Ted Dekker - Mortal

“Guard!” Dominic ordered. “Remove this body!”

Saric didn’t bother to acknowledge the demand. His Dark Bloods had already handled the Citadel guard.

He stepped to the front of the platform, aware of every eye upon him.

“Tell me, Rowan, Regent of Jonathan… Is Feyn, who was rightful Sovereign before her cruel and unwarranted death, in Bliss at this moment? Or is she here with us?”

The Regent’s mind was either too preoccupied with the tragedy unfolding before him or not occupied at all, having shut down.

“Answer. Now.”

The Regent’s eyes flicked to Dominic. “I… It is unknown.”

“Isn’t it appointed for all to live once? Once for them to die? Isn’t that what your book claims?”

“Yes.”

“And when you die that death, your soul goes either to Bliss or Hades, is that not written?”

“Yes.”

“And yet our own ancient texts record accounts of those brought back to life. Were they truly dead? Had they gone on to Bliss when their hearts stopped?”

“I… I don’t know,” Rowan said.

“No, you don’t. Because you don’t really know the powers that make life and death. Only the Maker can know these things, isn’t it so?”

“Yes.”

“Then Feyn might not be in either Bliss or Hades at this moment, but here with us. We cannot know. We can only know if she is dead or alive as we understand life and death. Tell me this is true.”

His brows relaxed slightly. “It is.”

“And so, according to your understanding, is Feyn now alive or dead?”

He hesitated, choosing his words. “Dead. By law.”

“Not by flesh?”

No response.

“Did you not aid the alchemists in keeping her body in stasis in a crypt below this very Citadel since the day she was slain?”

He blinked. He could not hide the truth etched on his face.

“Yes.”

Saric spoke before the floor could react. “And you did it in anticipation of the day when that boy , Jonathan, had safely risen to sovereignty and you might bring her back without compromising his reign.”

They all stared at Rowan-Dominic, the senate leaders, Corban, Saric-all but his two children, who bowed their heads in submission still.

“Rowan,” Dominic hissed. “Surely not!”

Rowan gave a shallow nod. “What he says is true.”

“ Why? ”

“The reason no longer matters,” Saric said. “The truth is this: that if Feyn were alive today, she would be Sovereign, as succession fell to her before Jonathan. Tell me, Lord Regent, is that not true?”

He nodded, his face a hollow mask.

“And you would not be Regent, because Jonathan would have no claim to Sovereign office.”

“None of this matters now!” Dominic said, stepping forward with sudden urgency. “Feyn’s fate is sealed. She is dead. Jonathan is Sovereign and will take his seat in eight days.”

Saric rounded on him.

“Only the Maker decides if Feyn is dead! And today you will see her Maker. ”

His statement put the senate leader back on his heels.

Saric spun to Corban: “Bring it.”

The alchemist withdrew a black velvet pouch from beneath his gown and crossed the dais. Saric shrugged out of his cloak and draped it over Feyn’s lifeless legs. Without any explanation, he took his right sleeve cuff in his fingers and folded it back four times, exposing his forearm.

“Rise.”

The two Dark Bloods rose and stepped to one side, ominous. Out in the senate, no one moved.

To Corban: “Proceed.”

The alchemist set the pouch on the table beside Feyn’s head and pulled out a pair of black medical gloves. After slipping them on, he withdrew a clear rubber tube roughly two feet in length from the pouch, stainless steel needles on both ends.

Before him, Feyn’s lifeless body reclined not in death, he knew, but in defiance of it. The jugular there, just beneath her translucent skin, begged to pulse once again. For his absolute mastery over her. For the gift given him by Pravus, now perfected by him so that he could bestow it as he wished. As he did now. He could not suppress the slight tremble that spread through his torso at the thought. This was his destiny: to consume and give life as he alone chose.

Master and Maker.

His eyes closed. His mind raged with beautiful darkness.

“Sire?”

His eyes opened. Corban stood ready, stent in one hand. Saric silently presented his forearm.

“I beg you do not do this!”

Dominic’s protest was cut short by the dark glance of one of Saric’s children. Saric hardly noticed. His attention was on the stent in Corban’s hand. The bite of its razor edge in his vein. He gasped, softly, as it slid home.

Black blood spilled into the tube. Filled it to the clamp halfway along its length.

He held the device in place as Corban slipped the other stent into Feyn’s jugular. The alchemist lifted his eyes to him.

Saric nodded.

Corban removed the clamp from the tube.

For a fleeting moment, Saric became aware of how perfectly still the chamber had become. Fear ruled the hearts of those within Order. But he was the Maker now. They would remember this day. His supremacy. The glittering eyes of the Dark Bloods upon them so that none dared utter a sound.

His blood entered Feyn’s jugular slowly, pumped by his heart in a transfusion of life. He let it flow, curling his fingers into a fist, willing it to flood her. It would not be a making like his at the hands of Pravus, but one perfected, both more potent and refined. He’d brought only six to life in this way.

They called elected Sovereigns to-be “sevenths.”

Feyn, his half sister, Sovereign of the world, would be his seventh. The one he, not the dictates of Order, chose for the throne.

“Sire?”

Saric ignored Corban, eyes fixed on his arm.

“Sire, it is enough.”

“No.”

Corban would only inform, never protest. He’d been Saric’s first and could never betray him. As with all of Saric’s children, his heart was not his own, but solely owned by his Maker.

He waited until he felt the first hint of depletion and then went a moment longer, his heart surging, tenaciously pressing blood into her lifeless body. Dominic backed away, lips moving in prayer.

To the wrong Maker.

“Now.”

Corban moved to reclamp the stent, but before he could, Feyn’s eyes snapped wide. Her body arched, the small of her back jerking a full foot off of the stone table.

Corban swiftly slipped the stent out of her neck.

For a full beat, her contracting muscles held her in contortion, impossibly bent. And then her mouth suddenly spread wide and she sucked in a thick lungful of oxygen. Her ragged gasp echoed through the hall.

She collapsed on the table, eyes wide. And then she clenched them tight and screamed.

It wa a raw scream of birthing in excruciating pain that Saric himself so longed to feel. He had not been made in this way, but how he wished he had been!

A second scream chased the first, joined now by a hundred cries from the assembled dead on the senate floor.

Saric tore the stent from his arm and stepped back. Blood dripped down his arm. He did not gloat, he did not smile, he did not offer any sign of satisfaction. All were beneath him.

He simply was. Maker.

Feyn collapsed against the table, panting, clawing at her neck, legs stiff. The solution that had kept her in stasis had preserved most of her muscle, but it would take hours to recover any semblance of her former mobility.

And a few days for the pain to leave entirely.

Saric stepped to her and gently lowered his hand to her heart. It throbbed beneath his palm, beneath the sudden flush of her skin. Of his life, become hers. She absently tore his hand away, oblivious, twisting in panic.