Sovereign

by Ted Dekker

  Across the room a sofa sprawled low to the floor, another stack of books near the foot of it rising halfway up the height of a candelabra housing no less than a dozen candles. She had never thought Roland the scholarly type, but there on the chaise, one of the books was upturned, open, as though it had been put down in haste, like a lover left in the middle of the night.

  He’d removed his cloak, rolled up his sleeves, and was pouring wine into one of two pewter goblets that sat on an ornate wooden table. He lifted the cup, drank half of its contents in one long gulp, then set it down and topped it off before filling the second. Without turning to face her, he pulled the tie out of his ponytail. His hair cascaded to his shoulders. She had never seen it without the braids, beading, and feathers of the Nomadic warrior. But now, plain as it was, it might have been the envy of any woman.

  He took another drink before he rested one muscular hand on his hip and drew a breath in through his nostrils. She couldn’t see the expression on his face, but she guessed it well enough by his impulsive movement. In her offer to be of service, she’d managed to awaken the beast in him.

  Lead him, Jordin.

  Lead him where? Jonathan felt as distant as her Immortal senses and left her feeling just as hampered. She couldn’t understand why her memory was so fragile. Why she could hardly remember what it meant to be Sovereign, much less the details of where she’d lived or what specifically she was to do. Those details flitted through her mind, as elusive as specters.

  Other memories, however, echoed with unmistakable clarity.

  Why do you resist what is real?

  What was she resisting? Was this chamber real? Was the distinction between Sovereign and Immortal real? How could she accept what was real if she couldn’t remember?

  Why do you forget who you are?

  Who was she? A Sovereign, yes, but who was a Sovereign? Was her memory so tied to her blood as to remind her only what was important to the nature of that blood?

  She’d died and then come back to life, she knew that much. The ordeal had been explosive, filling her with barely containable joy. But as the ecstasy of it had faded, her memory had with it, and now, without a clear context, she felt bereft of identity.

  How she wanted back in the womb of that rebirth, to know who she was with as much clarity as she’d known it then. She couldn’t remember feeling this way the first time she’d taken Sovereign blood, six years earlier. Why this time?

  Why do you forget who you are?

  She wanted to scream: I don’t want to forget. I want to know who I am! Instead she stood at a loss, breathing deliberately through her nostrils, as if she could force memory into her mind like breath into her lungs.

  Roland set the cup down and turned to face her, both hands on his hips. For a long time he only stared at her, eyes black. She was supposed to hate him, wasn’t she? Yes, she had hated him.

  She’d come to kill him. That was right—she’d come to use him for something and then kill him. She could remember that much as well now.

  Did she really hate him?

  “Why am I here?” she asked.

  He watched her as if undecided.

  Jordin glanced around the room, struck again by the richness of it. It was filled with objects of comfort, peace, light. Every token of abundant life. And yet she knew somehow that Roland had forgotten who he was as well. For as much as the room had been designed to exude warmth, it could not suppress the chill of its cold stone walls, or chase the darkness from its corners. Just as the wine on the table could not guarantee rest.

  “I don’t know what’s happened to me,” she said, facing him. “I’m sorry…. I know you aren’t pleased, but I just can’t seem to remember things.”

  “This is what it means to be Sovereign?” he said. “It’s no wonder you’ve become so miserable.”

  “Miserable?”

  “Perhaps more now than before you took the dead blood.”

  Misery. Now she remembered that as well.

  “No more playing,” he said. “You came to me with wild claims that a virus threatening all Immortals will be released unless we deliver Feyn’s head to your alchemist. My council seems to think your intentions are less than noble. That you don’t have the strength to survive so you’re resorting to deception with our demise in mind. That this nonsense regarding your memory is nothing but a charade.”

  Slowly the pieces of her puzzle, her mind, began to fall into place.

  “Your council’s wrong,” she said. “I swear on my life, my death and resurrection have swept my mind clean.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I think it is.”

  A slight, wry smile softened his face. His gaze slipped down her body to her toes. He appeared genuinely curious, but she suspected his show of interest was only his way of manipulating her. He stepped to the table and took both goblets in his hands.

  “If only I could read your mind and know, Jordin,” he said, turning. “Honestly, I don’t know whether to take you seriously. Sovereigns are nothing like I imagined.”

  “And what did you expect?”

  He came to her and offered her one of the goblets.

  “I don’t know. Something less interesting. They say you’re conniving. But I see only a lost girl here in my room.”

  He was attempting to soften her. To win her trust. Perhaps more…. She felt her pulse quicken, but she wasn’t sure why. She knew that she hated him, but her heart hadn’t yet fully caught up with her mind on the matter, which in and of itself served as a warning.

  She did hate him. Feyn’s wasn’t the only head she’d promised to deliver.

  “No need to be frightened,” Roland said. He lifted the pewter cup to his stained lips and took a sip. “Truth be told, I have more faith in you than my council. I expect you’ll prove me right.”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Drink. We took this wine from a transport bound for the Citadel. Wine stolen from the Sovereign’s table, may she die in misery.”

  Jordin took a token sip if only to appease him before he took the goblet from her hand and placed both on the stack of books on the table beside the bed.

  “You might prove your loss of memory to me.”

  “You already know I’m telling the truth,” she said. “If I knew what it is you wanted to know, I would tell you. Sovereigns are nothing if not truthful.”

  “Oh, I’m sure.” He took her hand and lifted it, turning it over slowly. “Tell me, is it also true that Sovereigns love Immortals despite our differences? Wasn’t that Jonathan’s way?”

  She wasn’t sure what to say. Love, yes, she supposed. But love?

  His eyes met hers. “No?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He traced her hair with his fingers. “I find myself strangely taken with you.”

  “You have the queen.”

  “She doesn’t share my bed.”

  The confession surprised Jordin. Even in her state of disorientation she couldn’t mistake his intentions. He was testing her to see if she recalled her hatred of him.

  “My mind may not be as clear as it should be,” she said, “but I know I’m not here for love.”

  “And here I thought love was all that Sovereigns cared about, being so saturated with it. You must know pleasure as few can.”

  She knew he could hear her heart racing like a spooked horse. Feel the rising heat off her skin. Smell her perspiration. He might even mistake it for desire.

  Was it?

  He couldn’t possibly be sincere. And if he was, she dare not fall prey.

  And if it was sincere?

  She could not return his affection.

  Another thought on the heels of the last: rejecting him would only undermine his trust. Winning his affection, on the other hand, might gain it.

  Roland stroked her cheek with the back of his forefinger. “I never would have guessed that I would find the sight of the skin I left behind so appealing.”

  She hesitated. “We wer
e the same once.”

  “We were the same an hour ago.” His voice was soothing. “You are the one who changed, as you did six years ago. So. Show me what it means to be Sovereign.”

  “How can I when I don’t remember?”

  “You’ve forgotten how to love?” Roland’s lips brushed against her hair, his breath hot in her ear. “Then let me show you.”

  She felt like a trapped animal. Worse, a part of her did not want to push him away. And that frightened her.

  His raw power called to her like a drug, terrifying and alluring at once. Her salvation came in a simple thought: whether he was truly drawn to her or toying with her, Roland obviously liked his women strong.

  She withdrew her hand from his, stepped away, and turned to face him, her jaw set. “The fate of your kind is in the balance, and all you can think about is your bed? Am I just a flower to be plucked?”

  He looked genuinely stunned. “Is that what you think?”

  “How could I not?”

  His face, so pale, had actually gone a shade of pink.

  “What you need is locked in here, and not below my waist. Help me, don’t seduce me!”

  “I am helping you!” he shot back. She was surprised by how easily she’d set him back on his heels.

  “How?”

  “I’m trying to free your mind.”

  “Along with my dress?”

  “Perhaps some liberation of your body would also liberate your mind.”

  “And that’s all you were thinking.”

  Roland gave a soft laugh as he relented. “Not entirely, no.”

  She glanced at him sidelong.

  “You find me attractive.”

  “If I were pressed to,” he said. Then, as if in a forced confession, “Yes.”

  “Only if you were pressed? Like one forced to consider the crumbs on the floor?”

  “I said I find your skin appealing, didn’t I?”

  “My skin.”

  He hesitated. “More.”

  “Then it’s a little more too much. I’m Sovereign, one you would kill, not bed. Or have you lost your memory as well?”

  His face went flat.

  What was she doing? She’d gone too far. This was Roland, the prince of the Immortals. Her enemy.

  Whom Jonathan had loved.

  Lead him, Jordin.

  She needed him as much as he needed her. She couldn’t afford to leave him feeling dejected—too much was at stake. Already he was turning away as though he might call for Rislon or dismiss her.

  She took a quick, deep breath and reached a hand to his shoulder.

  “Roland. Please. I’m here because the stakes are as high as I’ve said. From the day you left, I despised your choice. I would never come to you unless it was my last option. You want the truth? That is it. There’s more, I’m certain, but I need your help to remember it.”

  He stepped away, and her hand slid off his shoulder. But then it came.

  “The keys to the Sovereign lair! The Citadel!” she blurted out.

  He threw back the rest of his wine, set the glass down, and, casting her a dark glance, began to pace, hands on his hips. He looked more like a sulking lion than an Immortal prince. But then, his predicament was as uncertain as hers, wasn’t it? For a moment, she wanted to comfort him.

  Comfort him? This man who’d seen to the massacre of so many Sovereigns only a year ago! What would stop him from taking the lives of those who remained in short order?

  Nothing.

  And here he was, shrouded in comfort. But for as magnificent as he appeared, he exuded misery.

  As did she.

  Why do you forget?

  A heavy weight settled into her heart. She was filled with Jonathan’s blood but without peace, a hollow vessel, a vacant thing.

  Jonathan had abandoned them all.

  The air itself felt too thick to breathe. Despair edged into her mind. Her only cogent thought was that she must not allow Roland to sense it.

  But it was already too late. She couldn’t hold back the tears that filled her eyes. She stood frozen, hating herself, as one slipped down her cheek.

  And then they flowed silently, unrestrained. No amount of will could stop them.

  Roland had stopped his pacing and was watching her, but her vision was too blurred to see his reaction.

  “I’m sorry….,” she managed, turning half away. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

  “It’s all right.”

  His voice was low and soothing, and it pulled a sob from the deepest part of her heart. She had to gain control. Her show of emotion was unbecoming, if not for an Immortal, then without question for a newly made Sovereign. What would any Immortal—let alone the world—think of such a reaction from one claiming to have the love, joy, and peace of Jonathan’s blood in her?

  Roland crossed to her, put a hand on her arm, looked down into her face. She stared up and saw the face of a gentle man, not the powerful warrior who’d hunted Sovereigns and conquered women. He brushed her tears away with his thumb.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  She finally found a semblance of control.

  “I’m lost,” she whispered.

  He stared at her for several moments, touched her cheek, and then drew her to his chest. They stood still, her breath too hot in the air between them, her tears too mortifying on the black silk of his shirt.

  His arms too willing to be strong around her.

  He released her, and she hauled in a heavy breath as he strode for the door, where he turned, hand on the lever.

  “You will sleep here tonight, alone and undisturbed. Find yourself, Jordin. If what you say about this virus is true, the lives of my people will depend on it.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  YOU SHOULD be honored,” Feyn said, gliding along the length of the heavy stone table on the dais. “It was on this very spot that I came to new life.”

  The man on the table did not speak. Corban had fastened a gag around his head and trussed him like a sacrifice—binding his hands and feet, cutting away his shirt, securing his head with thick bands to the surface of the table. But she had a feeling he wouldn’t have responded. He was given to quiet in this last stage of his zealotry. Soon the delusions that propped up all his naïve beliefs would collapse.

  She would show him suffering. And she would also show him perfect peace.

  Feyn turned away. “You realize that it’s a kindness I do you,” she said, her voice carrying perfectly throughout the tiered chamber.

  The electrical lights in the old Senate Hall had been turned on, dimly illuminating the paintings of another millennium on the ceiling. Just above the dais, a large dark blot above the place where the senate torch once burned day and night obscured what might have otherwise been a priceless work. She’d often thought she could just see an image resembling a hand, forefinger extended, emerging from the edge of the black mar that had only darkened over the years. It was meant to burn forever, that torch.

  Until the day she extinguished it.

  She turned back as Corban finished his preparations, propping Rom’s eyes wide open with metal instruments that looked wickedly like clamps but had the opposite effect. Rom lay faceup, eyes wide in the stainless steel frames. The scissorlike handles gleamed above his temples. Corban had asked to study the change in Rom’s eyes during his conversion, and Feyn had granted the request.

  His breathing was labored, if steady. Controlled, though audible enough to betray what had to be an accelerating heartbeat. He thought he knew what was coming.

  He had no idea.

  She hadn’t touched the table since entering the chamber, standing back as Seth and another of her Dark Bloods lifted Rom onto it. Though she wouldn’t trade who she was today—for which she ultimately owed Saric gratitude—she’d never been able to repress revulsion at the sight of the stone table since the day of her making. She would’ve had it destroyed had it not been the symbol of the Sovereign’s presen
ce in the theater of world government. It was as much a tangible reminder of the Sovereign’s headship over Order as the Sovereign was the visible hand of the Maker on earth.

  No one had known that the table was the main reason she’d stopped attending senate hearings. After that, it hadn’t been such a leap to disband the senate entirely.

  “Soon, the burden of loyalty for your people—indeed, of any knowledge that troubles you—will be gone,” she said. “You won’t live in misery, hiding from the sun as you have. You’ll eat from my table. You may even sleep in my bed, if I grant it. And you’ll know peace absent of struggle, loyal to one will alone: mine. Think on that in the hours to come. You’ll need something to cling to.”

  Corban folded his hands behind the table, waiting. When she nodded, he lifted a simple stainless steel stent attached to a clear rubber tube with a second stent on the opposite end. She suppressed a shudder with sheer willpower, conflicted by the urge to kiss the instrument of her own conversion.

  “My liege,” Corban said, gesturing to the space beside him.

  “You realize this is an honor I didn’t give even Corban,” she said, coming round the side of the table. “But Corban won’t begrudge you, will you, Corban?”

  “Your will is perfect, my liege,” the alchemist said.

  But of course the man was jealous. Which one of them wouldn’t have bitten off his own arm for the opportunity to receive what Rom was about to receive: a full dose of their Maker’s blood drawn directly from her.

  She lifted the hem of her heavy sleeve. Blood red, hemmed in gold, black onyx glittering along its edge. Folded it back, baring the dark vein just below the surface of her skin.

  The mitigating factor of Corban’s envy—aside from his inherent desire to please her—was his own curiosity. He seemed aware of nothing but his precise movements as he wrapped a tourniquet around Feyn’s upper arm and applied astringent to the vein. She felt the cold bite of steel as he slipped the stent into her arm.