Forbidden (16 page)

Rowan stood and closed the space between them. He touched Saric’s sleeve and spoke in a low voice. “Sire, I beg you. Everyone will be fearful enough that they’ve lost a Sovereign. We cannot deviate from Order. In such a difficult time especially, you must follow protocol.”

Saric pushed back and snapped at those gathered on their knees by the door. “Get out! All of you, out. Have you no respect for the dead?”

They hurried out, leaving only Saric, Rowan, and the physician to contend with the dead body.

When they had gone, Rowan started to speak, but Saric silenced him with a gesture.

“I won’t serve a law that’s a disservice to humanity,” he said. “This law, however inspired by the Order, is not in favor of the people.”

“Nevertheless, it’s the law!”

Saric looked at the form of his father sprawled upon the floor, and then tore his gaze away. He covered his face in his hands and breathed deeply. At last, he dropped his hands: “Then grant me this. Put me before the senate. Let me make my argument there, not here over my father’s still-warm body.”

“As head of the senate, I can assure you—”

“I insist. Before the senate or not at all.”

Rowan bowed his head. “As you wish. I’ll assemble the senate. It will take a few hours. In the meantime—”

“In the meantime the world will have no Sovereign. So I suggest you hurry.”

S
even miles
north of Byzantium, Rom stepped into a broken-down shack with a crooked roof. The boards of its three standing sides were worn to a deathly gray, but a carpet of emerald grass and a sea of red anemones covered the ground. He’d never seen anything so lush, so green or wild in his life. In Byzantium, parks were artificial and stunted approximations of nature. Never had he seen the artful spread of the Maker as he saw it now, where it reclaimed nearly five centuries of barrenness in glorious patches such as this.

Beauty did not help him at the moment, however.

Rom had tied Feyn’s hands to an old post, then tied her ankles together for good measure. Now he pulled free the strip of muslin that had kept her quiet all night. He hadn’t relished the idea of gagging her for so long, but he couldn’t risk her screams being heard by a stray convoy.

She spit out some lint and stared at him. For half a minute, neither spoke.

“Is this really necessary?” Feyn motioned at her ties with her chin.

“Yes.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere. You think I’m going to run away?”

“If I let you go, what’s to keep you from braining me with a rock and riding out of here?”

He probably shouldn’t have offered that.

Her eyes shone like arctic mirrors in the morning light. “You’ve abducted a future Sovereign. You must realize the consequence.”

She rested her head against the post, jaw fixed, eyes steady, her hair a dark tangle about her. It had lashed him in the face like a thousand tiny whips through the course of the last few hours, and he was glad to have it out of his eyes.

Maker, what was he doing?

She was right. He was going to die. Hades had already prepared his special chamber of torment.

Rom glanced up at the sun filtering in through the old boards, the sky open along the eastern side of the old shack as though they sat in a theater. They had ridden beyond the gray stratus clouds that normally surrounded the city. Although the sky was full of feathery wisps, morning light filtered into every corner of the old structure.

He tilted his face heavenward and inhaled.

“What are you doing?”

“The sun. Do you feel it? Isn’t it amazing?”

She glanced up. “I suppose it’s soothing.”

He turned toward her. “Don’t you see? Don’t you feel it?”

“Yes, I feel it. It’s warm.”

“No. Not just that…” He felt a pang of sadness. She was so beautiful—was it possible for her to be so unmoved? Yet he would have been the same two days ago.

He sat back on his heels in the grass next to her. It would be so easy for him to become rapt in these surroundings, the sheer light of it, the greenery of the scrub grass, the speckle of the red flowers. This was Bliss if he had ever dreamed of it.

But even this would soon mean nothing if she didn’t help him. Time was not his friend.

“Can’t you see how beautiful this is to me? How full of life it is? I am?”

“I can see how mad you are,” she said flatly. Her skin seemed more opaque in his shadow. The faint lines beneath it were like the veining of fine marble.

“Please, listen to me. I was like you—”

“You were never like me. I’m quite sure.”

“I
was
like you. I felt, I knew, only fear. And when the keeper, the one I’ve been trying to tell you about—”

“The one in the dungeon.”

“No, not him. A different one. The one who gave me the vial two days ago.” He withdrew the vellum from his pocket, keeping the vial firmly tucked away as he had in her chamber. “You see all of the writing on here? I can’t decipher it.” He unfolded it and showed her. “But the old man in the dungeon said that you could.”

She glanced at the vellum and then back up at him.

“The old man in the dungeon. He’s the reason we’re here. He’s the one who said I shouldn’t leave the Citadel without showing this to you. That you could make sense of this.”

“And you’ve done all of this because a madman gave you something to drink, and something that you can’t read, and another madman told you to come to me to make sense of it.”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

“Then you’re as mad as they are.”

Was it possible to make her understand? He searched around him. “The flowers, the sun. Don’t they move you? Don’t you want to sing?” He hummed a few notes. “I’m a singer, you know? The thought of it now…” He swallowed past the lump in his throat.

Feyn was watching her stallion nip up the heads off several anemones with a clump of grass.

“You’re going to be Sovereign. How do you feel about that?”

She refused to answer.

“You accept it, don’t you? Maybe you feel anxious. A little fearful. But you’ll do it because that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

She glanced at him. “I’m not going to think you’re a mystic for guessing that. Anyone in my position would feel the same.”

“But are you hopeful that your reign might usher in great things? Do you feel compelled to be a better Sovereign than any before you—better even than Megas or Vorrin?”

“Why would I want that?”

“Because you want to improve the world! Because of your legacy.”

“Legacy is ordained by the Maker. Improvement is unnecessary. There is only loyalty to what is right, and the world is already right.”

He lowered his head and picked at the grass, at a loss as to how to make her understand. His were just words without currency.

“I’m thirsty,” she said.

He glanced up. “Like thirst. Hope, and ambition, desire. They’re all like thirst. You think about how good that water will taste. You
want
it. You work for it, and it becomes your driving goal.”

“If you’re mad.”

“No, not if you’re mad, if you
feel
something. Anything!”

“Why do you pursue this idiocy? When my men find you they’ll send you to the dungeon. You know you’ll
die
for this.”

“My lady,” he said softly. “People have already died for this. The old man who gave this to me was killed by your Citadel Guard. The same guard that killed my mother. Both, right in front of my eyes.”

“Nonsense. Violence is of the past.”

He leaned in on his knees until he was close to her face. “Do I look like I’m lying to you? Do I look like a crazy person when I say that I watched as she bled all over the floor she used to clean every week for as long as I could remember?”

“I think you might believe that,” she said. “And I agree that there are some odd things happening, which I plan to investigate. But I also think you’re deluded.”

He understood then that trying to convince her of what he had seen would be fruitless. She either couldn’t—or simply wouldn’t—believe him. He had to take a different tack.

He fell back on his seat and awkwardly hugged his knees. “What I’m trying to do isn’t about solving some puzzle. It isn’t even, ultimately, about getting your help. It’s about…knowing. The rest of the world deserves to know. It’s about feeling as you’ve never felt before. Do you feel love, my lady? Ever?”

“Of course,” she said.

But he knew the answer. She didn’t. She couldn’t.

She was beautiful in the way that ice was beautiful, in the way of marble, or stone.

She tilted her head. “Why do you keep pursuing these vestiges of Chaos? Even if all you say is true, what’s to be gained from pursuing them? There’s a reason these things have fallen away. Don’t you see? You’ve been deceived. You’re being led astray. That’s the nature of Chaos—it was a disease that held the mind in shackles. It was the insidious nature of forbidden things that made Chaos so destructive. And for that, millions died. Please, for your own good, consider the logic. Whatever caused you to turn away, renounce it. Return to the truth. I’m telling you—commanding you, as your Sovereign-to-be: Set these things aside.”

There was a time when he would have listened to her. Even now, her words pricked conflict within him. He wondered, if only for a split instant, if he should give more credence to what she was saying. Her dogma was as familiar to him as his mother’s house, as basilica, as the Order itself.

But he knew it was false. She was the one, along with millions of others, who had been deceived.

“I can’t,” he whispered.

She shifted her gaze away.

“You won’t help me, will you?”

“Nothing can help you if you won’t leave these ways,” she said.

Win her confidence, the keeper had said. But how?

“I need…I need to think,” he said, standing. He looked down at the vellum on the grass in front of her, but then thought better of leaving it with her, so he folded it up and shoved it back into his pocket next to the vial.

“Where are you going?” she said.

Rom retrieved the canteen from the horse’s saddlebag. “I’m going to go see if there’s any fresh water.”

“We can’t drink the water out here. My stallion can barely drink it, and even so, he might be sick for a week.”

But an idea had taken root.

“I’ll be right back.”

Rom walked around to the rear of the old structure, glancing back. He could see her through the cracks in the slats, craning to see him.

He walked toward the copse of low trees on the knoll, unscrewing the cap to the canteen. The water wasn’t cold, but at least it was reasonably fresh.

It should have been obvious to him from the beginning: There was only one way to help someone really see.

He peered into the canteen’s narrow mouth. Gauged the amount of water left in it. And then pulled the vial from his pocket.

By the time he came back to the shack, she had shifted her position against the post. She leaned against it, eyes closed. Her skin was flushed, he thought—she seemed a little pink. Was the sun burning her?

He set the canteen down and stepped up to her as her eyes fluttered open. The blue veins of her skin seemed darker beneath her eyes. She looked tired.

“Would you like me to move you out of the sun?”

She nodded.

He untied her from the post and carried her farther inside, setting her in the shade.

“There’s no stream but I found a small puddle. It’s a bit stale, but I haven’t keeled over. Seems safe enough.”

“It’s all we have?”

“Better to drink stale water than die of thirst.” He picked up the canteen, unscrewed the top, and put it between her tied hands, so she could help herself.

Her first drink was only a swallow. “Ugh.” But she tipped it back and drank again.

“I had some—the rest is yours.”

She paused, made a face, then finished it off. When she handed it back her mouth was red.

He quietly screwed the cap back on.

Rom waited no more than ten seconds before Feyn gasped. Soon the Sovereign of the world to be was about to see the world as it was.

C
ome here,
Rom, son of Elias.” Feyn’s hands reached toward his face. “I want to look into your eyes.”

In the space of a single hour her reality had been redefined in a way that still made Rom’s head spin.

He leaned toward her on the grassy knoll as she laid one hand against his jaw, the other on his cheek.

“What are you looking for?” he said, beneath her gaze.

“I can almost see what you’re thinking. I hear my own thoughts as I never have before. There’s something in your eyes I’ve never seen in the eyes of anyone else. Last night I thought it was madness. But it’s far too beautiful.” She bit her lower lip. A moment later a tear spilled down her cheek.

He didn’t dare interrupt her metamorphosis—there was far too much at stake. He certainly wouldn’t tell her not to cry. To say it was to tell her not to feel. Impossible.

He had marveled at this transformation in her, relived moments of his own conversion in the basilica two nights ago. It had been fascinating and humbling. Amazing and horrifying. Horrifying, because he had watched the great abyss from which she had come in so short a time—a far greater distance than any of the others.

Her stoic world of Order had been shattered.

No wonder her heart had nearly burst upon breaking the surface. No wonder she had reeled beneath the sky, laughed at the sun, wept at birdsong on the knoll.

She had long ago thrown off her cloak without care for the dirtied dress she wore beneath, kicking away her leather shoes to feel the caress of the emerald grass on her toes.

He was entranced by it. By her.

“What is it, my lady?”

“Feyn,” she said.

He arched an eyebrow.

“Never call me
lady
again. I forbid it.” She broke into a heartrending smile. “My name is Feyn.”

“I know.” He couldn’t help a smile of his own. The whole world knew her name. But they did not know her and would never have recognized the woman before him. She had been beautiful before. She was vibrant now.

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Feyn,” he said. He had been less insistent with her since giving her the last of the vial, his need for answers replaced for the moment by his fascination with her desire to consume everything around her. The red flowers. The marvelous warmth of her stallion, whom she wept over, laying her cheek against his head.

And Rom himself.

“Feyn,” he said again. So close to her, he could see the separation of her irises, the ring of white that encased that uncanny glacial blue-gray.

Her lower lip, appearing so chiseled in every street banner and inaugural sign, was so plush that he hardly recognized the mouth of the Sovereign on the woman before him. He hardly recognized her at all, except for her eyes.

“What are you looking for in my eyes?” she said softly. “Tell me, do you see me, really? Do you see behind these eyes?”

He gazed into them, saw the riot of clarity and confusion at once.

“I see you. The real you.”

She wiped the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Do you realize you’re the first person—ever? The first person capable of really seeing me?”

She laughed, sprang to her feet, and ran a few steps away. Gone was the austere Sovereign. It was impossible to reconcile one with the other.

“Rom! Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

She ran back and dropped to her knees, beside him. Her hair fell into his face. “Let’s
go
. To my estate. We can take all that we need. Horses, food. We’ll shun the train and ride north, to all the old cities. We’ll enter in triumph, in love. They’ll throw open their doors to us, and we’ll walk the old streets by night. No! We’ll travel by plane. We’ll see the entire world. I want to see it all again, through your eyes. I’ll show it to you. And we’ll solve this riddle of yours, of ours.

“But for now, let’s go. I want to leave, tonight. I never want to set foot in Byzantium again.”

“What about your inauguration? The Order?” he said quietly, brushing her hair from his eyes. He didn’t want to force the issue. He wished, more than anything, for her to have this moment—this day. But there wasn’t time.

She hesitated.

“The Order. Order…I don’t know. How does it all work together? We’ll figure it out. We’ll go away and one day we’ll return, having solved it. You and I will tell history a new story. It will be our gift to the world. And we will do it together. The whole
world
will see as we do.”

Rom didn’t say anything.

“Of course that’s ridiculous. Of course,” she murmured, rising and stepping away.

He stood and walked up behind her, lifted her hand. “I understand. I do.” He did. The wildness was there, and there was something in him that wanted to say yes, that they should go and leave the concrete world of Order behind forever.

He had a vellum that made no sense and the cryptic words of an old man to guide him. Feyn wasn’t the only one reeling in this new life.

But there was something else guiding him. He’d told the others to leave the city if he didn’t return by dawn. It was late into the morning. Surely they had gone. He had to get back. Find them, find Avra.

Avra, whom he had always worshipped without knowing it. Avra, whom he would always love.

Time is short
.

Feyn turned her face toward the sky and twined her fingers through his.

“But just think of such a life. Think of it.” She closed her eyes and inhaled. “I smell the anemones like I never have. I smell the air, the rain to the south. I feel it all.”

She let go of his hand, spread her arms wide, and fell backward. He moved to catch her and she laughed.

Despite his growing sense of urgency, he laughed, too. “You could have hurt yourself!”

“I knew you would catch me.”

He lifted her and she came up breathless, her hair splayed about her shoulders. Her lips parted, her gaze was heavy as it shifted to his mouth.

“I’ve been so protected all my life. The life of a future Sovereign is so shielded from the world that we don’t even marry. It never seemed like a hardship before. Rom.”

“Hmm…”

“There’s nothing I want more right now than for you to kiss me.”

“You’d kiss a lowly artist?”

“I would love to.” She wrapped her arms around him, tilted her head, and pressed her lips to his. For a moment he shut out every unanswered question, lost in the warmth of her embrace.

He lowered his head and let his forehead rest against hers.

“Feyn.”

He straightened and saw that she was still in the first flush of new life. Reason was an unwelcome presence. But they had no time.

“Feyn, the others I told you about who have taken this same blood are waiting. And there’s probably worldwide panic over your disappearance. Please help us. Not for me. Don’t do it for me. You know now what this is—please forgive me for tricking you. But it was the only way I knew—”

“I forgive you. How can I hold it against you? I forgive you.” She caught herself. “No. I don’t forgive you. You should have done it sooner! If I think about it too much, I think I’ll regret every year, every day and hour I’ve lived until this moment. They’ve been wasted!”

He smiled. “I’ll take that as an approval.”

She looked at the sky. “You’re right, you know. I would never have helped you. I would have had you hunted down as a rebel. I would have had you thrown in the dungeon.”

Her gaze fell on a nearby patch of flowers. “But I don’t want to talk about this. I’ve always thought of humanity. Of Order. Of everything other than myself. But right now, I don’t want to think of a life other than this one.”

“Our time is running short.”

“You’re a poet.” Her gaze dropped to his amulet and rose to his face again. “Speak me a verse.”

“Then you’ll look at this vellum?”

She shrugged. “If I like your verse.”

He glanced heavenward as though seeking inspiration.

He wasn’t sure if she would smile or weep.

“It’s our story,” he said.

She abruptly turned away and started down the knoll.

“Feyn?” He ran after her. “What is it?”

“We have to go back. It’s the last thing I want to do, but you’re right, the world is in our hands. Yours more than mine, I think, strange as that sounds. We must go to my father. The world’s going to change. I’ll see to it.”

She turned back, and he saw her fresh tears.

His heart soared and broke at once. He wrapped his arms around her, and she rested her cheek against his shoulder.

He held her for a full minute in silence, the breeze brushing past them. In the distance, her stallion nickered. There was rain on the horizon, he could smell it. The clouds had begun to churn.

“Show me the vellum,” she said.

It lay on a patch of hard ground between them, held down on all four corners by stones.

“This is the only part we could read,” Rom said, pointing to the verse at the top. Feyn scanned it quietly.

“The power to live,” she said with wonder. “They were right, too, weren’t they? Sweet Bliss. They were right.”

“But this part—all of this…” He gestured at the faded characters that covered the rest of the page, as evenly spaced as soldiers in formation, none of them forming words or even grouped like words. “None of this makes sense. This is what I went to the keeper in the dungeons for.” Rom glanced at her. “Do you know what it is?”

“A Caesar Cipher,” she said, not looking up. “Did he give you a key?”

Rom had never heard of such a thing.

“He told me to remember a number. Twenty-one. Vertical. Does that help?”

Her gaze flicked this way and that. Her fine brows furrowed. She rested her finger on the letters then slowly drew it down.

“Are you sure? That’s all?”

“Latin! He said it was Latin. Please tell me you know Latin.”

“Of course I know Latin. It’s the written language of the alchemists.”

For some reason, a chill passed up his spine. She, too, hesitated, as though struck by a thought.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. Something my brother said to me. I’m not thinking very well. They cloud the senses, these feelings, don’t they?”

As Neah had complained. Neah. She had to be sick with fear by now, thinking he had been captured.

“I need something to write with,” Feyn said. “And on. Something, paper, cloth…anything.”

He dug in his pocket, pulled out the empty vial and his pen. Feyn grabbed the hem of her dress and ripped it open across her knees.

“What are you doing?”

She tore the section in a wide band all the way around to the back seam, yanked it free. “Can’t ride in this anyway,” she murmured.

She smoothed the white fabric on the ground next to the vellum, took the pen from him, and began to write, methodically deciphering each character onto the fabric. She worked quickly, one finger on the vellum moving a character at a time, keeping her place. When she had five rows of lettering, she paused, frowning.

Rom’s heart had begun to accelerate. “What does it say?”

She ran her finger along the first line of characters. She whispered, “Maker…”

“What does it say?”

“This…this is some kind of account.” She scanned ahead again with an incredulous breath.

“What does it say? Please!”

She backed up to the beginning again. “It says,
First year, third, second…
I’m assuming this is a date.”

“What does it mean?”

“Listen.” And she translated aloud:

Feyn glanced up at him.

“This is someone’s journal?” he asked.

Feyn scanned ahead, shook her head, then backed up and translated:

Rom’s heart stopped. Then pounded on. “What does that mean?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Feyn.”

She bent over the vellum and worked with increased urgency.