by Ted Dekker
“I’ve told you—”
“You’ve told me you have their secrets. And it appears you’ve ingested one of them. But I need more.”
“More?”
A knowing smile twisted his lips. “More.”
“I can tell you about their ways.”
“But you see, I know about the keepers’ ways. Probably more than you do. We’ve tracked them for centuries, since their formation. We killed the last of them just days ago, not counting this Book fellow in my dungeon. So that won’t do.”
If she let herself think too much, fear would overtake her. She couldn’t afford that.
She moved closer, pushing aside her dread. “Life runs rampant in my veins. Right now. It’s vibrant. It hums. I feel everything.”
He said nothing. She imagined it was because he’d been caught in her spell.
“Have you ever been with a woman who’s consumed life and love?”
He closed the distance between them, ran his thumb along her cheek. “Tell me where to find them.”
His words rang in her mind like a bell. Find them? He just said he had killed all the keepers.
“Find who?” she asked.
His fingers toyed with the tie that drew her dress tight around her neck. He pulled it loose and slid the edge of her dress aside.
Not until he bared her shoulder did Avra remember her burns. His gaze twitched, and then he stood transfixed by her scarred skin.
For an unbearable breath, Saric remained frozen. His eyes lifted to hers. His face transformed into a mask of rage. His hand flashed up without warning as he slapped her with an open palm.
She reeled, gasping.
She’d been played.
Saric didn’t have Rom, did he? He was looking for them, and one of them was Rom.
“I don’t have your pathetic man,” Saric snapped. “He kidnapped my sister, the Sovereign-to-be.”
“You lied,” she gasped. It was all that came to her frantic mind. Shame flooded her, scalding and hot.
“You’re deformed,” he snapped. “Is your whole body like that?”
“No.”
He eyed her as if trying to decide whether his thirst for her had dried up. He turned on his heel and strode away.
“Put the word out to every radio, every paper, every outpost and city within a hundred miles. Let it say this: Rom. Return what you’ve taken within twenty-four hours or Avra dies.”
Corban nodded. “And what about her?”
“Have her sent to my private chamber.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
They had no more water. They had no food. But as she and Rom rode toward the closest outpost in the settling darkness, fatigue, thirst, and hunger were the last things on Feyn’s mind.
Rom was sitting behind her, his arms around her. She leaned back against his chest and closed her eyes. She could imagine, almost, that it was another day in another world. That this torn dress was the only one she owned. That she was no ruler-to-be, but the richest gypsy in the world, with scrub grass and anemones for her carpet and stars as her evening jewels.
Almost.
There was Byzantium, waiting for her. A dead capital for a dead world. She shuddered. Rom’s arms tightened around her.
And then there was the fact that the two thoughts together should have made her weep.
But they didn’t.
She had first felt her emotions start to wane three hours ago, when she and Rom decided they must return. She would not go to her estate, but return to the city, they decided. She had been prepared to release the keeper called the Book and to help shelter him and Rom’s friends outside the city, where they would be safe for the time being. Safe, but away from her. There had been such great hope in his eyes as she had said it, and though she had thought it beautiful just a few hours earlier, she was no longer able to re-create that sentiment.
Something was changing. Was she really willing to risk so much by releasing the keeper and bringing forth this boy, assuming such a boy even existed and could be found?
“Rom?”
His cheek brushed against hers as the horse moved beneath them.
“I’m losing this,” she said. “It’s leaving me.”
He said nothing. What could he say? He turned one of the hands around her upward and she laid her own against it, clasping his tightly.
“Does this mean I’m dying?”
“If what we read is accurate, we’re both destined to die again. It’s only a matter of time. The difference is that we know it.”
“I wonder what I’ll think about love, having known it.” She turned, as much as she could, and he clasped her against him. “Promise me. Never let me forget what it was like.”
“Which part?” he whispered.
“All of it. Love. Joy. Hope. Sadness. Don’t let me forget what it was to be alive, even if it was only for a day. Promise me.”
He didn’t respond immediately. “You’re afraid you’ll forget?”
She faced the horizon. Afraid. Soon it would be all she was capable of feeling. “It’s leaving me, but I don’t want the memory to leave me, too. I don’t want to forget. Is that too much to ask?”
“Of course not. I promise.” His hand tightened around hers.
She knew he said it to make her feel better. But the more the afternoon waned, the less she needed his assurances. She wasn’t quite as sure why it was important to remember.
Which only alarmed her—if less than before.
I am dying.
She closed her eyes and thought of the warmth of him behind her. The sun on her face, fainter now, through the clouds. Her skin was no doubt still flushed from more sun than it had seen in years. She thought of the anemones like drops of blood on the knoll.
Blood. Blood. So much talk of blood.
All of it felt so distant now. Had she really danced with Rom through the grass in the rapture of the day? Had she kissed his lips and lost herself in their wonder?
When she was seventeen, an alchemist had treated her for a broken bone after a fall from her horse. To help with the pain, he’d given her medicine, and it had filled her head with a numbness that washed away the ache.
She felt that same vagueness now. Numb, after a distant dream.
The outpost they’d been riding toward came into sight, lamplight shining from its lone window. Soon Rom would leave the city, perhaps never to return.
“This boy,” she said. “What if he really is alive?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what happens then. The keeper said to find him—”
She gave a short, mirthless laugh.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The keeper said to find him, and the vellum said he must come to power. You do realize that’s impossible, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I was born within seconds of the seventh hour. It is almost statistically impossible that the boy, if he existed, would be born closer to the mark than I. In which case he would be, at best, next in line.”
Rom tilted his head, considering her words.
“If he really was born and if he’s still alive and close enough to the mark to be next in line…it would still be impossible for him to come to power.”
“Why?”
“Because I would need to die before my upcoming inauguration. Only then would rule pass to the next in line. But once I become Sovereign, succession will be recalculated according to the cycles of Rebirth within my reign. And only the new set of candidates will be eligible to succeed me. So I would need to physically die—”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m differentiating. Because I’m already dying in one sense.”
“You’re not dying.”
But I am. I feel life slipping away. And then I can feel it a little less…
“As Sovereign, you could change the law.”
She knew, though, what Rom did not: The senate would never allow it. But all she said was, “Maybe.” Then: “I can
understand the appeal of Sirin’s Order better now than before, I think. With the burden of emotion, logic suffers.”
“So say the dead,” Rom said.
“Now you’re mocking me?”
“Of course not. You’ve known life.”
“Nevertheless, I’m dying, Rom. I took less of the blood than you did and it’s already leaving me. I no longer feel either the joy or the sorrow of this morning. Think of it, a whole world of the unwitting dead. Lost to love. Lost to beauty. Like walking corpses. But now it hardly even seems sad to me.”
She drew one of the ragged scarves down over her head as they neared the outpost. The world need not know—must not know—that their future Sovereign was missing. No doubt her father and brother had done their best to shield the world from news of her absence. It would not do to have the masses in a heightened state of fear.
The outpost was a small building offering only simple supplies: dry goods, water, some medicines.
Feyn realized she had no means of paying for anything as a commoner. “I don’t have any money,” she said. It was a strangely delightful thought that caused her to smile, even if she did not laugh as she might have earlier.
“Luckily, I’ve got a banknote.” He grinned.
In front of the outpost was a channel pumped with safe, treated water. The stallion dropped its head and drank thirstily.
“Can I trust you not to go anywhere?” Rom said after he dismounted.
“Yes. You can.”
It took him less than five minutes to find what he needed.
She was gazing in the direction of the city’s storm clouds—always circling like gray vultures—when he came running back out of the outpost. His face was ashen.
“What? What is it?” The old familiar fingers of fear reached into her mind. She felt it—welcomed it, nearly.
He held up a paper. It was a public notice, drawn up with the seal of the Citadel. It would have gone out to every government office, outpost, and transport station in the area for immediate posting.
Her skin prickled at the message:
This notice goes out to that one who has fled the Citadel Guard, the outlaw Rom Sebastian. Return what you’ve taken within twenty-four hours. Avra’s life depends upon it.
No picture. Nothing but those words so stark on the page.
“Saric,” she whispered.
“Your brother? He’s got Avra? We have to go!” He reached for the saddle.
“Go and do what?”
He tore at his hair, paced away and back. In a way she pitied him for all of his angst, for this strange love that had ravaged both of their minds in the fields.
He looked at her with frantic eyes. “I don’t know. But I have to go,” he said, making to remount behind her.
“No, Rom.” She swung down.
“What are you doing?”
Yes, what was she doing? She was dying, she knew that now, and in a strange way she could not help but welcome that death. For all Rom’s refusal to speak plainly about the implications of the keeper’s words, she could not ignore them. The only way for any such boy to come to power would be for her to die before she became Sovereign.
In the throes of life, she would have leaped from a cliff for love. Now that passion felt like a vague and distant thing. Surely this idea of a boy—romantic as it seemed—was a fantastic notion as well.
And yet she had no desire to see any harm come to Rom. None at all.
“He’ll kill you. You took me. That was treason. You can’t return.”
“Feyn…” The look on his face was purest anguish.
He loves her.
“Take the horse,” she said.
“What about—”
“I know my brother. He wants you, but more than that, he wants me back safely. I’ll get Avra.”
His eyes were filled with uncertainty. She understood. Earlier today, he could never have trusted her with his own life.
“How do I know?” he asked.
“You doubt me already?”
“Please tell me that you still believe all of this,” he said.
“All of what?”
“You see?” He motioned at her with an accusing hand. “You’re losing it! Not only your emotions, but the reason that goes with it! This isn’t just about feeling. Emotion brings with it a new kind of thinking. You no longer believe?”
Something about his fear rang true.
“In what?” she asked, scrambling for reason.
“In the boy!”
“I don’t know. He may exist. If so, you may be the one to find him.”
“I mean that he’s destined to be Sovereign!” Rom blurted.
“Based on an ancient vellum? It defies everything, Rom.” Her sudden doubt surprised even her, and she immediately restated the matter so as not to alarm him. “I’m not saying I don’t believe that the virus somehow altered humanity, Rom. Clearly something changed in me when I took the blood. But I can’t say that I believe you will find this boy. Or that I am meant to die so that he can take his rightful place.”
“No one said you would die.”
“How else would he succeed my father?”
To this he said nothing.
Feyn looked away. “It doesn’t matter. What does is that you and I shared something I won’t forget. For that I will help you and your friends. I will save Avra for you. I will see that the keeper is safe.”
“And what if I do find the boy?”
She shrugged. “Then fate will take its course.”
He stared at her, brow wrinkled. There was more playing across his face, a veritable riot of emotion. Desperation. Fear. Frustration.
“Rom? I promise you. I’ll help Avra.”
“And then what? What am I supposed to do?”
“Stay away. They’ll be looking for you and I can’t immediately put an end to that. Get out of the city. Find a hiding place.”
“I’m meant to find the boy! I can’t just hide in fear.”
“Then go find the boy!” she said. “But you must understand that my brother won’t easily forget what you’ve done. The city will be a dangerous place for you.”
He threw his arms wide. “Find him where? Feyn!”
She’d considered the question of the boy as they rode, and each mile had only solidified her certainty that he could not exist. Really, what was the vellum but legend and myth? Wishful thinking…false hope? The blood was more likely an intoxicant than true life. Religion had once been full of such claims. Perhaps it was what had gotten under her brother’s skin.
And yet just an hour ago she’d half believed in it, herself.
“The family who had the deformed infant…,” she said. “I think you might be able to find them.”
“How? Where?”
“Not the boy, mind you. But I could direct you to the family my servant spoke of. Go on your quest, just stay clear of the city.”
He paced, one hand in his hair. “And Avra?”
“I’ll be sure that she knows you’re alive.”
“Tell her to wait for me. She’ll know where.”
“Of course.” He did not appear fully convinced. “I won’t betray you, Rom. I owe you that much.”
“For what? What have I done but kidnap you? You’ll soon forget all of this.”
She reached for his face and offered him a gentle smile. “For showing me love, however fleeting, however distant it may seem.”
Why did saying that fill her with such misgiving?
He took her hand in both of his. “Then don’t forget. Please, I’m begging you. What we shared was real.”
“How could I?”
But they both knew how. And that it was she who now spoke the words to comfort.
By the time she had directed him and given her stallion one last kiss on the neck, fear was all that remained behind, settling over her like a gray cloud.
So this is what it is to die.
She could still see the sadness in Rom’s eyes as clearly as if h
e had voiced it.
A beautiful day. A day for another life.
“Thank you, Rom, son of Elias. We’ll soon meet again.”
He turned in the saddle. “Remember, tell Avra I’m alive and well. Tell her to wait for me.”
“I will. Now go.” She slapped the hindquarter of the horse.
She watched him gallop east, wondering if she would ever see him again. It was amazing how quickly her thoughts had shifted. The green hills and their bright flowers seemed so far away.
Feyn turned her gaze to Byzantium where the world awaited its Sovereign. Her name was Feyn and she would rule as none had yet ruled, with wisdom and kindness as commanded by the Order.
And what if Rom does find this boy, Feyn?
A slight shiver ran down her back. But Rom would find no boy, because there neither was nor would be another Sovereign.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Dawn had the audacity to bring not his sister or the interloper Rom Sebastian, but feeble, useless light.
Two days until inauguration.
Saric stalked before the great window of the Sovereign’s office, raking back his unbound hair. At his command, word of Vorrin’s death had never gone out. But of course, Pravus knew. Somehow, he always knew. And he had paid Saric a visit a few dark hours ago.
The unspoken threat of his coming to the Citadel had disturbed Saric deeply. But not as deeply as seeing him here in person.
“You assured me a smooth succession,” the hooded alchemist had said. His quiet, more than his implied threat, had set Saric on edge.
“And so it will be.”
“It won’t be if we have to contend with Feyn’s death first. And so quickly on the heels of Vorrin’s. The senate has full right to demand an investigation.”
“Have I failed already that you come to rebuke me?”
He had not slept or bathed since Pravus’s visit.
Now he stared out at the impassive face of the capital and wondered if he really might watch his reign crumble like so much sand under a wave.
The message had come, as he had known it would: an urgent note from Rom, the pathetic lover of the scarred Avra.