Mortal

love somehow… I don’t know. But can’t you see Saric’s intent is to enslave the world? He has no intention of offering freedom to anyone-least of all you.”

There was so much he wanted to say, all carefully rehearsed in logical sequence. But that had fallen by the way now.

“Saric stands against every ounce of true life and freedom in Jonathan’s veins! He’s not only a dictator, but the enemy of life itself. He would replace one virus that at least brought peace with another that will give him absolute power. We both know that Saric intends to kill you and reign himself. You must have concluded at least that much!”

She glared at him and he prepared for her anger. But as her eyes misted, he couldn’t help but gentle his tone.

“Forgive me, I don’t mean to be crass. The fact is I can’t bear the thought of any harm coming to you. But the law is clear. If you die, Saric is Sovereign. By bringing you back to life, he ensured his own rise to power. It’s only a matter of time before he decides the time has come to seize that power.”

She didn’t snap back with witty comments or arguments that undermined what had to be patently obvious. A storm was brewing in her mind and Rom meant to feed it.

“I only seek to protect your life and ensure Jonathan’s destiny. Think with me. You saw the vellum, the prophecy. You believed it. You gave your life for it once; please don’t offer your life to undo it all.”

“According to you, I was never alive.”

“Not true. You were for that day. And it’s that part of you that I appeal to now. Tell me, is Jonathan’s life false?”

“How do you know that there aren’t many ways to life? How egocentric-how ethnocentric-does one need to be to say, ‘Mine is the only way’?”

“Who’s to say that Saric’s life of bondage should be the way?” he snapped. “He will lead you into death as surely as Jonathan would return you to life!”

Rom stepped in front of her and took her hands.

“Feyn,” he said, looking into her eyes. “You and I were united once. You believed in the words of Talus, the Keeper whose account you translated that day in the meadow. Do you remember?”

“I do,” she said quietly.

“Everything you translated about the blood and Jonathan was true.”

Her expression was impassive.

“You gave your life for it, Feyn. You’re not a woman of rash action, so I understand your struggle now. You were trained to think strategically, methodically, all your life. And yet you knew.”

She made no effort to argue.

“If all had gone as we planned, you would be waking four days from now-not to Saric’s face, but to mine and Jonathan’s. To Mortals who revere you for the price you paid for them. If you only knew how I anticipated that day, how many times I’ve imagined it…”

He let go of her hands. She had no idea the number of nights he’d thought of her. The times he had waited for the Keeper’s return from Byzantium to hear that she was intact, protected in stasis. The nights he had halfheartedly entertained the company of the women Roland had sent to him-nights that had invariably ended in their leaving him for more interested game when he had proven unmoved by their advances.

Feyn glanced down, but not before he saw the tears welling in her eyes.

“The way it is now-this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, Feyn. This isn’t what we worked for. What you sacrificed yourself for. You didn’t do it to become Saric’s pawn. You did it because you believed. And you did it knowing I would be here, as long as I was alive, waiting for you.”

Tears slipped from her eyes and onto her cheeks. She brushed them away with the hand that bore not the ring of office, but only the simple moonstone he remembered from so long ago.

“And now…” He shook his head. “My hands are tied. Short of a war that will cost far too many lives and send fear rippling throughout Greater Europa, there’s no way to get Jonathan into power. You’re the only one who can fix this now. Please, Feyn. I am asking you.”

She glanced up at him. “You always seem to be asking me, Rom.”

“Only because I was asked first.”

“By whom?”

“By destiny when the blood first came into my hands! So now I ask you. We will go to war if you refuse, but I beg you first. Please, for love of life.”

She nodded absently, though not in agreement.

“I can only give so much, Rom,” she said quietly. “I’ve died once already. Now I find life and power and you ask me to step aside.”

“Listen to me, Feyn. Think carefully. Can you say that you feel the same now as you did that day with me nine years ago? The day the sun was so hot on your pale skin-remember? We rode a gray stallion out from the royal stables beyond the city. One just like the one you rode here.”

She was listening, staring off at the horizon.

“The anemones were in bloom,” he said, more gently. “I sang you a poem, because you asked for it like a gift, and I gave it willingly… You cried.”

Her lips parted but no words came from her.

“You asked me to come away with you. To live with you. To bring Avra if I wanted… You laughed then. I’ve never seen you laugh since. But you did, and you were beautiful. Not a Sovereign. Not a Brahmin. But a woman with a heart that loved.”

He stepped toward her as he said it, the smell of death thick in his nostrils. Her scent had once been beautiful, an exotic and intoxicating perfume, heady as too much wine. Now she smelled of a reek so foul no Mortal except Jonathan could seem to stomach it in close proximity.

He touched her cheek and she turned her eyes up to him. Dark, fathomless. He was desperate to find her within them.

His fingers slid along her jaw to the back of her neck.

“Tell me you remember,” he said.

He told himself he should not crave the taste of her. The smell of her. What Mortal had ever kissed a Corpse? And yet he brought his lips to hers without reservation.

He found no sweetness. Gone the smell of her breath, the wet of her tongue, sweet against his, her lips, plush and soft at once.

Her breath, when she exhaled, was fetid in his nostrils. And still he slid his hand into her hair as her lips parted beneath his, as though in surprise at the response of her body, only now catching up to her heart.

Her mouth tasted like rot. But this was Feyn, the woman he had known and loved. It didn’t matter how foul his senses claimed this act to be. He wasn’t there to take, but to give. To help her remember.

She suddenly pushed herself away, lips parted as though in shock.

Or stunned realization.

Any Mortal would find the mere thought of what he had just done repugnant. But it was all he could do not to draw her back again.

“You’re too bold!”

“Forgive me. But don’t tell me you don’t remember how life felt that day.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Feyn said. But the determination in her tone had been cut by confusion.

“What you ask is impossible,” she added, straightening her back. “I’m not some girl that you fool into drinking blood as you did once. Yes. I loved you. But I might have loved anyone who made me feel the way I did that day. Any face that was before me at that moment. Even as I love the face that I saw the moment I came out of stasis.”

Saric.

“Surely you can’t mean that.”

“You’re very good at telling me what I can and can’t feel, Rom Sebastian. At dictating whether I truly live or not and if the life I bring is real or false. No more.”