written by their prophets. The fear Dominic felt now was borne of righteousness. He knew without investigating any of Saric’s claims that the man was more than twisted.
He was evil.
Dominic’s greatest fear now wasn’t for his own life. It was that in failing to act today he might have somehow left his fate unsecured. Or that in failing to act in the future, he might achieve the same. He dare not risk Bliss. He feared Hades.
He straightened, his purpose clear. Adjusting his robe, he strode for his office door, yanked it open.
The anteroom of his office was filled with senators. They were only slightly less pale than when they’d witnessed the horrors of just an hour ago.
He dipped his head. “Senators.”
“What would you say?” Senator Compalla of Russe said.
He strode forward, heart set. “Isn’t it obvious? Feyn is our Sovereign. We will serve her without question as we serve the Maker.”
“And what about Saric?”
“Saric,” Dominic said, facing her, “is a blasphemer.”
“And his claims?”
“You dare ask?”
“Not to question.” She faltered. “Only to know where you stand.”
“False! All of them.”
They were in the grips of fear, practically wavering where they stood. A nation could not be ruled like this. A world could not be ruled by the weak.
“I have consulted the archive. He fills your ear with lies. Guard your mind, lest you compromise your hereafter.”
It wasn’t the truth-he hadn’t gone to the archive, he’d spent the last hour pacing. But it
The prudence of his decision-of his own obedience-was immediately evidenced in the slight, but very real, settling on the faces before him.
“We know the Maker exists by his Order,” he said. “And for that reason, hear what I say now. Saric must be stopped. At all costs.” He spun and walked past them.
“And how will you stop him?”
He stopped at the outer door and faced them.
“I won’t. The Sovereign will.”
CHAPTER NINE
EIGHT HOURS HAD PASSED since Feyn had woken to find her world completely changed. And although she knew precisely who she was, in some ways she didn’t know herself at all.
The face looking back at her was not her own. Familiar, yes. So pale. Skin to set the standard of beauty for the world. And right there-the dark vein beneath her temple. So dark. It had been blue before. And her eyes had been palest gray. They glittered now, like faceted onyx.
Feyn turned her head, considered the inky veins spreading up over her cheek like the branches of a winter tree… the tributaries of a black river. A river with a single headwater.
A face appeared beside hers in the mirror.
“You’re beautiful, my love.”
Saric.
Feyn considered him in the glass. The strong line of his jaw, broader than she remembered it. The neatly trimmed hair beneath his lower lip, precise as she remembered it.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
His voice filled her with strange warmth.
He reached around her and unfastened the top of her gown. Pulled wide the broad neck, bearing the scar that crossed from her sternum almost to her waist on the other side.
She flinched-not at the sight of it, but at the sudden memory of the sword. Flashing down, light glinting off the blade. A scream in her ears-her scream as she held her arms wide. She had opened herself to the slashing blade. Given herself to it.
She had died that day.
Feyn clasped the front of the gown, pulled it closed. And then his hands were on hers and pushing them gently away, fastening the hooks up the front.
“Don’t worry, my love. I will remove the scar. I’ll see it gone from you. Nothing will mar your beauty or remind you of that day. Nothing except the fact that it brought you to me. That would please you, wouldn’t it?”
She lifted her gaze to his in the mirror. “Yes.” And then: “Thank you.”
He smiled. “Wait here.”
Her brother stepped away, and she turned to watch as he moved toward the chest in the corner. Her jewelry chest. Here, in her chamber.
She glanced out toward the broad windows at the tumultuous sky, churning beyond the curtain of heavy velvet drawn back on each side. At the dressing table with the large, round mirror. At the bed, too big for one person, or even three. Up, to the vaulted ceiling overhead.
Saric was back, holding up a pair of dangling sapphire earrings.
“You never wore these before. A state gift, I believe, of Asiana on the occasion of your inauguration the day you were taken from me. You always insisted on such simple baubles. But the time for those childish days is over, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is,” she said, as he slipped them through her earlobes.
The old Keeper had said she would not die. That she would sleep for a time… and would live again. And he had been right, in a manner of speaking.
He had been wrong, too.
It had not been sleep.
And now there was Saric, the face she remembered, peering at her distantly, as though from another life.
She didn’t remember him being so muscled, or even quite so tall. She didn’t remember the curve of his mouth when he smiled as he did now.
There had been pain. Pain, worse than the wound that had killed her. She had no doubt now that she had been dead.
Had she been in Bliss, then? She had no memory of fear. Of the eternal torment of Hades that one goes to when one fails the known bar of Order, wherever it might be set, that day, and for that person. And on the day she’d died, she had renounced Order and changed the course of its succession.
How strangely it had all worked out.
“Tell me, sister, did you dream?”
He wanted to hear that she had. She saw it in his eyes.
She smiled slightly.
“But of course you did,” he said in a low, soothing voice. “Of me, I’m sure.”
Her mind drifted to the scene at the senate. Like a dream, but real, alive. Every eye, staring at her. She had been naked, but it hadn’t mattered at first because she was still in the dream, and in dreams fear always manifested as nakedness. A fear that the world would see the dreamer as they really were. That they were never what they pretended to be.
“Of course,” she said, smiling again. She wanted to see him smile. Had Saric been quite so gentle with her
