“Sire?”
His eyes opened. Corban stood ready, stent in one hand. Saric silently presented his forearm.
“I beg you do not do this!”
Dominic’s protest was cut short by the dark glance of one of Saric’s children. Saric hardly noticed. His attention was on the stent in Corban’s hand. The bite of its razor edge in his vein. He gasped, softly, as it slid home.
Black blood spilled into the tube. Filled it to the clamp halfway along its length.
He held the device in place as Corban slipped the other stent into Feyn’s jugular. The alchemist lifted his eyes to him.
Saric nodded.
Corban removed the clamp from the tube.
For a fleeting moment, Saric became aware of how perfectly still the chamber had become. Fear ruled the hearts of those within Order. But he was the Maker now. They would remember this day. His supremacy. The glittering eyes of the Dark Bloods upon them so that none dared utter a sound.
His blood entered Feyn’s jugular slowly, pumped by his heart in a transfusion of life. He let it flow, curling his fingers into a fist, willing it to flood her. It would not be a making like his at the hands of Pravus, but one perfected, both more potent and refined. He’d brought only six to life in this way.
They called elected Sovereigns to-be “sevenths.”
Feyn, his half sister, Sovereign of the world, would be
“Sire?”
Saric ignored Corban, eyes fixed on his arm.
“Sire, it is enough.”
“No.”
Corban would only inform, never protest. He’d been Saric’s first and could never betray him. As with all of Saric’s children, his heart was not his own, but solely owned by his Maker.
He waited until he felt the first hint of depletion and then went a moment longer, his heart surging, tenaciously pressing blood into her lifeless body. Dominic backed away, lips moving in prayer.
To the wrong Maker.
“Now.”
Corban moved to reclamp the stent, but before he could, Feyn’s eyes snapped wide. Her body arched, the small of her back jerking a full foot off of the stone table.
Corban swiftly slipped the stent out of her neck.
For a full beat, her contracting muscles held her in contortion, impossibly bent. And then her mouth suddenly spread wide and she sucked in a thick lungful of oxygen. Her ragged gasp echoed through the hall.
She collapsed on the table, eyes wide. And then she clenched them tight and screamed.
It wa a raw scream of birthing in excruciating pain that Saric himself so longed to feel. He had not been made in this way, but how he wished he had been!
A second scream chased the first, joined now by a hundred cries from the assembled dead on the senate floor.
Saric tore the stent from his arm and stepped back. Blood dripped down his arm. He did not gloat, he did not smile, he did not offer any sign of satisfaction. All were beneath him.
He simply was. Maker.
Feyn collapsed against the table, panting, clawing at her neck, legs stiff. The solution that had kept her in stasis had preserved most of her muscle, but it would take hours to recover any semblance of her former mobility.
And a few days for the pain to leave entirely.
Saric stepped to her and gently lowered his hand to her heart. It throbbed beneath his palm, beneath the sudden flush of her skin. Of his life, become hers. She absently tore his hand away, oblivious, twisting in panic.
He slapped her face. “Hold!”
She stared with wide, dark eyes, seeing him for the first time.
“Hold,” he said, with tenderness this time. “The pain will pass.”
She whimpered once and settled.
“Better.”
He leaned forward, kissed her lightly on her forward, and whispered his will into her very soul. “My love, my Sovereign… Rule for me.”
Tears slid from the corners of her eyes, toward the table beneath her.
Saric snapped to Corban: “See to her.”
And then he turned to address the senate chamber, now roaring with fear and dissonant confusion. Many were out of their seats, some crowding the aisle, some close to the doors. All in horrified shock.
He held up his hands.
“Esteemed members of the senate, leaders of Order, I have but one question to put to your leader before your witness, here, in these hallowed halls. He will speak truth for all to hear on pain of death.”
They expected him to turn to Rowan, the Regent. Instead, he faced Dominic, who immediately glanced at Rowan with questioning eyes.
“Feyn is alive,” Saric said, done with mincing words. “Chosen at birth by the laws of succession as our rightful Sovereign. Does she or does she not retain full claim to the Sovereign office?”
His mouth opened but he didn’t seem capable of speaking. His eyes darted to the stone table where Corban and one of his children were easing Feyn up by the shoulders.
He blinked. “If she-”
“She breathes. She bleeds. The same as you. No. Better than you, now. Was she not designated by birth rightful Seventh in line for Office?”
“Yes.”
“Louder. Speak the truth for all to hear!”
“She was-she is.”
“I will permit you to live.”
He walked over to Rowan, who was now only a frail mirror image of his former self. “Forgive me, old friend, but there can only be one Sovereign,” he said quietly.
His hand flashed with a speed they would soon come to know all too well. The knife beneath his vest filled his fist. Before any could see, much less react, the blade slashed through the Regent’s neck, four inches deep.
Blood spurted from the man’s jugular onto the dais floor. Rowan grabbed at his head in an attempt to keep it, eyes already fading. He toppled with a loud crash as Saric turned his back.
Corban and one of the Dark Bloods had eased Feyn’s feet to the ground. They stood her upright, facing the Senate Hall. She trembled, leaning to one side, weak as a fawn staring out at the world for the first time. Such terrible beauty. Heart of his heart. Blood of his blood.
“Now,” he said to those on the chamber floor. “I present your Sovereign. You may kneel before her.”
The senators looked from one to another, only the barest rustle of turning heads and bodies shifting in seats filling in the oppressive silence of the chamber.
And then one man moved.
Dominic.
He stepped slowly forward. A motion born of obedience-not to the man on the dais, but of a lifetime of Order. The Sovereign stood, alive. And so he knelt.
The rest of the chamber followed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE CORPSE SPY might as well have walked into the council chamber and told Rom that the Citadel had fallen into the ground. No. That news would have been far better received.
