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  Feyn lay back on the mat and stared at the yurt’s framework. Rom’s undying idealism had plied her mind more than she’d thought possible. Memories of him had stirred her like an eddy muddies the waters of a river. And yet even nostalgia paled next to Saric’s siren call.

  He was her Maker. Not Rom. Not Jonathan.

  The door suddenly snapped wide and Feyn jerked up on the mat. There, in the opening, stood Jonathan, dressed only in a loincloth, chest rising and falling as he hauled in a breath as though he had run all this way. The loincloth clung to him, damp and still stained, though he himself seemed to have washed, as though he had leaped into the river on the edge of camp. Judging from the damp look of the feathers in his braids, that was exactly what he had done.

  There was fire in his eyes.

  “My Sovereign,” he said, stepping in as the door fell shut on its wooden frame behind him.

  Feyn stood up, unsure what to say.

  “They told me you’d come to see me,” he said. He spread his arms. “Tell me, do I look like a Sovereign to you?”

  She stared at the young wild man before her, this boy who would be Sovereign, as words refused to form in her mind, much less her mouth.

  “Then again, what should a Sovereign look like? The fact is, none of us are who we appear. For nine years you were in a grave, living in death. And I was a boy, dying to live. So which is it, Feyn? Who will live and who will die? Isn’t that the question on everyone’s mind?”

  Uncanny boy! He was obviously crazed.

  And speaking the truth.

  But whose truth?

  “It’s my honor to see you again, Sovereign.” He stepped forward, took her hand, dropped to one knee, and kissed the back of her hand.

  The moment his lips touched her skin, something within her reeled, careened off balance. Darkness threatened to envelop her. She gasped and jerked back, startled by her own visceral response. To the thing that had just threatened to swallow her whole.

  He went on as if nothing had happened. But of course nothing had. She was tired and hadn’t eaten enough today, that was all.

  She suddenly became aware of the fact that she hadn’t spoken since his brash entrance.

  “Forgive me… You caught me unprepared,” she said.

  “But you are prepared, Feyn. The question is, am I?” He paced like a young lion, one hand raking through his braids, eyes darting side to side. She could hardly reconcile this frenetic young man before her with the quiet one who had appeared just days ago in her chamber with Rom. “So what is it?”

  “I’m sorry… What is what?”

  “What are we to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jonathan stopped pacing and looked at her. A smile formed on his face.

  “It’s all right. I do.”

  “You do.”

  “Yes. But again, the question is whether or not I’m prepared. What would you say, Feyn? You’ve studied the role of a Sovereign all your life. So, am I?”

  “Prepared?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought I was prepared. I find in truth that I hardly am,” she said with strange honesty.

  “But you know you’re meant to be Sovereign.”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet, I know that I am to be as well. And so here we are. One seat of power, two Sovereigns. It’s a dilemma, isn’t it?”

  “So it seems.”

  Jonathan began to pace again, speaking, it seemed, to the canvas walls as much to her.

  “I take it you have no intention of relinquishing your Sovereignty to me.”

  So forthright. So enigmatic. What an exotic young man he was. So strangely endearing. How powerful he could become!

  And how dangerous.

  She’d recovered enough to choose her next words with care. “Should I?”

  He glanced at her. “You’ll know what you must do when the time comes. Tonight I just want you to know who I am.”

  “I believe I know.”

  “Then you know I will be Sovereign. That tonight you will swear your loyalty to me,” he said.

  His audacity knew no bounds. “Really. You know this.”

  Jonathan stopped and stared into her eyes. Calm settled over him like a mantle. When he spoke next, his voice was reasoned and laced with certainty.

  “I know that you long for love, Feyn. That only death will give you the life you seek. That the one who enslaves you now will die before you. That love, not Order or any code, will win the hearts of the dead.”

  Saric… die? Barring his tipping his own hand to an assassination attempt, he couldn’t possibly know that.

  Jonathan searched her eyes and she suddenly felt powerless to look away.

  “I know your longing, Feyn. How desperately you desire love. It’s why you once gave your life for me. I will never forget.”

  She gave only the slightest of nods.

  “I will repay that debt. We will rule the world, Feyn… You and I. Not like they expect, but we’ll rule, mark my words. This world cannot be enslaved by an Order designed to appease an exacting Maker. We’ll come to terms, you and I.”

  She wasn’t sure what to say.

  “If there are problems when I come of age in two days, you and I must play our roles unified. Do you know where the old outpost at Corvus Point is?”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  “Five miles northwest of here. There’s an old road—you have to look for it because it’s completely missing in places.”

  “The Citadel would have records of such a road.”

  He nodded. “Five miles northwest. Meet me there, alone, in two days. We’ll come to terms, you and I. Can you do that?”

  “Perhaps.”

  He smiled. “I will count on you. But tonight I only ask for your loyalty.”

  “Forgive me, Jonathan, but—”

  “Would you like to see the truth?” he said.

  “The truth?”

  She watched, confounded, as he spat on his palms. And then, before she could back away in shock or protest, he closed the gap between them with two swift steps and laid his hands on her eyes.

  The world darkened as his palms shut out the light. But in the next moment the night swallowed her whole, a vortex sucking her into the abyss—a place she immediately recognized as the same from when he’d kissed her hand just minutes earlier.

  She pushed him away with a cry.

  “What are you doing?”

  But when his hands left her face the darkness remained, blacker than tar.

  “See yourself, Feyn,” she heard him say. “The blood in you.”

  Terror seized her, cutting through the soft yolk of horror that flooded her veins. She didn’t see darkness as much as feel it—a black, living maw to suck her in, as though into the pit of death itself.

  “Is this the path you will follow?”

  Feyn heard the question, like a call from a far horizon, but her mind was locked in crushing panic. She lurched, shaking, flailing for direction, but there was no up or down, no right or left. There was only the suffocating certainty of death.

  Her only remaining instinct was to scream, but her lungs refused to push enough air into her throat to give it any voice. The room filled with a dreadful whimper—her own.

  Free me!

  “When the times comes, you will deliver the world new life, Feyn. Free yourself from Saric. We will be Sovereign, you and I.”

  A hand touched her cheek and she instinctively wrenched away. As if sucked into itself, the darkness receded. Light flooded the room.

  Feyn stood, trembling, staring into Jonathan’s somber hazel eyes. The lamp still burned, seemingly brighter than before. Distant drums still carried the night’s celebration. She was still alive.

  Her lungs expanded her breath returned—but with it, a sorrow as unnerving as the terror that has preceded it.

  “I’m sorry,” Jonathan said. “I had to help you understand.”

  Tears flooded her eyes and spilled
down her face. She reached out for him and dropped to her knees. Grasped his hands and pulled them to her.

  There, with her face pressed against his fingers, Feyn wept.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THE MORNING AFTER PAST GATHERINGS, Roland had woken with pounding in his skull and exhaustion like languor in his limbs as he rolled over to cradle the body next to him, never sure until later whether it was wife, concubine, or other. Such disorientation was synonymous with that celebration to him—the only possible conclusion to the defiant catharsis of the night before. This morning, however, he woke tense, far too clear-headed, and alone.

  The thing that had woken him came again: Michael’s unmistakable voice, shouting his name.

  He leapt up from the mat where he’d attempted an insomniac’s fitful sleep a scant three hours ago, hurried to the door of his yurt, and squinted into the new morning light.

  Michael was running toward him, fully dressed, bow over her shoulder.

  “She’s gone.”

  She….

  It took him a moment to reorient himself and place who “she” might be. Images from the Gathering strung through his mind. The dance, the food, Avra’s heart, Jonathan’s crazed behavior, Feyn…

  He looked sharply to the north, the direction of the yurt where they’d kept Feyn under guard. “What do you mean?”

  Michael closed the gap between them, slowing to long, urgent strides, panting. “The Dark Blood. She’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “Gone. Escaped. With her guard.”

  “Which guard? Ours?”

  “The putrid Dark Blood she brought with her. I told you it was a mistake from the outset. It was far too dangerous!”

  With a curse, he rushed into his yurt, shoved feet into boots, tucked a knife into the waist of his pants, and grabbed his sword and the tunic he had discarded last night. And then he was striding out the yurt and after Michael, who was already running through the sleeping camp toward the horse pen. One of the Nomads he recognized from the late watch was there, hurriedly helping to saddle Michael’s horse as Michael began to saddle his.

  “Who was on watch?” Roland demanded, buckling on the sword.

  “Narun and Aron,” Michael said. “Aron ran into camp this morning. The Dark Bloods took the horses. Narun is still there.”

  Roland pulled the tunic on, pushed the man out of the way, and cinched the saddle girth himself. Then he and Michael were tearing out of the pen, away from camp. North.

  Within twenty paces of the two temporary yurts, he could already tell that the unmistakable odor of Dark Blood was gone.

  Narun rushed to meet them as they dismounted ten yards from the larger of the two yurts.

  “They cut their way out the back. Neither one of us ever heard—”

  Roland closed the gap between them with a single stride and slammed his fist into the man’s jaw. Narun reeled back and fell to the dirt, hard. He clawed for purchase and began to rise, but Roland struck again. The guard collapsed to his back and rolled to the side, spitting blood. It streamed from his mouth and nose into a tuft of grass.

  “Roland!” Michael hissed.

  Roland looked up, hand on the man’s collar, fist drawn back for another blow. He dropped the Nomad back to the earth, kicked a spray of dirt onto the guard’s face, and stepped over him.

  Michael stared as he stalked past her, but said nothing.

  He flung the door wide and stepped into the yurt. One glance at the precise cut in the thick canvas told the story clearly enough.

  He spat to one side.

  “We don’t know where she got a blade,” Michael said, stepping in behind him. “We checked them both for weapons when they came. Best guess, she got it somewhere between the Gathering and when Jonathan came to see her.”

  “Jonathan came? Here?”

  “That’s what they said. To talk to her.”

  Could the boy be careless enough to have had a weapon on him? He was losing his senses along with his potency. Even if he did become Sovereign, he’d have to be babysat by the hour. Then again, Jonathan’s ascension was now the farthest thing from the realm of true possibility.

  Feyn had escaped to run straight back to Saric. Not only did she have no intention of abdicating any portion of her Sovereignty to Jonathan, she now knew the location of the Seyala Valley and every Mortal living within it.

  They could move camp. They could mobilize in hours. But then a far more final option presented itself.

  Roland swung around, stepped past Michael and ducked out the door of the yurt.

  “We have to call council,” she was saying.

  But the council meant delay.

  “No council.”

  He strode toward his horse, Michael following at his shoulder.

  “How long have they been gone?”

  “According to Aron, no more than two hours.” She paused. “You’re going to kill her.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  He swung into his saddle without looking at her. “I will do what should have been done two days ago.”

  “Then I’m with you.”

  “No. I need you here.”

  “Not this time, brother. Let the others make preparation.” She flung herself onto her mount and pulled it around. “This time I see it through.”

  He was about to assert his demand but then thought better of it. Eliminating the threat Feyn presented wouldn’t put an end to the larger threat Saric presented to all Mortals. He would become Sovereign in her wake—with twelve thousand Dark Bloods at his command. Saric had to die today as well. How, he did not yet know, but to this end Michael would prove helpful.

  “Get word to Seriph. Tell him to keep his silence. Meet me on the south side at the river bend.” He spurred his horse. “Quickly, Michael.”

  Rom had slept the sleep of one for whom the world might promise to take a turn for the better.

  Feyn had come. She’d seen the appetites of life—true life. Not that fabricated existence that came from the work of Saric’s alchemists, but directly from Jonathan’s veins. More important, despite Jonathan’s crazed behavior on the ruin steps, he’d agreed to see her. The guards said he had emerged from her yurt in good spirits.

  Rom prayed it was a good sign. He’d seen the way the boy had looked at her the first night they’d gone to her apartment in the Citadel, just after her resurrection. Perhaps Feyn’s regal ways and calculated poise had made an impression on him as much as he on her. But he hoped above all else that Jonathan’s ability to make those near him see might affect her—and deeply. As deeply, perhaps, as it had affected him once.

  It had been nine years since Jonathan had opened Rom’s eyes to a vision of Avra at peace. The crippled boy with the penchant for dreaming the second side of reality had been an instrument of the Maker’s Hand that day. Not an erratic man or a blood savior or a living spring of Mortality, but one who helped others see in a way unachieved by any Mortal to date.

  Surely, he could help Feyn see as well.

  And help Rom to remember.

  All of Jonathan’s promises to date had been fulfilled. All of them. Even in the midst of Jonathan’s waning potency and Feyn’s strange and staunch loyalty to Saric, the thought comforted. Jonathan’s promise would not fail this time, either. Years from now, when Mortality ruled the earth, Jonathan’s strange behavior, the conundrum of his waning blood, the growing factions within the Mortals—even Triphon’s death—would be seen as trials rather than defeat.

  He closed his eyes and drifted into a half sleep, thinking again of Avra. But this time her face lengthened and her skin paled. Her hair, so auburn in life, darkened to near black. As did her eyes. Until her face was not the face of Avra at all… but of Feyn.

  Feyn, who had not taken part in the wild rites of the Gathering and might even now be awake in her yurt on the edge of camp.

  Rom sat up. Had the impassive lines of her cheek softened? He didn’t dare hope.

  But
he did.

  He dressed and went out into a camp littered with the evidence of celebration. Spilled cups and empty plates of mostly finished food. Clothing, a random boot here and there, abandoned where it fell. Embers dying in cook fires outside yurts, the pots over them open to any who cared to eat. The drums, still aligned on the steps, their drummers long gone…

  The tripod and the slashed bowl of blood hanging like an empty husk over a macabre stain of blood upon the dais.

  He turned away, headed for Adah’s yurt, likely empty—she was known to have a lover across camp—but knew he would at least find enough food for Feyn. He made it only halfway there when he saw the guard striding toward him. Relief relaxed the man’s face and he broke into a jog.

  One of the Nomads. Up early. Too early.

  “What’s happened?” Rom demanded.

  “Suri found you?”

  “For what?”

  The man blinked. “I sent Suri to find you—”

  “Why?”

  “He went to your yurt just a minute ago. I—”

  “I’m not in my yurt, clearly. What’s this about?” He resisted the urge to take the man by the shoulders and shake him. He had run dry of patience days ago.

  “Seriph says the Dark Bloods have escaped. The woman and her man, they’re—”

  “What?”

  The man took a half step back.

  Why would she escape? She had talked to Jonathan! She had seen!

  But then a different thought assaulted him.

  “Where’s Roland?”

  “He’s gone after her.”

  In that moment, Rom knew two things. The first was that Feyn had betrayed them. Either she’d played him all along, or Jonathan had finally crumbled and undone all that Rom had worked for.

  The second was that Roland was going to kill her.

  “When?”

  The man shrugged. “Half an hour.”

  “My horse!” Rom snapped, spinning back toward his yurt. “Now!”

  Roland and Michael had tracked Feyn and her guard to the south; the scent of Dark Blood clung like webbing to the leaves and branches.

  There were the more mundane signs as well: broken twigs, crushed grass, hoof scuffs on rocks, horse sign and tracks on soft earth.