Ted Dekker - Mortal

She would harbor a quiet and small amount of pride, knowing that.

Jonathan, however, was fixated on the cart.

“Jonathan?” she said, striding toward him. “Are you hurt? What happened?”

He stepped closer to the cart, peering through the barred door at the back. Not only peering. He was absolutely fascinated. Wholly consumed by what he saw. She hurried to him, mentally steeling herself against the smell of Corpse.

She drew up against his side and looked inside. Two benches, one on either side. Chained to one of the benches sat a young girl, perhaps ten or eleven years of age wearing a torn gray dress that hung on her thin body like a sack. Her long dark hair looked as though it hadn’t been touched by a comb for a week; her face was smudged as though it hadn’t seen soap for a month. Even so, she was a beautiful girl, Jordin thought, even dirty and staring at both of them with large, unblinking eyes. Eyes so resigned as to be nearly absent of fear.

Nearly.

Jordin saw the reason she had been taken: her right arm was wrong, crooked at the elbow. The hand below it only had three fingers. How long had she hidden that condition? How many years had she been kept confined, away from the others who would report her out of fear for their own lives… and afterlives?

“What’s your name?” Jonathan asked in soft voice.

Jordin glanced over. “Jonathan? We don’t have time…”

He stepped forward, ignoring her. The girl pulled back a few inches, face round with worry.

“No…” He reached for the bars. “Don’t be afraid.” His voice strained. “I’m not going to hurt you. Please… what’s your name?”

The girl still didn’t answer. The stench of fear was so strong that Jordin felt compelled to lift her arm to cover her nose, but then immediately took offense at her own weakness. This young girl could have been her not so long ago…

“My name’s Jonathan,” he said quietly. “I was born with a crooked leg. I was also born to give life and hope to the dead. They take my blood.” He paused. “It hurts me.”

Jordin glanced at him. There were tears on his cheeks, but that wasn’t what caused her breath to stifle in her lungs. She’d never heard such a bold statement of pain from him, and hearing it now, spoken to a Corpse who couldn’t possibly understand, somehow crushed her.

She told herself that he could only confess it to one he couldn’t hurt. That he cared too much to burden the recipients of his blood with the truth of his suffering. And yet…

Jonathan had said this, knowing that she, Jordin, would hear and understand.

She stood rooted to the street, fixed by a deep and terrible love for him. Suddenly desperate to repay him for his love with her life.

For his life… with her love.

“You’re a beautiful girl,” he said, “Please, tell me your name so I can remember you always.”

The girl could only feel fear, but the stench of it softened. Rom and Roland were almost here, two blocks from the fallen Dark Blood. Behind them, just entering the street from alley, four others came at them at full sprint.

Jordin touched Jonathan’s shoulder. “There’s more coming.”

He ignored her. “Please tell me your name.”

“Kaya,” the girl whispered.

“Kaya,” Jonathan repeated. “A beautiful name. Where are they taking you, Kaya?”

Tears flooded the girl’s eyes and broke down her face. “To die,” she whispered.

Jonathan’s hands began to shake on the cold metal bars. “My blood can bring you to life.”

“I have to be brave,” she said.

Jonathan glanced down at the heavy lock on the door. There would be no breaking it.

He looked up again. “Then we have to be brave together, Kaya. I’m afraid too.” He reached a hand toward her through the bars. “We have to be brave together. Take my hand.”

His tears snaked down his mouth to his jaw.

Rom was yelling now, racing toward them. “To the horses! Hurry, Jordin!”

“Jonathan, we have to go!”

“Take my hand. Please!” And in that moment, Jordin wasn’t sure who he did it for-the girl… or for himself.

The girl looked from Jonathan to his outstretched hand and then slowly reached out, touching the tips of her fingers to his. He reached in, took her frail fingers in his, and held her hand.

The world seemed to stall. Her vision swam, distorted-whether by the tears blurring it or the vivid sight of her Mortality as danger approached, she didn’t know. Only that something changed in that moment as she watched the exchange between Jonathan and the doomed girl.

“Run!” Rom cried, running past the fallen Dark Blood now. “Move, now!”

“I’ll find you, Kaya,” Jonathan said. “Remember me, when I bring my new kingdom!”

The girl nodded, holding tight to his hand with both of hers.

“Now!” Roland shouted.

Jordin took his elbow. “Jonathan, please!”

He let go of the girl’s hands like one tearing himself away. He turned to Jordin. “Don’t tell anyone what you saw.”

“I-”

“No one.”

“I won’t,” she whispered.

“Where are the horses?”

She swallowed the knot of thick emotion in her throat. “Follow me.”

Then they were running for the back of the basilica, and Rom and Roland were with them.

Jonathan was safe for now.

But Jordin also knew that Jonathan would never be truly safe.

FEYN HEARD THE FOOTFALL on the same stair by which Rom had fled an hour earlier. The sound of a boot that made no effort to mute itself, heavy as it landed on the flagstone of the chamber.

She spun, half-expecting to see Rom returned. But it was Saric, now tying the curtain to one side with the heavy bullion cord tied to a ring in the ancient stone wall. He had shed his long velvet coat and wore only a simple pair of black trousers, his boots, and a dark shirt with sleeves rolled away from forearms far stronger than she remembered them.

“My Lord,” she said.

Silence.

She paused, still unacquainted with this new Saric. He was so different from the impetuous half brother who had pushed for power with seething indignation. This man was far more controlled, far more affectionate, and far more strangely alluring. Her Maker.

She wasn’t a concubine to come bounding after him, to come begging for his approval, though there was indeed the strange compulsion to go to him, if only to win that approval and hear again his words of love.

When he turned and looked at her at last, she smiled.

He did not.

“I understand you had visitors,” he said, walking toward her.

“Yes. The guard told you, then?”

“Yes. The guard told me.”

He stood over her, less than an arm’s length away, nostrils flaring slightly as he released a measured breath. His lips twitched-a slight smile.

“Did you think?” Saric asked, gently drawing back a strand of hair from her cheek with tender fingers. “To tell me?”

“I didn’t want to trouble you.”

“And so you let them come… and you let them go.”

“I thought your guard would stop them. Surely-they have, haven’t they?”

His eyes, so startlingly dark, searched hers.

“Tell me about them.”

She glanced away, trying to subdue the strange sense of need-to clasp his hand to ask forgiveness for something, to thank him, to ask him to stay. Strange reactions to this man, her brother. But oddly beautiful.

This new life was disconcerting. No wonder they had called it Chaos…

“Rom Sebastian came to see me,” she said.

“And was he alone?”

Surely he knew the answers already.

“No. He came with the Nomadic Prince, a man named Roland. And…”