“You’re still converting. There hasn’t been enough time. Feyn…. it won’t work.”
“Then come with me. Jordin’s here. We’ll find her. Get up. Rom, get up!” Tears were streaming down her face, and she didn’t know why.
“The Immortals need it.”
“You do as I say, Rom Sebastian. I will not see you killed for my actions, for saving me. Corban was right. I’ve consigned enough to death as it is!”
“They were never meant for life, your Dark Bloods. They could never have known life. They hardly knew it as they lived…. and knew nothing of true goodness.”
“For all I know Roland might have been too late to save any of them. Get up—we have to find Jordin!” She slid her arm beneath his shoulder.
“No.” A voice from behind her. “Take mine.”
Feyn swiveled to the voice behind her. Saric stood in the open doorway, eyes on Rom.
“Take my blood,” he said.
Hope sailed up through her chest, but then faltered at something in his eyes. It was the look of them…. resolute. At utter peace.
She stood slowly, gripped by the look on his face.
“Saric….”
She’d looked into Jordin’s eyes and seen utter peace too…. but there was more in Saric’s expression. An otherworldliness, as if already retreating from this reality.
A gentle smile curved his mouth. Tears filled his eyes. “It is so good to see you
alive
.”
Feyn crossed to him quickly, suddenly overwhelmed. “Thank you, brother.” She sank to her knee and grasped his hand, looking up at his face. Her brother, not the Sovereign he had once been, but one who had risen from the ashes to show them all a truer way.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He gently eased her to her feet. “This is the way it was always meant to be. Where I once brought death, I now bring life. I am the grateful one.”
“Then we all find life.”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard.
“Jonathan’s blood has given me life, replacing the Dark Blood in me that took a thousand lives. Ten thousand…. more.”
Something—some unnamed resolution in his voice—sent a chill down her neck.
“But it doesn’t matter now, you see? We are alive, and you can save Rom. You will reign with me, at my side.”
“No, Feyn.” He lifted her hand in both of his own. A tear escaped his eye. “This is no longer my realm to rule.”
“But of course it is! Now more than ever.”
He gently let go of her hands and then slowly crossed to the chair.
“Saric?” she said.
“My journey here is over, Feyn. I have taken many lives. But now I will save Rom and the remaining Immortals.”
“You and Jordin, you mean.”
“No, Feyn. There are more than thirty to be saved. One of us must give all that we have.”
She felt the heat drain from her face. “No. That can’t be true.” She went to him and fell to her knees, grabbing his hand. “You’ve just come back to me. Saric. Brother. There has to be another way.”
He quietly stroked her hair. “No. There isn’t. But this is my gift to give, and a small one at that. One that I’ve waited long years to give, knowing this day would come. Didn’t you yourself die once, for the sake of hope?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then allow me to do the same. Not only for the sake of those who I save, but for mine. For Jonathan. For you. For Rom. For the Immortals who may live through my blood.”
She glanced at Rom to find his eyes resting on her.
“Tell him. Tell him there’s another way!”
Rom quietly shook his head. “He’s right.”
“No! It can’t be! I finally have life—true life—with my brother, for the first time! Why will you take the years to come away from me?” She was weeping as she said it.
“We have the gift of this time. This moment will live, Feyn.”
“But you won’t.”
“Yes, I will,” he said, tipping up her chin. “Just not in this realm. Join me in my joy for that which awaits.”
He glanced up and nodded at Rom, who began to look around him.
No!
she wanted to scream. But even here, there was beauty. She had never seen Saric so radiant in her life.
Rom was searching among Corban’s things. Feyn looked from him to the corner. Ammon was gone. No matter. Rom found the stent and a large basin. He quietly crossed to the chair. Kneeling beside the chair, he took up the stent as Saric drew back his tattered sleeve.
Saric took a deep breath and let it out slowly, face settled with a deep contentment.
He leaned back and laid his head against the top of the chair so often used as a device for interrogation and torture. But in that moment, it looked like a throne.
Feyn reached for both his hands as Rom shoved the stent deep into Saric’s vein. She closed her fingers over his, tears coursing over her cheeks.
As the blood began to trickle into the jar, he turned his eyes upward and stared at the ceiling, lips softened in a quiet smile. She laid her cheek against his knee.
She watched as her brother’s life slowly drained from his body.
“Now I go,” he said, voice barely more than a whisper.
She lifted her head. “Where?” But she already knew.
“To be with Jonathan,” he said, and closed his eyes.
Three Weeks Later
T
HERE WERE SEVEN primary continents in the world. Seven houses that governed them. Seven, the number of perfection. Seven, the seal of the Maker.
The Sovereign who’d proclaimed herself Maker ruled them all from her seat in the Citadel, rising above the ancient city of Byzantium—such was the way of her Order.
But Byzantium had been ravaged by death and war and Order had fallen. Feyn was no longer Maker; she was simply a new Sovereign yet unknown to the sea of citizens who’d been urgently summoned to witness the new inauguration along the old processional way at the Citadel basilica. Among them, prelates, each of the continental rulers, and nearly half of the world’s twenty-five thousand royals.
Feyn sat on the stage staring out at the throngs gathered in fear to hear her words. Fear, because it was all they yet knew. Fear, because they unwittingly breathed death each day without realizing even that they were dead.
Today they would learn the truth.
She looked at Rom, seated in a chair beside her, watching her with the same gentle eyes that had once wooed her in a field north
of Byzantium. The blood he’d given her that day had awakened her to life, but she had never known how abundant that life could be until three weeks ago.
He laid his hand on hers—a simple gesture of assurance. To say that she wasn’t concerned would be to lie. Not for herself, but for those who would hear words spoken that hadn’t been voiced in nearly five hundred years.
Her eyes flitted to Jordin, seated next to Rom, and Roland, who stood across the platform with his back to them, issuing final instructions to three servants who shifted nervously, casting glances her way every so often. How strange she must appear to those Corpses who’d once served under her iron fist. Today, their tyrannical Sovereign had shed her regal robes for a simple white dress. Her eyes, once black, had turned bright blue; her skin, once white, was now the color of living flesh.
Feyn smiled at the thought.
So much had changed.
Fifteen years earlier she’d stood on this very platform, anticipating her inauguration as Sovereign of the world. By the law of the Order, she’d been chosen from among eligible candidates not by peer or by merit, but by the hand of the Maker himself, according to the twelve-year Cycle of Rebirth, which had been completed three times in her father’s forty-year reign. The births of those royals born closest to the tolling of the seventh hour on the seventh day of the seventh month of each new cycle had all been recorded. And she had been born closest of all.
Was it chance or fate that Talus, the first Keeper, had predicted that a Sovereign with pure blood would be born to rule the world? Jonathan had been that Sovereign and he ruled today, but it was she who would rule this world of flesh and blood—“this dream,” as Jordin was fond of calling it.
It all made such perfect sense in hindsight. The order of Keepers, guarding the blood for so many centuries; Rom’s giving the blood
to her; her own death and stasis that paved Jonathan’s succession to the throne; her resurrection that seized it back. Even Saric’s alchemy and her own dark reign. Would she be standing here today if any of it had been different? Would life—true life—now be seated as Sovereign if even one piece of history had not played itself out as it had?
Saric….
Her throat still knotted at the image of him yielding his blood to save the thirty-seven Immortals who’d taken it following his death. Having found life in the desert, he had delivered that life to save not one but many—founding a new race of humans who would in turn offer their blood to the world.
There were fifty-three in total now, having been judicious in the process of seroconverting others, taking the time to think through the massive undertaking before them. They’d agreed to call themselves Mortals once again, to avoid confusion with her office, despite knowing they truly were Sovereign, each and every one of them.
They would never manipulate or force any to take the blood. Never offer clever words of persuasion. Masses regaining the full range of emotions could wreak havoc in a society that had no tradition of dealing with those emotions.
She turned her eyes to the huge crowd gathered before the inaugural platform. They waited in fearful silence—waiting to hear what their transformed Sovereign had in store for them.
With Rom, Roland, and Jordin, she’d carefully laid plans for this day, agreeing not to thrust the truth on the world with too much haste. As a result, she’d told none of the governing body yet.
They would hear it all today. All of them. Across the globe, the blue light of television screens illuminated the city centers of every continent, broadcasting images of New Byzantium.
Traditionally, the observance of Rebirth was required to be witnessed by all. The passing of authority from one Sovereign to another was among the holiest of events. To Feyn’s way of thinking, today was no different; after all, she had truly been birthed to
new life, the first ruling Sovereign to find that life. And so across the world, throughout the continents of Asiana and Greater Europa, of Nova Albion and Abyssinia, Sumeria, Russe, and Qin, the loyal gathered in the hundreds of thousands in every city to watch.
Roland turned and crossed the stage, dressed with Nomadic flare in leather and light wool, his hair braided with dark-blue beads.
Nearby, Kaya sat on a mat, running her hands over the back of Talia’s lion. Having stayed behind with Kaya and four others who did not fight in Byzantium and faced with the prospect of certain death from the virus, Talia had vanished into the desert to face her fate with her lion. The lion had returned alone.
“All will be ready in a few minutes,” Roland said, inclining his head to Feyn.
“I’m your Sovereign, not your queen,” Feyn said with raised brow.
He stared at her for a moment. His eyes shifted to Jordin. “No, that would be another.”
Jordin smiled and stood. Stepping toward him, she brushed aside a loose strand of hair hanging over his right eye.
“And such a proud queen she is,” she said.
He lifted her hand and placed a kiss on her knuckles. “Always.”
“Always,” she replied.
Feyn glanced at Rom and winked. The look in his eyes had nothing to do with Jordin and Roland’s display of tenderness. In close circles it was already known that she and Rom shared a profound love that would surely require a breaking of the tradition that sitting Sovereigns did not marry.
“Consider the stage secure, my Sovereign,” Roland said.
He was still the Nomadic Prince, still the warrior with battle-hardened hands, but in so many other ways he was a completely new man, his strength displayed in love and composure.
If Rom were to lead the new senate, a matter still undecided, Roland would take matters of security in hand. The world would
soon know full emotion as Sovereign blood reversed the death that had kept ambition and anger at bay. Conflicts were bound to erupt. Feyn would need a principled man of Roland’s strength and skill to navigate the dangerous passages of awakened emotions in a raw world.
The prince took his seat next to Jordin and draped his arm over the chair, legs spread out as one who possessed all he could see and more. Once a ruler, always a ruler.
Their first order of business following seroconversion of the Immortals had been to rid the city of the stench of death. Reaper had ravaged the fifteen thousand Dark Bloods who’d survived the Immortals’ onslaught. They’d gone mad with the disease, many of them fleeing into the wasteland, where they died. Thankfully, only two citizens had been killed; Feyn had feared far worse.
Clearing the battlefield had required the work of two thousand men. They’d loaded the Dark Blood carcasses on carts and hauled them into a canyon just east of Byzantium, where they had been burned along with every trace of Dark Blood alchemy, including the samples, the equipment, sarcophagi, and even the papers chronicling their making. The fires had burned for days, illuminating the horizon. When the last of them had burned out, the canyon had been filled with earth, forever sealing in the remains of darkness.
Roland and the other survivors had carefully laid the bodies of the fallen Immortals on a funeral pyre. Together, they’d paid their respects to the dead in Nomadic fashion—with stories, tears, and hope.
It had taken two full weeks to clear the rubble left from the homes of those unfortunate enough to have been summarily displaced by her orders. The mile-wide swath of leveled ground surrounding the Citadel was a stark sight to the royals who’d traveled for today’s re-inauguration. One she regretted. One she would rebuild.
For now, the grounds before the basilica had been planted with trees and strewn with flowers leading all the way up to the bleachers
of the royals—if only to present a less shocking image to those who viewed the broadcast around the world.