She strode to the commander who lay toppled, unmoving within an inky pool of blood, and walked to the second commander in line. Looked him directly in the face. He made the mistake of looking back.
“You dare look in my eyes after such a failure?”
“No, my liege. I—”
His eyes went wide as she sheathed her sword in his middle.
The next one did not make the same mistake.
“Arcane,” she said. His breath was serrated. She could
smell
the sweat rolling down his neck.
“My liege?” he whispered.
“Carry out these orders without compromise.”
“I will, my liege.”
She lowered the sword, tip to the floor. Twirled it once. Blood splattered the marble, speckled the black of her boots. She lifted it, walked another two steps to the next man, set the tip down lightly again. A twirl of metal. His throat visibly worked as he swallowed. The cords in his neck stood out; he was clearly prepared for the swing of her blade. She lifted her fingers from the hilt, let the weapon clatter to the ground.
She turned on her heel. “Kill him, Arcane,” she whispered.
By the time she had crossed to Corban, the man’s grunt had filled the chamber behind her. She turned back in time to see the two men remaining: Arcane, his short sword dark and naked in his hand, and Rom, stiff yet, an arm’s reach away.
She stopped before the alchemist. His hair, normally so neatly groomed, was held back from his face in a tangled mess. His rumpled robe hung on thin and aging shoulders; he had lost weight in the last two days. But most telling of all was the shadow of resignation lurking about his eyes.
“What news?”
The alchemist shook his head. “The Immortals are useless. The sample we took from Rom before his conversion is no better. Our efforts to unravel the virus and create an antidote…. useless.”
“There must be something,” Feyn said through gritted teeth.
The alchemist was silent.
She spun back, fixed Rom with a glare.
“What more can be done?”
He turned his head, looked her in the eye, and spoke as though the air were forced from his lungs to form the words. “There is no cure, my lady.”
“I will not accept it!”
Beside her, Corban said, “We are grasping at slivers. We’ve tried everything. The only thing left is Sovereign blood.”
“You had that with him,” she said, jerking her head in Rom’s direction.
“The sample we retained from before his conversion proved…. inconclusive. Perhaps if it were living, taken from the vein…. but even then.” Again, he shook his head.
For a moment, the room spun.
Two days. Two days before the world slipped from her fingers along with her life.
She dropped her gaze to the stent and tubing in his hands.
“You tapped him today?”
“Yes. We will try again.” But his voice told her plainly that he already knew it would yield nothing.
She grabbed the stent and tubing from his thin fingers and strode closer to the candelabra burning on her desk. Jerking up her sleeve
by the embroidered cuff, she shoved it back. Without preamble, she stabbed the stent directly into the dark vein running along the crook of her elbow, gestured to Corban, already rushing to her side to quickly connect the vial to the other end of the tube.
“My liege—”
“He claimed for years my blood knew life once. Well, we shall see if he’s right.” Fifteen years ago, it had been enough to send her to her knees on the platform of her own inauguration. To spread her arms to the Keeper’s sword, and to die. The barest hint of remembrance even after the Corpse-death had claimed her senses again. Just enough.
Enough to cheat death and rise again.
She glanced toward Rom as she turned the knob on the tube.
But as she watched the black ichor of her own blood fill the tubing, she knew that it remembered that life no more.
The vial filled. She yanked the stent out. Shoved Corban away when he tried to staunch the wound.
“Take it and make me an antivirus! Your life depends on it. And take him.” She shoved her finger in Rom’s direction. “Drain him dry if you have to. As for you….” she turned, strode to Arcane, leveled him with a stare. “Make ready. Roland wants battle? We will slaughter him and his Rippers in the streets. Do you hear me? We will kill them all!”
T
HE BETHELIM VALLEY lay in silence, its forbidding slopes and hard-baked earth stark beneath an unforgiving sky. The sun rested on the eastern hill—a lone orange eye tracking the thirty-eight black-clad Rippers and the sole Sovereign who’d ventured into the desolate place.
Roland stood on the rise to the south, facing away from Jordin and the rest, hands on hips, staring out at the long rolling stretch of barren desert that ran all the way to the distant sea.
He hadn’t spoken a word since the arena, seemingly oblivious to the load on his shoulder as they raced through the tunnels, despite Jordin’s insistence that he set her down. Only upon reaching the cellar had he unceremoniously dumped her to the ground before ascending to the main floor.
He was mounted and already spurring his horse into a gallop by the time she’d stumbled out of the basilica. It had taken her a full minute to catch the others speeding north through Byzantium after their leader. Roland had ridden like a man possessed. Even when they’d put the city safely behind them, he hadn’t slowed his stallion to a trot for several more miles.
Michael, dead. She could barely comprehend it. Even the unflappable Cain. The first Immortals slain in battle.
Her fault.
They’d ridden through the night without words, Roland refusing to even glance at her. And so she’d let him alone, the cadence of their horses pounding the ground beneath her.
Roland’s grief was obvious. But tonight she knew he had been dealt an additional blow: Roland, the invincible Prince of the Immortals, had been proven fallible.
Jordin had fought growing despair as the night passed, searching in vain for any thread of hope—of absolution. They had no hope of recovering or saving Rom. Feyn was alive. The Immortals were soon to die. And where would that leave her? Jonathan, Triphon, the Keeper, every Sovereign she had lived and fought with, the Immortals she had known as a Nomad…. And soon Rom, Kaya, and Roland—all of those she had known in this life—would be dead within a day. Two at most.
The one mercy in all of it was that soon she would be void of emotion.
Jordin glanced at Rislon and the other Rippers. They rode tall in their saddles, pointedly ignoring her, eyes on their leader. None of them seemed to notice that she was even present until she nudged her horse up the hill toward Roland.
“Back!” Rislon snapped.
Ignoring him, Jordin dug her heels into her mount’s flanks and took it to a gallop up the rise.
Roland didn’t move as she pulled up behind him. She stopped a pace off to his right and stared at him for a moment. His brow was beaded with sweat, his hair damp and tangled, matted against his neck. He’d shed his cloak and outer shirt, leaving him in only a sleeveless black undershirt that covered little of his brawn. The tattoos on his arms looked darker than she remembered in the daylight.
Tears had dried on his face, leaving trails of grief on his cheeks and chin. She realized she had been wrong to think he knew nothing of anguish—including the sharpness of her own loss at Jonathan’s death and the guilt she bore now, over Michael’s and Cain’s.
She followed his line of sight to the sun rising above the horizon.
Jonathan was supposed to have risen to power like that sun—light to a world lost in darkness. But here in the Bethelim Valley, the indifferent orb seemed only a reminder that it would outlast them all.
“You blame me,” she said. “I swear to you, I don’t know how they knew we were coming.”
He stared into the sun, as if daring it to burn away his sight.
“Are you going to shun me forever?”
“Who can a dead man shun?” he asked bitterly.
“I’m so sorry about Michael.”
“Don’t speak her name.”
She fell silent.
“She and Cain weren’t the only ones to die—they’re only the first. Isn’t that your argument? That all Immortals die at the hand of a virus created
by Sovereigns
?”
“By a rogue alchemist! One who saw Immortals butcher those he loved! Rather than stand here burning your eyes to a crisp, why not help me think of a way out of this?”
“Dismount.”
She hesitated for a moment, then swung down from her saddle, only vaguely aware of the sore muscles along her back and thighs.
He said, too quietly for human ears, “Call him, Rislon.” And at that moment she remembered that every word she had uttered could be heard by them all.
A whistle from the valley floor. The horse turned and ambled down the hill.
“You want to know my thoughts,” he said, facing her. “Fine. Listen carefully.”
She nodded, miserable. She should be more courageous than any of them. She was going to live, after all. They all faced imminent death. And yet here she was, mired in self-pity, unable to see any advantage.
“Of course I’ll listen,” she said.
“Carefully,” he reiterated. “A person facing the undoing of all he’s lived for isn’t necessarily reasonable, so you’ll forgive me, but it turns out that I am that man. The fact that Feyn wanted you alive only means she believes the virus poses the threat you claim. She would take you and drain your blood in hope of finding an antivirus in short order—clearly she’s as unreasonable as me.”
He took a deep breath and went on, otherwise unchecked.
“If I’d listened to you when you first came, perhaps I would’ve been able to save my people, a fact that only makes my reason seem less stable. Even so, stable or not, the past is done.”
Plain words from a prince. She could not fault his honesty.
“Yes. It is done.”
“And yet, I must say this: it was one of your kind who released this virus. If you feel it was wrong of him to do so, you should have found a way to stop him.”
“What do you think I was trying to do? I came to you!”
“I didn’t say find someone else to stop him. You should have killed him yourself, long ago.”
“He claimed that doing so would only ensure the release of Reaper.”
“Then you should have ensured the loyalty of your subjects long before they could turn on you. I hold you personally responsible for your failure to foresee and stop this event.”
“And I hold you personally responsible for pushing him to the point of creating the virus,” she said. “You should have thought of that before butchering my people!”
“I am life!” His face shook as he pushed the words out, betraying the full rage seething behind his eyes. “And now I will die for that life, as did Jonathan.”
“Jonathan?” She was instantly shaking. “You
dare
speak his name? You rejected his blood!”
“I took his blood while he still lived! I can no more accept your
arguments for the life you claim in his
dead
blood than I could accept a rumor that this parched desert”—he jabbed a finger at the valley floor—“is a lake surrounded by trees. Your life is no more vibrant than this ruined earth!”
“And yours is?”
He lowered his arm. “Ask Kaya. No. Ask yourself. You were Immortal just two days ago.”
Even seething, righteously irate, she couldn’t argue. She was unable to point out his own deep-seated unhappiness for the blaring accusation of her own. How many times had she envied the Immortals their semblance of life—real life?
“In your very being, you fail to live,” he said.
She set her jaw, willed back the tears. If they came now, they would not ever stop.
He gave a slight nod, sighed. “If there’s anything you haven’t told me, say it now. Short of that, I have only one course left before me.”
“There’s always more than one course. You taught me that.”
“Then speak it now. Quickly…. time is no longer my friend.”
She swallowed, trying to imagine the right words delivered with the appropriate conviction. What came out surprised even her.
“I love you,” she said.
He blinked. Stalled.
She glanced away before the tears could threaten again. “I mean, you terrify me, but I’ve also seen who you really are, and it’s not this. I need you.”
Saying it, she knew she was overreacting in a moment of terrible desperation, but she also knew there was more truth behind the words than she cared to admit.
“Maybe I’m only saying that because I know that soon I’ll be alone in the world. I’ll be…. alone.” Her lips were quivering and refused to stop no matter how hard she tried. “But at least I’ll be
alive
.”
She reached out, took his arms. “I need you. To
live
. Live for me, Roland. Please. And we will have time to figure this all out.”
His eyes darkened. “By becoming Sovereign?”
“It’s the only way. I—”
“Never! In another time I might have made you my queen. Now I can offer you only my death” He looked as though he might spit at her. She knew she was a fool for voicing what she knew would be soundly rejected. But she was without options. Utterly desperate.
“We could still go back for Rom.”
“
Go back?
Even now Feyn is gathering her army. She knows full well what I will do. She’s a leader with a leader’s mind, and no fool! There is no trick to play now; no tunnel that isn’t already collapsed. No. I will go for Feyn on my terms.”
“And die on hers.”
His gaze bore into hers. When he spoke again, his voice was even.
“On mine. I have twelve hundred warriors waiting. We will carve out death in Byzantium to honor Michael. We will not leave a soul alive in our wake. It’s no longer
who
we kill, but
how many
.”
In another life, she would have been galvanized by his words. But hearing them now, his life so fleeting before her, they only terrified. “You won’t reach the Citadel!”
“You’re wrong. I was never willing to risk the life of my own. Now there’s nothing to lose. I will spend them all to the last soul. We are dead already. No one has yet seen the full fury of Immortals unleashed.” He leaned in, his lips curled back from his teeth. “But I tell you, it will be a fine, fine day to die.”