Ted Dekker - Mortal

“Hold,” Rom said. “It’s just the underground. The public transport.”

A gust of air came through the grate after another distant squeal.

Stink of Corpse.

Rom heard the boy stop behind him. “Keep moving.”

Past the terminus, the squeal of wheel brakes faded as they made their way deeper into the city. After another ten minutes the tunnel opened into a vast chamber with thick columns that rose nearly two stories to a vaulted ceiling. An electrical box took up half the wall, wires running from it in all directions. It was covered with a padlocked metal cage and emitted a faint hum. Metal stairs led to a second-story transom that hugged the circumference of the upper level; four arched passageways opened out of it in the brick, each in a different direction.

“We go up,” Rom said, nodding to the stair spiraling up the side of the wall. The three of them ascended, boots ringing on metal steps, then moved across the transom above to the arch of the northern passage.

Rom could hear the breath of the boy behind him, the skitter of a rodent, the crumble of mortar, here, where the bricks were the most ancient of all. He tasted the stagnant air.

Place of secrets.

They emerged from the tunnel and approached a door, the stone frame of which looked as old as the history of the city itself except for the obvious new addition of electrical wires running along its edge. The lock in the door was also modern.

Only three people had a key to this door: Rowan, the Keeper, and the Corpse who tended to Feyn. Rom had retrieved the key before leaving camp, but now he saw that it would be entirely unnecessary-the door was not only unlocked, but slightly ajar.

Rom pushed past it and stepped inside, torch held aloft.

Dark niches, the size to cradle a body, were hollowed out in the walls like the eye sockets of a skull.

He strode through the first chamber to the bell-shaped crypt beyond. To the great sarcophagus in the middle of the room, with its ancient carvings and metal tubes worming through holes drilled straight through the stone.

The heavy lid had been pushed aside and onto its edge on the stone floor between the sarcophagus and the crypt wall.

Rom hurried forward, his torch throwing light into the glass lining.

Empty. Severed tubes dangled motionless in the fluid-filled chamber. So it was true. He’d held out a bare hope that the spy’s story had been wrong.

He turned to find Jonathan staring around the chamber with wide eyes.

“As expected,” Roland said.

Rom took a slow breath. “We’ll find her.”

“You’re sure you know the way? The Citadel is three square miles.”

He nodded. “Let’s hope so.”

He led them out of the room and down the underground passage. It had been nine years since he’d passed through these halls of death and prison cages. The majority of them had been sealed off immediately after the commencement of Rowan’s regency. Up, near the service entrance, with its back corridor…

A corridor he remembered from one surreal night when he had abducted Feyn herself. A lifetime ago.

If he had done it before, he could do it again.

“Where will this take us?” Roland said.

“To the Sovereign’s chamber.”

“You know the way to the Sovereign’s chamber?” the Nomad said in a strange tone. “I should have known.”

Rom didn’t respond.

It took them another fifteen minutes to reach the hidden passage that led into Feyn’s chambers.

He led them down the corridor, his free hand held up for silence, and then to the top of a narrow flight of darkened stairs. Faint light seeped past the edge of a heavy velvet curtain below. He signaled them to extinguish their torches and wait.

The scent of Corpse was unmistakable. With it, burning candles. The lingering scent of a meal-meat. Wine.

And a deeper odor.

Dark Bloods.

Rom’s pulse quickened. He padded down the stairs and eased aside the edge of the curtain.

Faint glow of candlelight throughout the dimly lit chamber. Faint strain of… violin? The meal was gone; the smell came from the front room, adjacent to her bedchamber here.

The smell of Corpse was stronger. Of Dark Blood.

Saric had to be nearby.

A figure near the expansive window. A woman, in a gown of blue velvet, a diamond clasp in her hair. She sat at a desk piled high with newspapers.

Feyn?

He willed his breath to calm, slipped past the curtain with only a whisper of a rustle, glanced to his left, toward the dressing area, and once up at the ceiling, noting the faint mismatched edge of plaster where it had been repaired.

His heart was hammering, too loud.

He took several steps to the middle of the chamber and stopped.

“Feyn.”

The woman at the desk paused, newspaper in hand. She lowered the paper, very slowly, and then turned in her chair.

It was Feyn, and she was alive.

It came back to him then, all at once: the day he had taken her out of the city, the way she had come to life when he had given her the blood. The ways she had laughed, and then kissed him. Had asked him to run away with her.

How different it all might have been then. But there had been Jonathan.

And Avra…

His last sight of Feyn had been on the day of her inauguration. She had fallen to her knees, arms out, a terrified scream coming from those lips so beautifully set together now. Her blood had spilled to the platform as she had crumpled, sliced open by the Keeper’s sword…

A horrible image that had haunted his sleep for years.

Now, with the light of the candelabra illuminating her hair like a halo, he felt his breathing still. He’d forgotten just how regal, and absolutely beautiful, she was.

“It’s Rom,” he said, when she said nothing.

She was the picture of composure, her hands folded in her lap. Blue gemstones dangled from her earlobes.

“Rom,” she said.

He took two steps and stopped, staring. She wasn’t rising. Or hurrying to meet him. Or crying out how Saric had taken her. He had expected anything but this calm self-possession. But of course he should have known. She was a Corpse again, schooled to carry herself as one without fear, no matter how acutely she felt it…

“It’s true then,” he said. “Saric took you.”

Nothing.

“How?”

She rose from her chair.

“Once again you invade my chambers, Rom Sebastian. History repeats itself, after all.”

She folded her hands, placing her left hand over her right. There was no mistaking the heavy ring of office on her finger. Sovereign.

He’d come expecting nothing less, but seeing it so vividly confirmed…

Nine years flashed before his eyes. The lives of Avra. Of his mother. His father. The old first Keeper he had met.

Every memory now at her mercy.

He strode to her, half-expecting her to take a startled step back. But she didn’t. Instead, she allowed him to drop to one knee and take her hand.

Rom had been so distracted by the sight of her alive that he’d pushed aside the scents in the room, but now so close to her they registered again, demanding to be noted.

Dark Blood. Heavy as tar in his nostrils.

He looked up at her eyes. Black.

For a moment he froze. Now he saw the black sprawl of vein up her cheek.

Her gaze held no fear. She seemed to be taking him in, as though his sudden proximity had ignited strange fascination. Memory, perhaps-a tumult of emotions passing through those eyes like a confused mosaic.

“Feyn,” Rom said, pushing down his panic. “We’ll find a way to fix this. Where’s Saric now?”

Her gaze flicked to his left, over his shoulder. Rom spun around, expecting to see Saric himself. Instead he found himself staring at Jonathan and Roland. Their hoods were off, their scarves pulled down from their faces.