FEYN STALKED the length of the Sovereign office. Stopped once to stare out the great window at the changeling night. Paced again. Gone were the long velvets, replaced by leather leggings and boots latched over the knee. Gone, the amber earrings, only the gilt of her cuff reflecting the gold blazing behind her eyes. A short sword with jeweled hilt rode her hip. Deadly, almost, as its owner.
Roland and his Rippers had escaped. Not only with their lives, but the Sovereign girl in tow.
She stopped at the window and stared out. The clouds over Byzantium shifted high against elusive stars.
A thousand Dark Bloods. Twenty Immortals.
Escaped. Even grossly outnumbered, they had eluded the sheer force of numbers.
The two Immortal bodies had proven useless—fascinating, perhaps, to her team of alchemists on another day, but as prone to Reaper as the Dark Bloods.
As she was herself.
Fury swept through her at the ineptness of her army, the geriatric speed of her so-called master alchemist, the fate dealt her by an unnamed Sovereign. Fury at the very blood of Jonathan himself.
But there was something far worse within her, spreading up through her heart and into her mind like acid: fear. As base as any creature, as common as the Corpse. She hadn’t felt its fingers—not like this—for more than a decade.
In all of this, her thoughts had turned to one unlikely target. Saric.
He had come to her as a Corpse. The realization had only hit her after his departure that when Reaper claimed its last victims, Saric would be left standing.
And that was the bitterest pill of all.
She had wracked her brain, pushed Corban to his limits. But the alchemist who had perfected the dark serum claimed he knew of no way to reverse it. And yet there was a way. Saric. And even he had left unchallenged, taking the secret in his blood with him.
Hades knew where he might be now. But he was out there somewhere. And though she’d sent trackers in search of him, somehow she knew he would not be found. Saric always found a way to live.
Hate twisted in her mind like a corkscrew.
She heard a soft shuffle behind her. She glanced up through a break in the clouds at the cold brilliance of the moon, drew a slow breath, willed her heart to slow.
And then pivoted on her heel.
Five Dark Blood commanders stood before her—those who’d stood on the platform of the assembly arena only an hour earlier. No, four commanders and Rom. And though he was dressed the same as the commanders beside him, he stood as though he were bound, still resisting what could not be defied.
Near her desk stood Corban, the stent and tubing that had become the trademark of his work in his hands, the bags under his eyes so dark they looked like bruises against his white skin.
She appraised the line of Dark Bloods before her—the great girth of their shoulders, the cast of their eyes toward the floor, the broad knuckles and thickly muscled thighs. Each of them hers. Hers to walk the streets and cut down her enemies, each of them driven by one will—hers—like fingers of her own hand.
Saric. Roland. Jordin. All had slipped through a thousand of her fingers. Not only that, but each of them had spirited away keys to her own salvation.
“We have one day to prepare!” she said, her voice ringing out as she walked slowly down the line of commanders. “Roland is on a suicide mission. He knows he cannot live. He will not limp off into the waste to die on the sand, but he will return to take as many with him as he can. Rom has identified one of the bodies left behind as that of Roland’s sister.” Her lips curled. “How poetic.”
She paused before the last of the commanders and lifted his chin with a finger. His gaze remained fixed to the floor past her.
She dropped her hand.
“We will give him the battle he wants. A battle the likes of which he has never seen! Here, in Byzantium. Our birthright. Our land. Our terms.”
She strode to the other end of the line, past Rom, to stand a hand’s breadth in front of the first commander. “You will clear a mile swath around the Citadel.”
“My liege—the Rippers will avoid the battlefield for darker streets,” the man before her said. “There are a thousand homes in the sectors south and east of here.”
In an instant, her hand was on her hilt. With a hiss, steel slid free of the scabbard as she shoved the blade up under the edge of the man’s breastplate. The man’s face registered silent shock as a thin rivulet of blood trickled from the corner of his open mouth.
“Roland sees only blood, you fool! He will throw himself against our army.”
She yanked the sword free and turned away as the Dark Blood thudded to his knees behind her.
“We will give Roland as many Dark Bloods as he can imagine on a battlefield he cannot resist. The people in those homes will have one hour to evacuate or they will die. I want every structure leveled by morning!” She turned and shot Corban a pointed glare. Even harried and sleepless, he nodded, having gone even paler than before.
“You will bring me the master engineer at once. All the power on the city grid will be redirected to the Citadel for our defenses. We will light the battlefield like the sun.” She hefted the sword in her hand, rolled the hilt along her palm. “I want two thousand pitch torches illuminating every shadow within a mile. Shut down the rest of the city. Call in the guards from the posts beyond the perimeter. All eighty thousand will be here, placed as directed.”
She strode to the commander who lay toppled, unmoving within an inky pool of blood, and walked to the second commander in line. Looked him directly in the face. He made the mistake of looking back.
“You dare look in my eyes after such a failure?”
“No, my liege. I—”
His eyes went wide as she sheathed her sword in his middle.
The next one did not make the same mistake.
“Arcane,” she said. His breath was serrated. She could smell the sweat rolling down his neck.
“My liege?” he whispered.
“Carry out these orders without compromise.”
“I will, my liege.”
She lowered the sword, tip to the floor. Twirled it once. Blood splattered the marble, speckled the black of her boots. She lifted it, walked another two steps to the next man, set the tip down lightly again. A twirl of metal. His throat visibly worked as he swallowed. The cords in his neck stood out; he was clearly prepared for the swing of her blade. She lifted her fingers from the hilt, let the weapon clatter to the ground.
She turned on her heel. “Kill him, Arcane,” she whispered.
By the time she had crossed to Corban, the man’s grunt had filled the chamber behind her. She turned back in time to see the two men remaining: Arcane, his short sword dark and naked in his hand, and Rom, stiff yet, an arm’s reach away.
She stopped before the alchemist. His hair, normally so neatly groomed, was held back from his face in a tangled mess. His rumpled robe hung on thin and aging shoulders; he had lost weight in the last two days. But most telling of all was the shadow of resignation lurking about his eyes.
“What news?”
The alchemist shook his head. “The Immortals are useless. The sample we took from Rom before his conversion is no better. Our efforts to unravel the virus and create an antidote… useless.”
“There must be something,” Feyn said through gritted teeth.
The alchemist was silent.
She spun back, fixed Rom with a glare.
“What more can be done?”
He turned his head, looked her in the eye, and spoke as though the air were forced from his lungs to form the words. “There is no cure, my lady.”
“I will not accept it!”
Beside her, Corban said, “We are grasping at slivers. We’ve tried everything. The only thing left is Sovereign blood.”
“You had that with him,” she said, jerking her head in Rom’s direction.
“The sample we retained from before his conversion proved… inconclusive. Perhaps if it were living, taken from the vein… but even then.” Again, he shook his head.
For a moment, the room spun.
Two days. Two days before the world slipped from her fingers along with her life.
She dropped her gaze to the stent and tubing in his hands.
“You tapped him today?”
“Yes. We will try again.” But his voice told her plainly that he already knew it would yield nothing.
She grabbed the stent and tubing from his thin fingers and strode closer to the candelabra burning on her desk. Jerking up her sleeve by the embroidered cuff, she shoved it back. Without preamble, she stabbed the stent directly into the dark vein running along the crook of her elbow, gestured to Corban, already rushing to her side to quickly connect the vial to the other end of the tube.
“My liege—”
“He claimed for years my blood knew life once. Well, we shall see if he’s right.” Fifteen years ago, it had been enough to send her to her knees on the platform of her own inauguration. To spread her arms to the Keeper’s sword, and to die. The barest hint of remembrance even after the Corpse-death had claimed her senses again. Just enough.
Enough to cheat death and rise again.
She glanced toward Rom as she turned the knob on the tube.
But as she watched the black ichor of her own blood fill the tubing, she knew that it remembered that life no more.
The vial filled. She yanked the stent out. Shoved Corban away when he tried to staunch the wound.
“Take it and make me an antivirus! Your life depends on it. And take him.” She shoved her finger in Rom’s direction. “Drain him dry if you have to. As for you…” she turned, strode to Arcane, leveled him with a stare. “Make ready. Roland wants battle? We will slaughter him and his Rippers in the streets. Do you hear me? We will kill them all!”