Mortal

of Saric’s alchemists, but directly from Jonathan’s veins. More important, despite Jonathan’s crazed behavior on the ruin steps, he’d agreed to see her. The guards said he had emerged from her yurt in good spirits.

Rom prayed it was a good sign. He’d seen the way the boy had looked at her the first night they’d gone to her apartment in the Citadel, just after her resurrection. Perhaps Feyn’s regal ways and calculated poise had made an impression on him as much as he on her. But he hoped above all else that Jonathan’s ability to make those near him see might affect her-and deeply. As deeply, perhaps, as it had affected him once.

It had been nine years since Jonathan had opened Rom’s eyes to a vision of Avra at peace. The crippled boy with the penchant for dreaming the second side of reality had been an instrument of the Maker’s Hand that day. Not an erratic man or a blood savior or a living spring of Mortality, but one who helped others see in a way unachieved by any Mortal to date.

Surely, he could help Feyn see as well.

And help Rom to remember.

All of Jonathan’s promises to date had been fulfilled. All of them. Even in the midst of Jonathan’s waning potency and Feyn’s strange and staunch loyalty to Saric, the thought comforted. Jonathan’s promise would not fail this time, either. Years from now, when Mortality ruled the earth, Jonathan’s strange behavior, the conundrum of his waning blood, the growing factions within the Mortals-even Triphon’s death-would be seen as trials rather than defeat.

He closed his eyes and drifted into a half sleep, thinking again of Avra. But this time her face lengthened and her skin paled. Her hair, so auburn in life, darkened to near black. As did her eyes. Until her face was not the face of Avra at all… but of Feyn.

Feyn, who had not taken part in the wild rites of the Gathering and might even now be awake in her yurt on the edge of camp.

Rom sat up. Had the impassive lines of her cheek softened? He didn’t dare hope.

But he did.

He dressed and went out into a camp littered with the evidence of celebration. Spilled cups and empty plates of mostly finished food. Clothing, a random boot here and there, abandoned where it fell. Embers dying in cook fires outside yurts, the pots over them open to any who cared to eat. The drums, still aligned on the steps, their drummers long gone…

The tripod and the slashed bowl of blood hanging like an empty husk over a macabre stain of blood upon the dais.

He turned away, headed for Adah’s yurt, likely empty-she was known to have a lover across camp-but knew he would at least find enough food for Feyn. He made it only halfway there when he saw the guard striding toward him. Relief relaxed the man’s face and he broke into a jog.

One of the Nomads. Up early. Too early.

“What’s happened?” Rom demanded.

“Suri found you?”

“For what?”

The man blinked. “I sent Suri to find you-”

“Why?”

“He went to your yurt just a minute ago. I-”

“I’m not in my yurt, clearly. What’s this about?” He resisted the urge to take the man by the shoulders and shake him. He had run dry of patience days ago.

“Seriph says the Dark Bloods have escaped. The woman and her man, they’re-”

“What?”

The man took a half step back.

Why would she escape? She had talked to Jonathan! She had seen!

But then a different thought assaulted him.

“Where’s Roland?”

“He’s gone after her.”

In that moment, Rom knew two things. The first was that Feyn had betrayed them. Either she’d played him all along, or Jonathan had finally crumbled and undone all that Rom had worked for.

The second was that Roland was going to kill her.

“When?”

The man shrugged. “Half an hour.”

“My horse!” Rom snapped, spinning back toward his yurt. “Now!”

Roland and Michael had tracked Feyn and her guard to the south; the scent of Dark Blood clung like webbing to the leaves and branches.

There were the more mundane signs as well: broken twigs, crushed grass, hoof scuffs on rocks, horse sign and tracks on soft earth.

They rode hard, rarely speaking except to affirm what the other had already seen. Two hours, the guard had said. Even riding at twice the Dark Bloods’ speed they would require two hours to catch them. Any slower and Feyn would reach the city before they could stop her.

The sun was high when they crested a hill and first sighted the two Dark Bloods watering their horses by a stream.

With a click of his tongue, Roland signaled stop and dropped from his mount. Leaving it to Michael to secure the mounts, he released the reins and crouched behind a low boulder.

Feyn stood by her horse, gazing toward the south. Her escort was on one knee, inspecting the right hoof of his mount.

Michael lowered herself beside Roland, breathing steadily. For a moment neither spoke. They hadn’t been seen and the wind was in their faces, filling their nostrils with the stench of death. Roland had never expected to so welcome such a putrid odor.

“Less than a hundred paces,” she whispered.

“I need to talk to the woman,” he said. “They’re fast, remember that. Don’t expect a second shot. The wind-”

“I was shooting into the wind when I was five, brother.” Her bow was already in her hands. She notched her first arrow. “Just to be clear, you want the warrior dead-”

“-and Feyn’s horse. We may need the other.”

Michael gave him a casual nod, lifted her bow, drew the string back to her cheek, and sighted. She pulled in a long breath, adjusted for both wind and distance, then released her fingers.

A soft twang and the arrow flew into the wash with blazing speed. In the space of an instant it buried itself in the Dark Blood’s ear with a distinct thunk. The warrior jerked and then dropped to his side as though clubbed. The moment he did, his horse reared back from the stream.

“Her horse!” Roland snapped, and launched himself forward, over the crest and down the hill.

Feyn was spinning, looking frantically for the source of the attack until she saw him closing and froze, eyes wide.

Michael’s second arrow whipped overhead, narrowly missed the Sovereign, and sunk into her horse’s neck, just behind its jawbone. The animal bolted into the stream, whinnying as it fled into the brush beyond, leaving Feyn abandoned and empty-handed.

“Run and the next one is for you!” Michael cried.

Feyn glanced up, saw she had no escape, and went very still. Roland slowed to a walk at the bottom of the hill, now only ten paces from her.

“So we meet again,” he said.

Though her face was striking, her scent was an offensive bouquet-a strange mixture of defiance, anxiousness… and grief. Perhaps grief most of all.

She was fond of the warrior, he realized with surprise, flicking a glance at the Dark Blood’s fallen form.

He stopped before her. Her skin, so unnaturally white, seemed paler than even a moment ago.

“Running was your downfall. Now they all know the truth.”

Her lips tightened over her teeth. Her hair was disheveled, loosed from its simple braids. “You don’t