by Ted Dekker
“There’s only one man alive who knows what my father used to call me,” she said with dangerous quiet. Her Bloods had ascended the dais, ready to strike the man down at a word. To halt him forever if he moved too quickly.
“The white dove,” he said, his voice graveled but gentle. “Though now her feathers appear to be black.”
“Reveal yourself,” she said, very softly.
For a moment the man didn’t move. And then one of the hands slowly lifted to his head and pushed back the hood of the cowl to reveal a head of long, tangled gray hair. A face darkened to leather by the sun. A face she knew all too well.
“Hello, sister.”
Saric.
She stared, her ribs straining for breath against the bodice of her gown.
The last time she’d seen him, his skin had been alabaster. His veins as dark as hers, his eyes so black as to have no pupils. But now…. here sat a Corpse.
How was it possible? But there—the tan of his skin, once so pale, peeling in places from the sun. His eyes, the pale blue of Brahmin royalty—as pale, almost, as her own had been once. No trace at all of the dark veins anywhere—not even the blue shadow of them that the royals so prized beneath their pallid skin.
He was utterly himself as he had been long ago. And utterly unremarkable.
“How did you survive?” she demanded.
He offered no answer.
“You’re a fool if you think you can claim that throne.”
“I have no interest in thrones.”
She laughed, the sound brittle as shards, echoing up to the domed ceiling.
“Then you’re an imposter. The brother I knew cares for nothing but power.”
“The man you knew is dead.”
“And yet far too alive.” She was shaking with the rage of the past. Of his blood within her. The dominance he had exercised over her. The ways he had both ruined and made her.
“But perhaps you are right. I don’t see a dead man—I see something far more pathetic.” She planted her hands on the table and leaned over it toward him. “I see a Corpse.”
His eyes met hers.
“Do you?” His expression was devoid of emotion.
“I don’t know by what alchemy you renounced the Dark Blood, but it suits you. You always were a fool.”
He offered no explanation. All these years, she had assumed him dead. And yet here he sat.
“How did you get in here?”
“You forget, I know the Citadel as well as I know you.”
“You know nothing of me!” She felt nonplussed. “What do you want this time? Your years of seducing and bending me to your will are behind you. Did you come to beg? Have you seen my army?” She swept her arm out. “Have you seen the glory of them flooding the city streets? I am ten times the Sovereign you ever would have been.”
He remained unmoving, showing no emotion, pale blue eyes steady on her. She could understand his lack of ambition as a Corpse, but there was no fear in his eyes either. Perhaps the wasteland had baked his brain.
“You can’t help but play the role of the pathetic fool, can you? Always wanting what was mine.”
She started to turn away but then wheeled back and spat in his face.
He blinked once but otherwise showed no reaction, even as saliva ran down his cheek.
“Take him away to the dungeons he so loved,” she said to the younger Dark Blood.
“Sister.”
The Dark Blood started forward.
“I have news that will save your life,” Saric said.
“Seize him!”
The guard hesitated. Blinked once, as though confused.
“Sister,” Saric said.
She might have flown into a rage at the guard’s hesitation but for Saric’s use of the word a second time: sister. Hatred swelled in her veins.
She snatched up her hand to stop the Blood.
“No. The dungeon is too good for you. If you would be a Corpse, I should do you the mercy of killing you here.”
“If you refuse to hear me, you will soon be dead.”
Ice flooded her. He knew about the virus? How could he?
“They’re coming for you now. You’ll be dead before dawn. How can you be Sovereign if you’re dead?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“They’re coming for you now.”
He stared at her, unyielding.
“Who?” she demanded. “Tens of thousands stand in guard.”
“They’ve found a way. If you would live through the night, you must stop them before they breach the Citadel.”
Them. The Sovereigns were annihilated. He could only mean the Immortals.
Roland.
“You’re mad.” She gave a brittle laugh. “You speak the impossible. How would anyone make it past my defenses?”
“The same way I did.”
His claim stalled her. Indeed, the Dark Blood had said he’d simply shown up. No one knew the subterranean tunnels of the Citadel like Saric.
“Where? How?”
“Through the ancient maze.”
“I know of no maze.”
Saric slowly pushed back. The Dark Blood beside him stepped back, clearly at a loss for protocol in the presence of a former Sovereign, her father’s successor. “You will find it in the Book of Sovereigns locked in the back vault of the archive.”
“What Book of Sovereigns?”
“Had you succeeded our father as decreed, he would have given it to you, in secret, on the evening of your inauguration.”
“No one has ever spoken of such a book!”
“When I murdered Father and became Sovereign, I took his key.” He slid a simple, ancient-looking key out of a pocket in his cloak and set it on the table. “My gift to you, so you may indeed be Sovereign. Consider my debt paid.”
But of course. When he resurrected her to dark life, he had never meant for her to rule. He had retained the secrets of the office for himself.
She reached across the table and took it as he pushed up from the Sovereign seat.
“Hurry. They will come.”
Saric quietly walked toward the door behind the dais. And then he was gone.
It took her a moment to recover her wits. It occurred to her then that Saric had found a way to become Corpse through some kind of alchemy. As such his blood might hold another key, one that could offer an antidote to the virus.
“After him! Bring him to me alive!”
SWIFTLY, TO the dungeons. She had found the book. Within, a map of the ancient maze. She’d dispatched a thousand Dark Bloods to the assembly grounds within the hour. Death would not claim her so easily a second time.
Now as she descended, the glass object curled in the crook of her arm, she found the storm of her anxiety gone, replaced by cold rage for Saric’s undeterred appearance.
And disappearance.
The first two Bloods had given chase down to the archive, all the way to the laboratory and ancient dungeons, but had come up empty-handed. She’d sent others to hunt him down.
How had he known Roland was coming?
Why had her guard hesitated?
She told herself it was shock. That the Dark Blood standing beside him hadn’t known who to defer to—the seated Sovereign or the former one.
Her own hesitance bothered her even more. That even now Saric had that effect on her, though his blood—now in her veins—no longer flowed through his own. That by the smallest token of a key, she had learned that her Sovereignty had not been complete.
Once more, Saric had disappeared without consequence.
Why had he warned her? To worm his way into her confidence again, no doubt. He would have further surprises in store for her—he always did. This time she would be ready.
Assuming, of course, that she lived.
No word from Corban in all this time. Ammon reported only that he worked feverishly by the hour, thus far without success. He’d taken up work on samples of Rom’s blood taken before his seroconversion
, but she was afraid it was too old already. A living Sovereign’s blood might offer a key to an antidote. But there were none.
She passed the guard to the ancient laboratory and was tempted to step inside Corban’s private chamber, but her presence would only prove a distraction. He needed no further goading; his own life was on the line.
Instead, she strode to the back of the cavernous chamber, toward the ancient cells, directly to Rom’s chamber.
He was sitting along the back of the wall, a shadow beyond reach of the torchlight.
“I have a gift for you.”
Rom raised his head.
She lifted the glass jar that had sat on her desk for hours, morbid and repugnant at once. She saw the whites of his eyes go wide as she threw it to the ground. It shattered with a resounding crash of splintering glass, the heart tumbling to the dirty floor.
Avra’s heart.
Rom leaped to his feet. She kicked it through the bars into the cell. He stared, his face white, knowing very well the implication.
“We found your Sanctuary. The Sovereigns are no more.”
He slowly raised his gaze to her.
“Tell me I’m right,” she demanded. “That there are no more living Sovereigns.”
His eyes twittered, fighting back emotion.
“Speak.”
“Not all of them,” he said.
She paused, felt her veins chill. Was he lying? No, not possible.
“What do you mean?” she said, her tone dangerously quiet.
“There is one more.”
“Ah yes, of course,” she said. “Your precious Jonathan, whom you refuse to call dead.”
“No. Another.”
She stepped toward the bars, grasped them with white hands. Peered directly into the darkness at him.
“Who?”
“The one coming for you.”
“Who is coming for me?”
“Jordin.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MAKE THIS plain to me!” Roland paced before Jordin in the Sanctuary’s great chamber like a lion in a cage. “Tell me everything!”
Michael stood to one side, glaring at Jordin as if she, not the virus, were the scourge that hung over her own life.
Cain leaned against a carved pillar to her left, the seduction gone from his eyes.
The change in them was profound. The realization of Immortality cut short wasn’t sitting well with them.
“I have,” Jordin said. “Maybe you should have listened more closely the first time.”
Michael was on her like a cat, hand around her throat. “You will remember your place, Sovereign!” she hissed.
“I…. do.”
“Release her!” Roland snapped.
That Jordin was the only one in the room who might survive the virus could not be lost on them. If this didn’t give her an advantage, it at least emboldened her. The only thing was, she hardly cared if she lived or died at the moment.
Michael slowly released her grip. “Then watch your tongue or I’ll cut it out,” she said, shoving her.
“Enough!” Roland said, gathering himself. “And yes, I was listening. I want to hear it again. You’re sure the virus was in that vessel?”
“I have no doubt. Releasing it was his great obsession. The vial is marked with an ‘R’ and the virus is called Reaper. Do you need more?”
“And your claim is that this Reaper is carried on the air.”
“It’s no claim. Every Dark Blood who set foot in this place is infected and has taken the virus into the city.”
“Infected. As are we,” Roland said with a glower.
She hesitated.
“Yes. As are your Rippers outside. The virus has a three-day latency, after which every Dark Blood and Immortal breathing today will become deathly ill and die. By coming here, you have executed your own death sentence. I tried to warn you.”
“Does it matter?” he said, sweeping his arm wide. “The damage was done before we came.”
“By Rom,” Michael said. “If everything you say is true, he betrayed all of us.”
“Betrayed you? He fought for you!” She shoved a finger toward the exit tunnel. “He could have destroyed all of our enemies without raising a single blade! Instead he went to Feyn, knowing the danger, to save you. If you would have listened to me when I first arrived, we might have reached Rom before Feyn wrung it out of him. This falls on your head, not Rom’s.”
“Reached Rom how?” she shot back. “Your memory failed you, remember?”
Jordin drilled Roland with a glare. “I was delayed. One day might have made all the difference.”
“By your own stubbornness!” Michael said.
Roland lifted his hand to silence them.
“What happened no longer matters. Only the preservation of our kind.”
“Who are no longer Immortal,” Jordin said.
“Enough!”
The room echoed with his roar.
“Tell me what else you know.”
She turned her exchanges with Rom and Mattius over in her head.
“We have to assume that Rom is Dark Blood and will soon be infected as well.”
“And? How do we stop this virus?”
She gave a faint shake of her head. “There is no way. It will infect the world. All Dark Bloods and Immortals will die. Corpses will come down with a common cold and Sovereigns will probably lose their emotions. The damage is done.”
He stared at her.
She drew a slow breath, not knowing if what she said next might get her killed for the mere suggestion. “There is one way to live. Convert using my blood. Only Jonathan’s blood can save you. It seems that we’ve come full circle.”
“Never!” His response could not have been put more forcefully.
“Not even if it means living?”
“Under the tyranny of fear once again? Never!” He took two strides to his left before spinning back, his face dark. “You forget that we were Nomad before we became Immortal. For five hundred years we rebelled against the Order of fear on principle. I am a prince bound by my own history as much as my blood. Your Sovereignty is nothing but humanity stripped of life. The virus returns us all to Corpse. I will die before I put even a single drop of death-tainted blood into my body and so betray the true life Jonathan brought us!”
His words sank into her mind and heart like lead, pressing hope from her bones. There was far more truth in them than she would have admitted even a week ago.
Mattius, in his shortsightedness, had sentenced the world to a future not of peace…. but of misery.
“I’m the only living Sovereign,” she said. “It’s not certain that I will lose my emotions. But what is certain is that if you refuse to take my blood, you and all your people….”
“Did I not make myself clear? Never!”
Had she expected any other response? Roland would far prefer to die in battle than give an inch to fear or Sovereignty, which he saw as a living death in and of itself. And the example of her own wretched existence had done nothing to convince him otherwise.
Nothing to show him the abundant life Jonathan had promised….
Because she hadn’t found it herself.
She turned away, rubbed her temples with her fingers as if to force cohesive thought through her mind. The door to the council chamber rested closed, as did the door to Mattius’s laboratory. With the world pressing in on her, she couldn’t begin to think of how to properly honor the dead. So many children and elderly…. the thought sickened her. If there was any grace in the situation, it was that they’d died as Sovereigns. And that they had died by sword before fire.
She could only hope that Rom might yet be converted from Dark Blood. And Kaya.
“The virus isn’t proven to kill Immortals,” Cain said. “How could this alchemist know if he hasn’t tested it?”
“Because Immortal blood is the same as Mortal blood,” Jordin said. “He was sure, trust me. Do you truly want to take a chance on him
being wrong?”
“I am known to take many risks,” he said calmly. “The only one I refuse to consider is changing my nature.”
Cain squatted on one heel and looked up at Roland. “Rom may know what she doesn’t.”
Roland glanced at Michael, but she offered no opinion. He’d come to heads with Rom six years ago when the Mortals had split, but any difference between them was now moot.
Jordin seized the moment. “He has a point. If Rom’s a Dark Blood, he may be able to return to Sovereign. His blood might be resistant to the virus in ways mine isn’t, having contracted it.” It was a long shot, and she knew it. “If not, in the very least he may know more than I do.”
Roland’s jaw tightened as he considered her words.
“It was his suggestion, months ago, that one of us might become Immortal to reach you, Roland. He might well become Immortal himself if he thinks it will save you. He’s never abandoned his beliefs.”
Roland gave her a distinctly wry look.
“Don’t you understand? He doesn’t want you to die!”
He hesitated only a moment longer.
“Then there’s only one course of action,” he said at last. “We go to the Citadel. I can only hope you know as much as you claim.”
“I know the way. That’s all.”
“Then take us,” he said, moving toward the exit already. “We will rip Feyn’s head from her shoulders.”
She strode after him. “And Rom?”
His words came over his shoulder. “Let’s pray he can save us all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JORDIN LED the twenty Rippers through the city, flanked by Roland on her right, Michael on her left.
It should have been a time to savor. She, the lone Sovereign, leading Roland and his most accomplished warriors to a destiny of her choosing. Indeed, even now she might lead them astray and leave them to die, forever ridding the world of Jonathan’s scourge.
She could lead them into a pitched battle with Dark Bloods, stand back and watch as they slaughtered each other, soaking the ground with their defiled blood. Or she could use them to kill Feyn and rescue Rom as she had intended. What did it matter?