Nothing.
“Enough,” the Keeper said, withdrawing the stent and pressing a swab to the puncture wound. “Any more and-”
“I need more.”
“I’ve already given you twice the amount Jonathan gave to bring Corpses to life.”
“Give me more.”
“Rom, we don’t know what effect-”
“More! Do it!”
The old man finally shook his head and then reinserted the stent. A moment later cold flooded his veins once more.
Rom gripped his hand to a fist and closed his eyes again. His mind drifted behind the darkness of his closed eyes, a sea of darkness studded with pinpricks of light. The memory of stars in the sky as they had exhumed the grave. But nothing else. He felt no surge of power, no swell of emotion, no pain, no wonder, not even the slightest tingle beyond the cooler temperature of the blood itself.
Nothing.
A great sorrow settled over him like a suffocating blanket. Jordin was wrong. Jonathan’s blood was powerless. His sovereign realm didn’t exist any more than he himself did now. No hope lived beyond the grave in a world still imprisoned by death.
All that Rom had lived to protect was gone.
The tiny dots of light floated through the darkness, falling to a black horizon like falling stars, winking out.
He was being fed the blood of a corpse. What if that blood undid the power of Jonathan’s living blood within him? What if, in his desperate quest for the dream of a Mortal Sovereign, he had given up the very life in his veins and converted from Mortal to Corpse as surely as Jonathan had?
A sudden panic swept through his body, pushed sweat from his pores.
He wanted to. In his mind’s eye he was already reaching across his body, clawing at the stent, tearing it out with a cry of outrage.
His body began to tremble.
Images of Jonathan dancing with the children skipped through his mind. Of the little girl he’d rescued from the Authority of Passing-Kaya-grinning as she had lifted her arms to him. Of a thousand Mortals leaping up and down as their roar washed over their Sovereign to-be, standing with arms spread wide on the ruin steps.
Images of Jonathan’s blade effortlessly slashing through the line of Dark Bloods, of his finger pointed at the Mortals as he hurled words of accusation. Of blood splashing over his naked body as though to cleanse him.
The last winks of light faded. Darkness, deeper than any he’d known, edged into his psyche like a heavy black fog. He felt his breathing thicken, his pulse slow, his body cool.
When the realization hit him, it was already too late. He tried to open his mouth and cry out, but his muscles didn’t respond. His arms remained at his side, quivering with the last vestiges of life.
Voices sounded urgently from the far reaches of his consciousness. Voices, but he couldn’t make out their words.
Another image crawled into his waning thoughts, of the Dark Blood they’d injected with Jonathan’s blood, foaming at the mouth before slumping without pulse. Rom had desecrated Jonathan’s grave, taken his blood, and now he would pay the same price.
He felt the stent being torn free. Hands on his body, shaking him. Words of horror rasped by the old man.
And then he felt nothing.
Only perfect peace.
Darkness.
Silence.
Death.
Jordin stood over Rom’s dormant body, filled with icy dread. The sweat on his face and arms glistened in the candlelight-a baptism of death. His eyes, twittering beneath his eyelids only a moment earlier, had stopped moving. His nostrils had pulled in a last, long breath and then his chest settled, stilled.
Maker. Was it possible?
Jonathan’s blood had taken Rom’s life.
For a long moment she stared at his waxen face. It was pale as though drained of blood. The old Keeper was frantically searching for Rom’s pulse.
“He’s dead!” the old man whispered, eyes darting up.
“Blessed Maker. We’ve killed him!” the Keeper said, clapping his hands to his head.
Jordin’s breath quickened, her pulse a heavy thud, as though the life-robbing power that had spread through Rom in his dying moments had leaked in through her pores.
Jonathan had abandoned her. He’d loved her and chosen her, only to be washed away by madness, by a belief that by his death he could save them all. For two days she’d clung to that dying love, refusing to believe that Jonathan could invite his own death and leave her bereft, never to know love again. Because there would be no other after Jonathan. He’d taken her heart with him to the grave.
And now Rom had joined him.
She stumbled back a step, mind numb, breathing in quick, frantic pants that echoed throughout the inner chamber. Panic overtook her like an arctic wind, cutting her to the bone.
What Jordin did next did not come from any place of sound reasoning, but from the intuitive despair of a woman summarily thrown into darkness to die without a parting word from her master.
She leapt forward with a grunt and slammed her fist down on Rom’s lifeless chest.
“No!”
Like a beast clawing to escape the pit, she dug her fingers into his clothing and jerked him back and forth.
“No! Don’t you dare leave! Don’t you dare!”
The Keeper was at her side, hand on her arm, gently pulling her back. “Please, Jordin-”
“Wake up!” she screamed, beating at his chest. “Wake up!”
“Jordin-”
She slapped Rom’s face, hard enough to make it snap to the side. His head lolled to the side.
She slapped him again. “Wake up!”
His face was cold. He did not wake up.
The finality of Rom’s passing fell over Jordin like a crashing wave from the deep. And with it, absolute resignation to the smothering sickness of lost hope. Her legs buckled. She fell over Rom’s lifeless body with her head on his chest and her arms draped over the far side of the altar.
Her sobs came slowly at first, seeping up as though from her very bowels. And then it boiled over with ragged breaths and finally with a keening wail.
She was vaguely aware of the Keeper’s hand on her shoulder. That he was whispering something, trying to help her up.
She clung to Rom’s body, the body filled with Jonathan’s blood.
“Please, Jordin, daylight is coming. We’re going to have to explain ourselves to the others.”
His words cut her like a knife in the back. She could not explain herself to the others because even in this last act she had failed Jonathan. She, not Rom or the Keeper, would accept full blame. The woman Jonathan had loved while he lived, who had made a mockery of him in his death.
She slowly released her grip and sank to the floor, curled up in a heap, and sobbed.
The soft thump of her own heart mocked her, the palpitating rhythm of a heart pushed beyond the brink. And why not? Death had swallowed hope and abandoned her in a Hades. She no longer had reason to live. It thudded too hard, growing in intensity like a horse speeding into full gallop as though desperate to escape death itself.
The beat increased to a fast and heavy pounding. But it wasn’t coming from her.
She heard the Keeper’s sudden inhalation. Snapped her eyes wide. Jerked her head from the floor.
The sound came from the altar above her.
