Mortal

CHAPTER THIRTY

FEYN CLOSED HER EYES, attempting to shut out the sounds of drums pounding in her skull, as the celebration outside wore relentlessly on. Never had the gulf in her mind been so deep, never the darkness so bottomless, never her confusion so great.

She couldn’t escape the certainty that she clung to a razor-thin wire as storm winds raged, threatening to tear her fingers free. She would fall, but fall into what? More darkness… or freedom?

The only true freedom she’d found since returning to life had come during those hours of absolute submission to Saric. And yet another Maker called to her now. A boy who had once required her death so that he could come to power. Succumbing to the Mortal’s call now would end in another death, she was sure of it.

They’d brought her back to the yurt a couple hours ago when the sheer pain of the Nomadic drums in her temples had become unbearable. A guard stood outside-she could hear him calling occasionally to others in the main camp, clearly disgruntled by his removal from the main body. If the last hour was any indication, he would eventually be relieved and replaced by another so that no one guard would go without his fill.

She’d considered cutting her way out the back of the yurt and making a run for it. She didn’t know where this valley was, only that it was far north of the city. If she headed south she would eventually come across a road or a river or some other landmark, surely. But it would only be a matter of time before they discovered her missing and recaptured her. If folklore about the Nomads was true-and so far all of it had proven accurate-they were expert trackers.

But even if she could escape, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Something else called to her here.

Images of the wild boy crying out from the ruins barraged her thoughts as she sat on the thick mat that was her only furnishing and stared at the lone lamp that lit her prison. His words had stirred more awe and mystery than offense-not only in her mind, but in the minds of those who called him Sovereign. She’d seen it on their faces, heard it in the hush before doubt had given way to revelry’s more persuasive sway.

She hadn’t had an opportunity to talk to the boy, but now she wasn’t certain what such a talk would achieve.

The sudden image of Saric pushed thoughts of the strange boy aside, calling her back to reason. This much she knew: Saric’s blood had given her life, made her Sovereign, and filled her with peace to the extent that she embraced that life. Deviation from Saric, her office, or her existence through him only brought her confusion-the confusion she felt so keenly now, in the Mortals’ camp.

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.