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
“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.
