true life to die?
Everything he’d believed had been thrown into doubt.
And Feyn… what of her? What had they agreed to at their summit? Why had she fled after delivering him to Saric, never once looking back?
As for Saric… His slaying of Jonathan was clearly a victory, but what of his apparent breakdown before Jonathan? And where had he gone?
The questions refused to abate as he returned to camp, leaving Jordin to her exhausted sleep as day turned to night, and night to day.
The evening before, Roland announced that he and twenty Immortals were journeying north the next day. They would find a new valley in which to rebuild. There was no longer a reason to remain close to the city. He had no more clear direction than that, only that it was time for his people to embrace their new life and to consider the centuries before them.
It would mean a split between those Keepers and Nomads who wished to remain close to Byzantium with Rom and those forsaking any further notion of bringing life to the world’s capital city.
That night, sleep came hard, and then only in confused snatches. Rom tossed, writhing with the same questions, reliving again and again every encounter with Jonathan the last days of his life until his dreams became a jumbled collage.
“Jonathan?” he whispered once, into the darkness. Feeling foolish, he closed his eyes. Finally, he slept.
A whisper from the ether of sleep.
But there was no way. He’d known it once with the surety of his every conviction, and it had failed him.
Something nudged him.
No, not something, but someone.
“Rom. Rom!”
His eyes snapped wide and he stared up into a face in the darkness. Round eyes peered at him from a smudged, tearstained face. Her hair was a knotted mess.
Rom sat up. “Jordin?”
She stood with her arms limp at her side, looking half crazed.
So it was catching.
“Jordin. What is it?”
Had Saric returned? Feyn? Was Roland leaving under cover of the night?
“I know what he meant,” she whispered. “I know what we need to do.”
“What who meant, Jordin?”
“Jonathan told us to follow him. He told me. He made me promise. I know what he meant.”
The poor girl was breaking, undone by grief and her refusal to eat.
He sighed and ran his fingers through his tangled hair. “Please, Jordin… You have to get some rest.”
“I know how to follow him,” she said.
“He’s dead, Jordin! You have to accept that.”
She merely stared at him.
He sighed, closed his eyes and opened them again, willing himself to patience.
“All right. Tell me,” he said. “Tell me how to follow a dead man.”
“We have to take his blood.”
He returned her stare, not sure whether to be horrified or laugh at her.
“We already have his blood.”
“We have his old blood.”
“We have the blood he gave us when he was alive!”
“It’s in his blood.”
She said it all as if were obvious, so simple.
“Jordin. He’s in the earth. His blood is that of a corpse-literally.”
“It’s in the blood. There are three vessels of blood in his grave.”
“What are you saying? That we dig him up and drink a corpse’s blood?” The thought curdled his stomach.
“No, we inject it into our veins, as we did before.”
“Jordin, he’s dead! The blood is probably congealed by now.”
“Then we die, too, with his blood in our veins. He said to follow him. He said it to me, he said it to you, he said it to all of us. We have to dig his body up and take his blood. We have to follow him.”
He fell back down onto an elbow. “You can’t be serious.”
“Will you help me?”
The words Jonathan had shouted to Corpse and Mortal alike from the temple steps whispered through his mind.
The demand had haunted him. What could
In any case, Jonathan surely hadn’t meant for them to dig up his grave.
“Jordin, please… The Keeper tested Jonathan’s blood and found no properties of-”
“He said to follow him.”
“Yes, but not by dying!”
“He said his blood was being spilled for the world.”
“Yes. He said that. But if he wanted us to dig up his body and take his blood, he would’ve made it clear.”
“Jonathan always hid the truth for those who would find it,” she said. “I’m going, whether you help me or not.”
She actually meant to do this.
He got to his feet and paced, suddenly seized by the notion, however unlikely. Why had they assumed that Jonathan’s blood would mature by becoming a stronger version of what it had been rather than something new altogether? And yet, assuming the boy knew, why hadn’t he said anything to that effect?
Or had he?
“I’m getting a shovel,” Jordin said, spinning around to leave.
“Wait!”
She turned back.
“Hold on. We can’t just desecrate his grave by digging up his body! It’s revered by a thousand Mortals!”
“By me more than any of them,” she said. “I’m getting a shovel.”
“And then what?”
“Then I follow him in his death. I take the blood he spilled when he died. That’s what he meant. That’s what I’ll do.”
“We should ask the Keeper.”
“No. If you won’t help me, I’ll go alone.”
He thought a moment longer, then grabbed his boots and tugged them on. “We leave his body in the ground.”
“Of course. Do I look like a savage?”
He grabbed his jacket. “Get the shovel.”
It took Rom and Jordin twenty minutes to find a shovel and ride up to Jonathan’s grave. The night was still, long past the hour of insect song-a good two hours before the first birds came to life. Before them, the slightly rounded mound of dirt looked as dormant and lifeless as the body they’d buried beneath it.
To Rom’s right lay the long burial mound of those other Keepers, a raised scar on the surface of the earth. It
