Hold…. hold….
She held and she saw.
Only now did Roland use his blade, slashing across his body right into the necks of the two nearest Bloods on stage. Throwing it like a knife into the face of a third. Rolling past the rush of three others to come up behind and to the left of Feyn with a large carving blade in his fist.
He was going to reach her, but to what end? The Bloods on the senate floor were already storming the dais from all sides.
Jordin began to walk toward the dais, eyes on Roland. But he had no time to notice her. He threw himself behind Feyn, sidestepping the wicked stab of her knife. He slapped the knife away, spun her around, grabbed her hair with one hand, and tugged her head back at an obscene angle.
His blade was pressed against her jugular.
“Call them off,” he growled.
She struggled, and he pressed the blade against her with enough force to draw blood.
“Off!”
“Back!” Feyn cried.
The Dark Bloods pulled up sharply—all but one. He launched up the front of the dais with a growl. Roland kicked in his teeth with an audible crunch of heel against jaw. The warrior dropped with a hard thump.
The Senate Hall stilled to silence.
Jordin continued down the hall, eyes locked on Roland, who was dragging Feyn back toward the exit behind the dais. That he meant to leave through that door was clear. That he would not leave her alive before he did was a given.
And then he would go out to the battlefield and fight to the end.
Now, Jordin. See. Do what you know to do.
“Roland.”
Her voice was gentle but not without power. She watched the wave of energy leaving her, rushing to meet Roland where he stood. He turned his eyes and stared at her over Feyn’s head, as if remembering for the first time that she was even in the chamber.
“No, Roland.” The words left her mouth as silent, concussive ripples like heat on a blistering road. As they folded around him, he paused, appeared confused.
“No, Roland. Not now.”
His movement stalled, one knotted fist full of Feyn’s hair,
one hand pressing his knife against her panting throat. Feyn’s face had paled to bleached bone, lips drawn back as much in fury as fear.
“Not ever,” Jordin said.
She was acutely aware of every eye on her. That they stood transfixed in the grasp of a power that they couldn’t possibly understand, much less resist. As for her, the entire room had become a waking vision far more real than the stage play that had just unfolded with all of its screaming and leaping and swinging of swords.
Spoiled, angry child’s play. Insanity.
And she, the bearer of serenity.
Of true Sovereignty.
She mounted the steps and rose to the platform, eyes locked on Roland’s. For several long breaths, she rested in the presence within her. Jonathan’s presence, humming through her veins. Of water, tree, trunk, and branch….
Life beyond the veil.
She stepped forward, hardly feeling the floor beneath her feet.
“You, Roland, are destined for the throne. You will rule in a kingdom far greater than the one you seek. In a realm filled with more power than you realize.”
He blinked, eyes squinting in consternation.
She stopped three paces before him. Compassion swept through her like a hot breeze. Roland stood as the Prince of Immortals, waging war on principle, bound by an honor that was as much his identity as the brawn of his frame. He was a man who could snap his fingers to call a thousand Rippers into battle or issue a single word to bring them all to their knees.
And yet here he stood, struggling to hold his own over an orphan girl he himself had once saved to serve him.
One who had come to show him salvation.
She closed the distance between them, only vaguely aware of Feyn’s frantic breath, her long white neck bleeding under his blade.
Jordin lifted her hand to Roland’s face, brushed his cheek with her thumb.
“I love you, Roland.”
The words were borne on white light. It flowed into his eyes, through his skin, washed over the top of his head. And she knew then that she spoke with wholeness, void of posturing or position for gain.
This, too, Jonathan had told her: that she would truly love Roland. That it was Jonathan’s gift to her, to them both.
His brows drew together. A tear broke from his right eye and slipped down his cheek. The misguided bonds of loyalty to his realm resisted unconditional love—a love that knew no status or position. And for his resistance, she only felt more compassion.
“I love you,” she repeated, her own eyes filling with tears.
She lowered her hand.
“It’s time to surrender your suffering. To embrace new power and life.”
He started to speak, but whatever he meant to say came out only as a stutter.
She offered him a shallow nod. “You will see. You already do. You feel my love washing away your deepest fears. Surrender, my love. Surrender and live.”
His face slowly strained with emotion. Surrender didn’t reside in Roland’s world. He knew no such word, knew it only as weakness—never as power.
“Let Jonathan save you, Roland. From this. From yourself.”
His lips parted as tears spilled from his eyes to trail through the spattered blood staining his cheeks.
“Rule with me in a realm where all sit on the thrones of love. Let Feyn go. She will be Sovereign of this world. It will be her burden to bear, not yours.” And then, “Let her go.”
She knew it was not her but the truth in his own heart that he obeyed as he relaxed the blade at Feyn’s throat. He lowered his knife, released his grip on her hair.
Feyn jerked forward and spun out of Roland’s grip.
Jordin’s glance lingered a second longer on Roland. “You will see, my prince. I promise, you will see.”
“Kill them!” Feyn cried, voice filled with wretched dread.
But her Dark Bloods were either too confounded by the strange power in the room or struck by the sight of their maker so twisted by terror to move.
“No,” Jordin said, turning to Feyn. Her deception was deeper than Roland’s, flowing to every cell in her body through veins blackened by alchemy. But the life she had tasted once many years ago still lived behind that darkness, a tiny ember waiting on only a breath of love to fan it into flame.
“No,” she said again. Waves of light streamed between them.
Feyn was lost to rage. She shoved a trembling finger at Roland and spewed her demand, spittle flying past her lips.
“You will kill them!”
“No!” The force of Jordin’s shout filled the room with a thundering echo that surprised even her.
Feyn’s face knotted in confusion. She slowly lowered her arms and took another step back. She was visibly shaking. “You have no right….” Her voice was thin and desperate. “You….” She seemed to lose track of her intention, so taken off guard by the one crushing word hurled in her face.
“No, Feyn,” Jordin repeated more quietly. “The time for death is done.” She stepped closer. “I’ve come to give you the power you were born to possess. As Sovereign.”
“I….” Feyn looked around her, lost.
“You were born Sovereign, the seventh chosen by time in the Cycle of Rebirth. You are to reign over the world, not as Dark Blood or Corpse, but as Sovereign.” Jordin watched the truth of her words flow out to Feyn.
“Hear me. Jonathan came to be Sovereign, but not in this realm. He came to bring a new realm to a world lost in death. And he died so you could bring Sovereign light to them all.”
“I…. I’m going to die,” she said softly.
“No. You aren’t. Saric knows this now. I know it. You, too, must know it.”
“I am the world’s maker.”
“Maker only of your own pathetic dream. A dream that leads to misery and death. But that’s not what you were chosen to do from the beginning.”
Her lips spread wide in a silent, desperate plea.
Jordin moved toward her, reached out for that trembling hand. She took it gently in her own. Lifted it, eyes piercing the veil of confusion thick in the Sovereign’s eyes.
She spoke in a low, sure tone. “You must allow Jonathan’s blood to bring you life. The ancient blood that Rom gave you made a way. Only then can you awaken to the Sovereign Realm where Jonathan rules, alive.”
She reached into her pocket and withdrew the object inside it, given her by Saric. Two simple stents connected by an arm’s length of tubing and a rubber bladder pump. Feyn went rigid.
Jordin held her hand firmly.
“Everything has happened as it was meant to, Feyn.” Still grasping Feyn’s hand in her left, she slid her right hand to one of the stents and lifted it to her own arm.
“Everything.”
She slid the sharp metal tube into the vein on her arm, welcoming the prick of pain.
Feyn began to whimper. Her body shook from head to foot as the dark blood in her screamed with revulsion. Tears streamed down her cheeks to drop from her chin.
Across the Senate Hall, Saric stood, unmoving…. tears glimmering on his cheeks.
The darkness in her mind will resist,
Jonathan had said.
But Feyn is far stronger than even she knows. Bring her to life, Jordin. You have my blood. Bring her to life!
“Surrender,” Jordin said, gazing into Feyn’s bloodshot eyes. The agony in them broke her heart, and she briefly wondered if she would have the strength it took to climb out of such a deep well of despair.
“Surrender.”
Feyn closed her eyes and began to whimper as the tears streamed down her face. Then a wail—a piercing keen that pushed her Dark Bloods back in terror.
Her trembling legs lost their strength; she dropped to her knees before Jordin. Mouth open in an anguished cry, she opened her eyelids to slits. Her body was rebelling, but her dark eyes were begging for life. For a spark of light. For rescue from the torment that racked her soul.
“Take Jonathan’s blood. Find life,” Jordin said, pushing the velvet sleeve of her gown up her arm. And then she shoved the stent deep into the inky black vein in its crook.
She wrapped her fingers around the bulb halfway down the tube and pumped. Saw her own blood, crimson red, flow into the tube, through the pump itself, then down the tube and into Feyn’s arm.
Feyn’s wail swelled to a piercing shriek. She jerked back in recoil, but Jordin held her arm with a firm hand.
“Find life, my Sovereign. Find life.”
The words streamed as white light, flowing over Feyn’s face and chest, even as she screamed as one being flayed alive.
Because she was.
“Life,” Jordin whispered gently.
But the wave of light from her last word was not gentle. It slammed into Feyn and smothered her cries of pain.
The Sovereign’s body shut down, and she crumpled to the floor as one dead.
F
EYN’S PULSE exploded in her ears, unbearably loud and growing impossibly louder by the second. Fire seared her veins, ignited her nerves. Somewhere in the distance, someone screamed.
I die,
she thought.
At least it would be for the last time.
She gave herself to the blackness when it enveloped her, to the excruciating pain that dragged her from that oblivion. To the terror.
It came on her like a black wave, filled her lungs and darkened her eyes. Fear, guilt, shame, pride, anger—all at once. She sucked for breath, found there was none. In the drone behind the drumming of her heart, a distant chuckle, slow and ominous. The screaming again, rising up over the laughter, too loud to be human.
Let me die. Let it end.
The accusation of her every failure. Of the blood on her hands. The deaths added to her conscience. Their faces were before her—Seth, Dominic, countless thousands. The Corpses in Byzantium, fleeing, begging, pleading for their lives. The women ruined by her Dark Bloods. The Corpses condemned by her domination. She could never repay it. The burden of pride, of eclipsing the Maker, of aspiring to a seat she could never fill with even her greatest hate, ambition, or desires. Futile. Empty. Black.
She couldn’t bear it.
Screams again, unending screams. Her own.
Maker, take my life!
Hades could be no worse than this.
But then it was worse. Her body was on fire. She clawed but found nothing, not even air, blind in a sea of tar.
And utterly alone.
There was only this—an endless space populated by her own grief over what could not be undone. A price that could never be repaid.
The drums began to fade. The laughter had already rumbled to nothing.
Silence and darkness settled over her like a blanket.
Even her thoughts, her pleas to die, were gone.
Silence. Darkness—for how long, she did not know.
Only when a bare drone edged into the silence did she become aware of anything. It began as a vibration somewhere in the distance, flat and as unending as a line, stretching in either direction, never meeting east or west. Never ending. A hum, growing in undulation until it was not one note but two. A broadening ribbon of sound in a space otherwise empty—no, not empty at all but filled with a spectrum of sound.
Bands of light. Color. Filling the void, impossibly full, doubling on itself. East. West—never ending.
And now, an explosion of light! It blinded her, though she knew she did not see with her eyes. Impossibly bright.
Drums in the distance. They came, faint as a pattering step, thrumming as a pulse. As a heart pounding to rapid and dizzying life.
She was waiting for the laughter. It didn’t come. It would never come. The guilt, the shame…. where were they? The wish for death, the pain of it. Where was the sting?
She sucked in a breath, felt it rush into her lungs,
felt
it enter her very cells, the minute workings within them vibrating with it.
Time to wake.
No.
I will be with you.
Never leave me.
She blinked her eyes open. An electric fixture, glowing overhead. Something remembered and distant. The hum was fading, and she closed her eyes.