“Here, liege.”
“You brought her?” His heart drummed to a thundering crescendo within his chest.
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
“In stasis.”
For a moment he could not move. Could hardly fathom the good fortune that had found him with these words. But this was his destiny, and the day of that glorious fulfillment had finally come.
Breathing deliberately against the terrible new hunger that flooded his veins, he strode forward, barely aware now of the floor underfoot, the walls that hid his legion from an unwitting world, the air he breathed.
He swept past Corban and walked down the stone corridor, quickly now. Silks-red, the color of life-billowed out from the wall in his wake like lungs, lifting with crimson breath.
He did not ask where they had brought her. He knew.
Violins assaulted his nerves, ricocheting off the basalt stone of the corridor. He passed several of his brood- Dark Bloods as evolved, nearly, as he. They knelt the instant they saw him, their heads swiveling as he passed to descend the vast stair at the far end of the fortress into the subterranean chamber below. Dimly lit, it reeked eternally of chemicals and formaldehyde. Of death-one of the two things so offensive to Saric.
But he hardly noticed that now. There, on the great steel table in the center: a body sheathed in cloth, one arm dangling off the edge, snaked through with tubes. The skin, where he could see it, still perfect…
He willed his breath to slow again. Inhaled.
“Leave.”
He waited until the test tubes along the far wall, neatly stored in their racks, untouched in years, ceased their jittering shudder after the great doors slammed closed.
Only then did he notice the silence-the music did not reach this chamber. But in this moment, silence was the only appropriate sound.
With reverent fingertips he peeled back the cloth from that face. From the long line of that neck, shoulders, and torso, unblemished all this time except for the red marks where the tubes had been sewn in to keep her alive. From the seam of a great scar where metal sutures had once held it closed.
He lifted the hand, righting the pale moonstone ring that had twisted on Feyn’s slender finger. He lifted it to his lips.
“My love,” he whispered, turning his cheek against the delicate backs of those fingers. “Now we will embrace the full power of life… together.”
CHAPTER THREE
HIDDEN DEEP IN THE SEYALA VALLEY, twelve hundred Mortals began their routines after a late night of revelry. A daily rhythm of gathering, hunting, grazing horses, and consuming life with eagerness bound up in the imminent promise of the boy’s coming reign. After five hundred years of oppression and death, the entire world would soon be ruled not by the statutes of Order, but by life.
By Jonathan.
But those twelve hundred living souls were oblivious to the turn of events that had brought strange new death among them in the dead of night.
Roland and Michael had returned to camp before dawn. Now, six hours later, the Council of Twelve convened in the temple ruins built into the craggy cliff. Here, in the temple’s inner sanctum, the ancient windows still boasted an array of stained glass, the only ones still intact.
Roughly thirty paces deep, the chamber lay beyond the outer courtyard. Richly woven rugs covered the pocked marble floor and ran past the stone benches up three steps to a small platform. An ancient altar stood at its center, draped in burgundy silk embroidered with the emblem of Avra’s heart. Avra, the first Mortal martyr. Atop the altar lay a simple volume propped on a wooden stand. The Book of Mortals. Within it were recorded the names of every Mortal and the date of his or her rebirth as well as an exact translation of the Keeper’s ancient vellum that had put every event in motion to make such life possible.
Torches lit against the overcast morning threw warm light on the exposed stone of the chamber’s six pillars standing like sentries down the length of the room. But they did little to lend color to the ghastly pale Corpse gagged and bound to a chair at the foot of the platform.
Rom Sebastian, Keeper, First Born Leader of the Mortals and protector of Jonathan, stood before the Corpse, carefully considering what this turn could mean.
Nine years had passed since Rom had drunk from the ancient vial of blood that had brought him to life and sent him on a quest to find the boy foretold by Talus.
Talus, the man who had created Legion, the virus that had stripped the world of its humanity five centuries ago, who had sworn to undo his grave offense.
Talus, the geneticist who’d calculated the coming of a child in whose blood that same virus would revert.
Talus, the prophet who’d established the order of Keepers to protect a single vial of blood-enough for five to wake from death and protect the boy from those forces that would seek to kill him.
Talus, who had penned the ancient vellum by which Rom had found the boy.
Rom glanced up once at the gathered council. Jonathan was conspicuously absent, as always, preferring to be with the people rather than deciding protocol. No amount of persuasion had changed that in him. And so the Council of Twelve was truly a council of eleven-seven Nomads, including Roland and Michael, who refused to sit, and four Keepers, including the first Corpse convert, a woman named Resia, and those two who had first joined Rom nine years ago: Triphon and the Book.
The Book, as the aging Keeper was called, kept his long white beard unbound in ways that mystified the Nomads, who braided everything, including the manes and tails of their horses. He had, however, adopted the long, dark leathers of the Nomads, which leant him a surprising air of youth despite the snowy white of every hair on his head and chin. In fact, the man had seemed to thrive in the wilderness, though Rom knew it had less to do with the Nomadic lifestyle and more to do with the new blood flowing through his veins since having experienced, at last, the thing he had hoped for all his life: the true life of Jonathan’s blood.
Triphon, sitting next to him, had grown his beard in recent years along with his hair. Both were braided, tied with the threads of the warrior. Red, for the Corpse kill. Black, for prowess in the games. He rarely wore the long coats of the Nomads, having never learned the patience for the elaborate beading and time-consuming needle and leatherwork with which each fighter distinguished him- or herself, but had adopted the simple leggings and hooded tunics that served all Nomads well-particularly in a fight.
Michael bore signs of fatigue, if only in the scowl that curled the corner of her mouth. Council proceedings were well known to try Michael’s patience. As did Triphon’s stares.
Rom turned his attention to Roland. The Nomad stood, arms crossed, beside his sister. No one would have guessed by the set of his jaw that he had gone nearly three days on so little sleep. Or that the prince with the wealth of beads in his hair and such an eye for artistry was as brutal a warrior as any Rom had ever seen.
The Nomadic Prince slid him an unwavering gaze.
“You say there were four of them?” Rom said.
“Five.”
“All as strong?”
“Except for the one behind the bar.”
“And they’re now dead.”
“They were always dead. Now they’re ash.”
So he’d burned them in Nomadic custom. If the Nomads had their way, every Corpse on earth would be better turned to ash than turned to life-a sentiment Rom could only barely understand.
“Weapons?”
“Swords, axes, knives. Heavy steel.” Roland withdrew a twelve-inch bowie knife from behind his back and tossed it at Rom, who deftly plucked it from the air. The butt was black steel, as was the blade, polished so that it glistened like oil in the torchlight.
