.”
No answer.
Feyn stepped up to Rom, seized his neck with one hand, and jerked him to his feet. Then higher, until his feet dangled inches from the ground. She stared up into his face, her own arm shaking with rage more than exertion. She rarely displayed her own strength so openly.
Saric had created far more than he’d anticipated the day he’d made her.
“You will understand one thing, Rom Sebastian. I am your maker now. Your loyalty is to me. You will obey me without thought or hesitation. It would behoove you to understand this, and quickly. It will be far less painful for you.”
She released his neck with a slight shove. He slid off the edge of the chair and crashed to the floor, too weak to break his fall.
She swooped down, seized him by the cheeks, and turned him toward the two warriors standing nearby.
“Do you see them? Those two?”
“Yes,” he managed through heavy breath.
“Radus, hand your sword to Seth.”
The man drew his short sword with a hiss of steel and held it out to Seth, who took it.
“Seth, kill Radus.”
Radus’s eyes widened slightly—and then completely as Seth shoved the blade up under his rib cage, to the hilt.
Radus fell to his knees, hands on the sword sunk deep in his chest.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she whispered against Rom’s ear. “Do you not understand that my power is absolute?”
She heard him swallow. Felt him tremble.
“Seth.”
“Yes, my liege.” His voice was like a purr. He was ready, she knew, to do anything to please her. That he, in fact, relished it.
“Take out your sword.”
He slipped his blade free of its sheath, eyes steadied on Rom, narrowed to catlike slits in anticipation.
“Cut your throat.”
His head snapped up. For the first time in her service, he stared at her wide, with a hint of question. But his loyalty could not be compromised.
He lifted his sword and slowly, eyes fixed on his maker, dragged the blade across his throat. For a moment, he stood there, shock and devotion warring on his face. Blood gushed from the wound and spilled onto the dais between them.
Ah, but he was magnificent!
She’d been right in thinking he was the pinnacle of her creation.
He staggered only one step before collapsing on the floor, draining of the dark blood that gave him life.
“I will give you some time to collect yourself,” she said, shoving Rom’s face away. “The next time I speak, you will obey.”
She stood, brushed herself off, and looked at the collapsed form of Seth with a slight moue of regret.
“Corban.” The alchemist was visibly trembling.
“My liege?”
“Take him below. Send word when his transformation is complete—body, mind, and soul.”
J
ORDIN AWOKE with a start, eyes wide, heart pounding in her chest. The events of the previous night cascaded into her mind with the thunder of a waterfall.
She sat up, gasping. The drapes of the large bed were closed around her, the faint glow of a candle throwing shadows across the ceiling, reminding her that she was not dead or suffocating.
Roland had left her alone to sleep. And to remember.
She’d taken Sovereign blood and died a hollow death before being reborn in an explosion of love. But the beauty of that moment had fled as quickly as it had come.
She pushed aside the curtain and stared at the candle on the nearby table as Jonathan’s words filled her mind.
Why do you forget?
She didn’t know why. But with that forgetting, she’d lost her sense of identity. Fear had pushed her to a breaking point, and she’d wept, acutely aware of her own misery in the wake of having felt so much beauty in her rebirth.
Why had the beauty left her so quickly?
She’d forgotten not only what it meant to be Sovereign, but the particulars of her existence.
Jordin blinked.
But she knew now, didn’t she? Precise details of the Sovereign Sanctuary returned to memory. The passage through the ruins.
The canvas flap. The large chamber with the circular seats…. her own small room with the worn curtain over the doorway. What had been hidden by the fog of Immortality was clear for the first time since her arrival at Roland’s Lair. As were the details of the underground labyrinth that led to the Citadel. Other specific memories strung through her mind: places, people, dates…. each of them falling into place, one after the other.
But Jonathan hadn’t been referring to that forgetting. His words had questioned her very soul. The
being
of Sovereign. The abundance of life he had promised.
That had not come back to her.
How could she remember what she’d never known? Or had she known it once in those first days as a Sovereign?
Her chest felt hollow. Her eyes misted as the truth settled around her, thick as the darkness, heavy as the pelt on the bed. Whatever peace Jonathan had promised was as absent now as it had been before becoming Immortal.
Perhaps more so. Next to the memory of her recent rebirth, her emptiness only seemed to run deeper, a gorge cut by the river of her reconversion.
She’d rediscovered her memory only to find herself…. lost.
But she knew the way to Feyn. That was all that must matter now. Time enough to discover the source of her misery later, assuming she still had the emotion left to feel it.
Jordin threw the covers off and slid out of bed, dressed still in the short black dress. She stumbled to the door, flung it open, and ran down the corridor, her mind suddenly consumed with only one thought.
She had three days to return both Feyn’s and Roland’s heads to Mattius or the virus would be released. And somehow, after knowing the Immortals as they were now, she understood that their extermination would deeply offend Jonathan. Dark Bloods were one thing, but she’d seen the humanity in Roland’s eyes last night and….
She meant to kill him.
Jordin pulled up sharply, halfway down the vacant hall. Kill him? The prince who only loved with passion and hated in misery like herself? He’d treated her with tenderness last night. He’d given up his bed for her, left her alone.
She hurried on, shoving the dilemma aside. Nothing would matter if they didn’t first kill Feyn. Time was too short.
She burst through the door at the end of the corridor, veered toward the right flight of stairs, and flew down them, hand on the rail, watching her bare feet to be sure of her footing. Only when she’d descended halfway did she glance up and see that perhaps a dozen Immortals were seated at the long dining table on the main level, that their heads had turned, all of them staring at her.
At the head of the table sat Roland, leaning against the carved high back of the chair.
She flushed at the sight of him, felt a slight smile tug at the corner of her mouth.
And then she noticed Kaya. Sitting to his right.
The sudden heat that flashed up Jordin’s back surprised her. The girl had no business being near him!
Jordin had told Roland precisely how much Sovereign blood she would need, no more. The rest was for Kaya. But only now did the urgency for Kaya’s seroconversion fill her.
She gathered herself and continued her descent, more slowly now, aware that her hair and dress were tossed and wrinkled from a night in Roland’s bed.
Jordin crossed to the table and stopped three paces from Roland. He made no effort to rise or pull a chair out for her, choosing instead to stare expectantly. Gone was the tender man who’d held her briefly last evening.
Here was the prince, making a show of command before all of his Rippers and the girl sitting at his side who obviously worshiped the very air he breathed.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Talk,” he said.
“In private.”
“You have no secrets here.”
“No?”
“No.”
Her irritation swelled.
“If we have any hopes of stopping the virus, we have to leave now,” she said, assuming the revelation would be new to all except Michael, who leaned back in a chair three down from the prince, arms crossed.
Her glance at him confirmed Jordin’s suspicion. But Roland didn’t break focus.
“So you remember everything.”
“Yes.”
His gaze was heavy on her for several long seconds; silence was thick in the great chamber. His right arm rested on the table, and he lifted a single finger—a dismissive gesture. Immediately all the Immortals except Michael and Kaya rose. Then, with a glance at the others, Kaya did as well.
“She stays,” Jordin said, staring at the girl.
Roland’s brow arched. The others paused, the room bathed in sudden tension at the unspoken standoff.
“I need her,” Jordin said.
Roland hesitated and then gave a curt nod. Kaya eased back down, hands in her lap. The others resumed their departure in silence, some to doorways along the wall, others up the stairs, like dark phantoms vanishing into the walls, leaving only Roland, Michael, and Kaya at the table. The prince waited until the last door was closed before speaking.
“Quite the entrance. You would do well to remember where you are.”
She was looking at Kaya, who returned her stare with indifference. “How could I possibly forget?”
“Indeed,” Roland said. “And yet you’ve forgotten so much lately.”
“It’s apparently easy to lose your mind in this place.”
“And yet you seem to have found yours in my bed,” he said.
She gave him a sharp look. But his tone had not been mocking, and she saw that his face had softened.
“Yes,” she said. “I slept well. I trust you did also.”
He gave a slight smile. “Very.” He motioned to a chair with an open hand. “Please….”
He was dressed in black, his sleeveless shirt half buttoned up the front. Black armbands hugged each arm where his biceps met his elbows. Taut muscle pressed his veins to the surface of his forearms; his fingers, curled and at ease, looked strong enough to crush a man’s neck as an afterthought. She was surprised by her reaction to him even now, even as a Sovereign and fully rested.
And yet this was the man she must kill. The thought terrified her.
“We don’t have time to sit here,” she said. “I may know the way into the Citadel, but getting to Feyn and Rom could take some time.”
“Yes, of course. We kill Feyn today. I’d nearly forgotten.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“You haven’t told me what it is you remember. Tell me now so I know what to believe.”
She stared at him, trying to judge his sincerity, aware of Michael studying them. He was playing with her, knowing she had no option but to play along. She needed him as much as he needed her.
“I will. As soon as Kaya becomes Sovereign.”
His placid expression remained in place. “That is her choice, not mine.”
Kaya glanced between them, silent.
“Go on, my little darling. Tell us if you would take the dead blood and lose your Immortality.”
“Why would I do that?” Kaya asked.
“Because you were a lover of Jonathan before you crawled into this man’s bed!” Jordin snapped. “Get ahold of yourself, Kaya!”