Sovereign (20 page)

The hopelessness pressing on her mind felt no more movable than the tons of rock above her tiny, hollow cave. She could see no way out, no light, no choice that seemed capable of delivering them all from certain death. History was bound to repeat itself, and she was powerless to stop it.

The cave’s cool air dried the sweat from her brow as quickly as it broke onto her skin, offering no relief from the furnace in her mind. Her hands were trembling as she paced. And then her thoughts began to fail her utterly.

She would have to tell Roland whatever she knew, as soon as she knew it. Tell him and trust him. There was no other choice.

She sank to the mat and settled on her back, arms clasped over her chest, staring up into the darkness. Tears filled her eyes and streaked down her temples, wetting her hair.

“Jonathan….”

Her whisper sounded impossibly hollow and distant here, deep beneath the surface of the canyon lands.

“Jonathan, why have you left me? I beg you. Please…. you left me once. Find me. Save me.”

It was her last willful thought.

She fell loose from her thoughts as though she had fallen through a fissure in the floor of the cave. Silence quieted her, leaving only darkness…. and peace.

She lay severed from time. Breathing. At rest. There was nothing more than darkness and the sound of her breath.

She didn’t know when she became aware of the faint sound, only that it was there just beyond her mind: a faint hum that sounded as if it had been there all along, suppressed and silenced by her incessant mind until now.

No words, only a long, soft tone. The voice of a child, perhaps, that gradually changed from a hum to a tone, a word sung through parted lips. The voice of a boy calling in the wilderness. Beckoning her. A perfect strain of haunting notes from a single throat that flowed directly into her nerves.

The darkness began to part. Or was it her mind itself giving way to the soft gray of light? She could actually see it, as though a way had quietly opened—a way that had been clouded until now.

Or was it a dream?

The boy’s voice was joined by a chorus of strings, so faint at first she wasn’t sure she heard them. They were there and not there—had been there, perhaps, all along.

Beautiful. So beautiful. Here, there was no choice to be made. No anxiety, no world to save. Here there was salvation already, fully realized and riding the strains of music that seemed to have existed since the beginning of the world.

Just when she thought she might be swept away by the sound, the child stopped singing, as if suddenly aware he’d been discovered. The strings went silent. But the peace remained, suspended somewhere beyond thought.

Lead him, Jordin.

She caught her breath. Jonathan’s voice. As a man or a child, she wasn’t sure, but it was his voice; she would have known it anywhere.

Death is not the end.

And then the presence of that voice was gone, and she knew that she was once again alone.

Her eyes snapped wide. She was awake, lying on her back, hands still clasped over her chest.

And breathing hard.

“Jonathan?”

Her voice echoed softly in the cave. She sat up and stared into the darkness.

“Jonathan?”

The door suddenly swung open, flooding the room with light. For the second time that same day, Rislon stood in the door frame.

“The prince asks for your decision,” he said.

She blinked. “It’s night?”

“If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t be asking.”

Jordin’s mind spun, searching for an answer to the questions that had flogged her. But there was no real choice to be made now. She already knew what to do.

“Tell my prince that if he allows me to become Sovereign, I will lead him to our Sanctuary myself. My life and the lives of all Sovereigns will be in his hands. Tell him I will lead him tonight.”

THE IMMORTAL warriors under Roland’s command numbered two thousand, only three hundred of whom were called Ripper, his elite force occupying the great cave known simply as Roland’s Lair. Of those, two hundred now filled the main chamber, all adorned in black battle dress and boots. One might be tempted to think Roland had called them to witness greatness.

But Jordin knew he only wanted them all to see what happened when Sovereign blood entered an Immortal’s veins and turned them into something less.

Rislon had delivered her answer to Roland and returned to collect her within the hour. They were ready, he said. Where had she hidden the Sovereign blood? In her canteen, which she’d shoved into the hay of the open stall upon arriving. He’d given her a hard stare, then told her he’d be back.

Now she stood beside an ancient wooden table they’d set at the center of the great room, directly under one of the massive chandeliers. No fewer than a hundred candles lit the chamber, casting
a wan amber glow over the ghostly Immortal faces that seemed to float above black-clad shoulders, each of them watching with those black eyes illuminated by their own golden fire. They stood in eerie stillness, some leaning on the railing along the upper level, others arrayed along both stairs, more on the main level.

Rislon and Sephan were two among many now, their faces cold. Cain stood somberly in the presence of his prince, as the queen, Talia, watched without expression from a high-backed, red-velvet chair. Kaya stood just behind and to Roland’s right—Jordin would know her wide eyes anywhere—dressed in a simple black gown that bared her pale legs to mid-thigh. If she’d given up anything to Roland, it must not have included information on the location of the Sanctuary; evidently he still needed that knowledge.

What else she might have given Roland, Jordin didn’t care to guess. A pang of jealousy spiked her heart. How had she come to feel such affection for Roland? And if she felt such a draw toward him, how much more had Kaya? The girl was unspoiled fruit, eager to love with new sensory passion. If the young woman felt any longing to recover her Sovereignty, her face showed no hint of it. She appeared fully and unabashedly Immortal, and all too aware she had been chosen to stand at Roland’s side.

In any other group so large, Jordin would expect signs of individuality—a cough here and a whisper there as curiosity got the better of onlookers. Varied dress, color, different lengths and color of hair.

But Roland’s Rippers all looked strangely similar. The cadre of their faces was white, their long hair mostly braided and unadorned. Clad in the same black as their leader with only the occasional piece of jewelry—a necklace around a warrior’s neck or a ring on a pale finger—she could find no hint of the Nomad within them, of the anarchy of color and riot of individualism that had celebrated life beneath the stars of the wilderness.

Except, of course, for Talia, who stood out in teal, a single drop of ocean in a sea of black.

Only four others stood out in the gathering, all dressed in long cloaks with red bands around their long sleeves. Two men, a woman, and Michael. Gold-hilted swords hung from their belts; crescent moons from chains around their necks. Rislon had made mention of his War Lord, Lydia, during the long trip to the lair. These were the War Lords then?

Roland had donned a loose-fitting, dark-blue shirt tucked in at the waist beneath a similar longer black cloak that hung to his calves. His hair was pulled into a ponytail. His dark nails were perfectly manicured and his sleeves sharply buttoned. His burgundy lips offered no smile, only quiet resolve.

But Maker, he is handsome, that brooding prince. The very image of deadly perfection.

He lifted a hand and motioned to the side, his gaze never releasing Jordin. Seriph emerged from the outer circle of onlookers, carrying a black bag.

The instruments of seroconversion.

He set the bag on the table and withdrew a single translucent tube affixed to a thin, stainless steel needle and then set them on a white cloth beside the vial of blood they found in her canteen.

Fear snaked down Jordin’s spine. The realization that she was about to forfeit the Immortal life suddenly filled her with dread and strange insult. Her breathing thickened.

Roland had stepped to her side, hands clasped behind his back, a hint of a smile now pulling at his lips.

“You will get your wish, my dear. But make no mistake, you will do as you say. And if you fail me in even the smallest way, I will return you to your current state and learn what I must one way or another. I have a way of getting what I want. If you have any doubts, you may ask Kaya. Bringing her to me was thoughtful. I suppose I owe you my gratitude.”

He was baiting her, calling on her desire to be with her Maker as one of his brood. The fact that his play upon her jealousy had such
a cloying effect on her mind terrified her, even now before all these faces.

She set her jaw. “As you said…. my fate is now tied to yours. Let’s get this over with.”

He nodded at two Immortals behind her. They stepped up and put hands on her silk dress, as if to remove it. Jordin shrugged them off.

“You wish to humiliate me as well?”

“Humiliate you?” And then she realized that Immortals harbored no fear of nakedness.

But Sovereigns did. Didn’t they?

“Forgive me, but when I turn Sovereign I might feel strange. Leave me dressed.”

The faces floating in the gathered assembly looked at one another in shock; Immortals didn’t speak this way to their prince. Her own ear was offended by her tone.

“Please,” she followed. “I mean no offense. But Sovereigns aren’t so free.”

“Perhaps that too is part of your misery,” he said. “Didn’t Jonathan set us free from all such rubbish?”

Had he? She couldn’t quite remember.

“Leave her dressed,” he said to Seriph. “But get on with it, we don’t have all night.”

Seriph frowned at her without any intimation of approval. “On the table.”

Jordin rolled onto the wood surface and lay on her back, staring up at the great chandelier. The faint hiss and sputtering of a hundred candles joined the steady breathing of the Immortals. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d gathered around their table for a feast.

Seriph’s cool hand gripped her wrist, and she closed her eyes.

Lead him, Jordin. Death is not the end.

Had he meant she was to die?

The memory of the music swept over her and momentarily quieted her mind, but the peace left as the Immortal tied a tourniquet above her left elbow and slapped the vein on her arm to turgid life.

Please, don’t let me die.

The needle stung her skin. She held her breath, expecting more pain or heat—something to indicate the shift in blood type entering her veins.

She felt nothing. No surge of power, no swell of emotion, no pain, no wonder, not even the slightest tingle beyond the prick of the needle itself.

Nothing.

But she’d been here before, as a Mortal changing to Sovereign, and then, as now, the conversion had taken some time. Why would changing now be any different?

And then it came. Sorrow settled over her like a suffocating blanket. What if she was wrong and reconversion only killed? What if Jonathan had meant that she would indeed die now?

The Immortals made no sound—if they did, her heightened senses were failing her already, leaving her deaf to their whispers. Where was the music from her dream now? She strained to hear, but there was only the silence, complete and smothering.

Tiny dots of light floated through the darkness, falling to a black horizon like shooting stars, winking out. It wasn’t too late! She could still stop them! Panic swept through her, pushed sweat from her pores. In her mind’s eye she was reaching across her chest, clawing at the needle, tearing it out with a cry.

Her body began to tremble.

The last prick of light faded. Darkness, deeper than any she’d known, edged into her psyche like a heavy black fog. She felt her breathing thicken, her pulse slow, her body cool.

She was dying.

When the realization hit her, it was already too late. She tried to open her mouth and cry out for help—they would help her, wouldn’t
they?—but her muscles didn’t respond. Her arms remained at her side, quivering with the last vestiges of life.

She felt the needle slip out. And then she felt nothing. Only perfect peace.

Darkness.

Silence.

Death.

And then, without warning, light came out of the darkness that was her nonexistence. It did not seep into her consciousness or grow from a mote spark; it exploded with a white-hot flash. It didn’t change her dead world, it created a new one. Let there be life. There was nothing, and there was everything.

She was only vaguely aware she had a body that was reacting to the sudden eruption of life, distorted beyond what occurred naturally, because in the moment nothing was natural. All was new.

A hum filled her ears, soft and haunting. Formed tone and long notes, carried by a single voice—the same one she’d heard in her dream earlier! Music. The light was music, calling to her from the desert.

Come to me, my beloved. Awaken from your slumber and know that you are one with me.

The very air was his music, and she breathed it like a drug that strained her synapses to the breaking point. A sensation so exhilarating and beautiful that she felt powerless to resist its unrelenting power.

Do you feel my life, Jordin?

Jonathan’s whisper echoed through her new world, soft but laden with as much power as the light and music both.

Why do you resist what is real? Why do you forget who you are?

And with those whispered words she heard a distant scream. Hers.

Find me, Jordin. Find yourself. Come to me.

She was shaking violently, weeping unrestrained, her mouth
spread wide. She wanted to say
I will. I will find you
, but all that came out were screams.

Jordin didn’t know how long that first explosion of life lasted—it felt timeless. She was life. She was home. And then the light and the music faded, leaving her in silence once again.

She felt her body go slack on the wooden table, spent. Undone. Redone.