Sovereign (32 page)

“Then you must open your eyes,” he said. “The ones closed in slumber.”

“Help me,” she said. Then, very quietly because her breath was gone and her throat constricted, she added, “I beg you.”

Saric lowered his arms as he moved toward her. His hand lifted, and as it neared her face, she let her final resistance slip away and surrendered to whatever might come, offering up all the suffering and confusion that had lived with her for so many years. Too many.

“I’ll wait for you on the other side, my dear.”

His hand covered her eyes a moment, and then he slapped her on the cheek, as if to wake her with a firm hand.

“See,” he said.

Her world blinked to black, and she felt herself falling.

Then she felt nothing.

J
ORDIN REGAINED awareness before she opened her eyes. She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious—only that a new consciousness had awakened her. A certainty that
what was
, was meant to be.

When she opened her eyes, it was still light. Lighter even than it had been before. The ground was bleached nearly white as before but somehow it seemed purer. Not brighter, but
more
than what it had been.

She jerked up and looked around, searching for Saric. The hills still rose up around her, the valley still spread wide to the south where a dark storm gathered on the horizon.

Over Byzantium.

But here in the desert, the sun still shone above, having barely moved. The canteens still lay on the ground, one where it had been dropped, the other near the place where Saric had offered a drink she’d not taken.

Nothing had changed.

And yet, somehow it was different.

She became aware of the faint hum again, more definite now, tingling her flesh; speaking to her bones.

Pushing up onto her right arm, she twisted around and looked
up the valley—and then caught her breath, gripped by the sight before her.

A translucent veneer seemed to rise from the ground just fifty paces away. A shimmering wall that bisected the valley and distorted her view of what lay beyond. The hum was coming from something beyond it, or from the wall itself.

Jordin lifted her eyes and saw that it went as high as she could see, that it ran in either direction past the hills, from east to west. It seemed to ripple, to reflect the sun like water.

She scrambled to her feet, breathing hard, eyes wide, knowing somehow that beyond the veil lay the world of dreams. The world of Saric….

The world of Jonathan.

Wake up from your dream, Jordin.

The words whispered through her mind, as if carried in the hum.

She was dreaming?

Come to me. Wake from your dream of flesh and blood.

“I’m dreaming?” Her voice sounded like that of a younger woman, innocent and curious.

Faint laughter beckoned her. And then a voice she could not mistake.
“Come, Jordin. Run! Wake up!”

Jonathan!

Reason lost to the four corners, desire flooding her in its place, Jordin tore toward the veil.

“Jordin!”

She pulled up hard at the unmistakable cry of Roland’s voice behind her.

Roland…. he’d returned for her? There was no way he could be back so soon.

Slowly, she turned in time to see Roland plunging down the slope on his stallion, dressed for battle in the same shirt and boots he’d been wearing earlier. The breeze lifted his hair as he rode. His eyes were intent on her.

He reined in beside her and dropped from his mount. “Jordin….” He searched her face, appearing conciliatory, almost regretful. Dropped to one knee.

“Forgive me.” A tear broke from his eye and edged down his cheek. “I had no right to leave you. Forgive me.”

She didn’t know what to think. Only that here knelt her prince, begging her forgiveness.

“I sent the rest on to gather the army while I came back. I won’t die denying the truth.”

“What truth?”

“That there would be no queen among the Immortals but you. You’ve taken the throne of my heart.”

She stared into his eyes, knowing in that moment that she loved the prince before her far more than she ever could have had Saric not opened her eyes to receive him.

Tears swelled in her eyes.

At that, Roland rose and closed the distance between them in two strides and gathered her into his arms. He buried his face in her neck.

“Forgive me, my love. Accept my confession and absolve me.” He lifted his head, ran his hand over her hair, then drew back and gently kissed her.

“Make me Sovereign,” he whispered.

She looked up and saw past the eclipse in his eyes to the love kneeling before her heart.

“You would become Sovereign?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Now,” he said, and lightly touched his lips to hers again.

Come to me. Wake up from your dream of flesh and blood.

Jonathan was calling….

“Come with me,” Roland said. “Ride by my side. Make me Sovereign and let us live out our days as one.”

She twisted her head and saw that the glimmering fissure still cut the valley in two. It had brought her Roland. Somehow, the world had righted itself. Jonathan had delivered her….

Roland took her chin and turned her face to him. “Jordin. We must hurry. My Rippers are riding for the city with revenge and death on their minds. We have to stop them!”

“I don’t have a stent,” she said.

“Seriph has a stent. Ride with me.”

Roland seemed oblivious to the anomaly behind her. She glanced once more over her shoulder.

Wake up, Jordin. Hurry!

“Do you see it?” She looked back at him. “Do you hear it?”

His eyes lifted to look beyond her and settled back on her face.

“I see only my savior, standing before me in the flesh. Flowing with life-giving blood.” He began to turn, pulling her arm with him. “There’s no time. We have to ride!”

“Wait!”

Confusion spun through her mind. She’d come to find Jonathan, not to save Roland. How could she ignore the call of Jonathan’s voice?

“Jonathan’s here!” she said.

He glanced about. “Jonathan? What do you mean? In your blood, you mean? Come with me before your blood fails you and Jonathan is no more. Hurry!”

He started again, pulling her toward his mount. She followed him four steps before pulling back. She couldn’t leave now—not when Jonathan was calling to her!

“Roland, wait.” His hand slipped off her arm.

“There’s no time!”

“Jonathan!”

“There
is
no Jonathan!”

Come to me, Jordin.

With those words humming through her mind, she knew that
she could never leave with Roland—not until she grasped the truth of what lay beyond the veil.

Without another moment’s hesitation, Jordin twisted around and began to run toward the distortion.

“Jordin!”

No. Roland must be an apparition.

She’d taken only three long strides before awareness of the changing landscape struck her. The earth darkened under her feet, sprouting lethal blades. They snaked up like shrill tongues, filling the air with screams of protest and accusation, even as her boots crushed them underfoot.

She ran faster, glancing to her right.

The hill, the same slope Roland had descended, was rising up like an angry black wave. She pulled up hard, suddenly terrified. The world had become a nightmare. She was dreaming!

And yet, this felt like no dream.

Above, storm clouds gathered with frightening speed. As she watched, they spawned four and then ten and then a dozen twisting tendrils, each of them descending toward her, pointing like accusing fingers.

“Look at me, Sovereign!”

She whirled toward the guttural voice behind her. Roland had vanished. Saric strode toward her, not twenty paces distant, dressed in a long black robe. He was Dark Blood again, and death was in his eyes.

“Your life is that of a pathetic rat digging in the sewer for rotting refuse.”

Earsplitting thunder crashed overhead. Saric came on, marching with long strides. Panicked, she tried to turn back for the veil, but found the blades from the earth had coiled up around her ankles.

“You deserve only what you choose, and you have chosen only misery,” Saric snarled.

One of the fingers from the sky shot down at her, a narrow funnel of hot air that slammed into her chest, jarring her very heart.

But it wasn’t just air. Visceral guilt and condemnation slammed through her gut. She screamed—until horror cut off her breath.

You’re waking, Jordin! Now run to me. Leave your fears and see what is real. Come to my arms.

Jordin screamed again, this time with a fury she didn’t know she possessed. She jerked around with enough force to free her legs from the black vines. They sliced through her legs like razors. Gasping for air, she ran pell-mell toward the rift that divided the valley and threw herself into it.

As if she’d plunged into a lake, the sounds behind abruptly faded, replaced by a gentle thrum and ebb. Her skin, thrashed and cut and bleeding, forgot pain, came alive with the sensation that every cell of her body was humming to life.

She gasped, sucking in the galvanized air. When it hit her lungs, rapture flooded her chest. Exploded into her mind like ecstasy.

Come to me, Jordin….

As she fell headlong past the veil, Jordin knew that she had entered Bliss.

She sprawled on the white desert ground and lay panting, facedown, surrounded only by the sound of her own breath.

Perfect silence.

Her skin tingled as if submerged in a living sea. She was filled with peace. It was in her cells, filling her lungs, in her very veins.

She slowly lifted her head and gazed at the hill to her left. It was the same slope as before, but now it seemed to move, as though each grain of sand were alive. She blinked, thinking her vision would correct itself, but it positively shimmered.

As did the earth beneath her palms and arms.

She looked around, saw no sign of Jonathan, but she
knew
that he was here, with her. In her. Surrounding her.

She rose to her feet, stared about her as though she’d stepped into
a foreign world, staggered by the splendor of what had been only a barren desert valley before. It was the same valley, but now it shone with beauty.

How had she not seen it before? Known it?

She knew other things now as well. She knew that she wasn’t dreaming. That she’d somehow woken from a dream—one of her own making, which she’d mistaken for her true life. That she was one with Jonathan and had been all along, but had only now become aware of it.

The Sovereign Realm. Jonathan’s realm. It was inside her, as he was inside her—while all the while she’d been searching for him.

The awareness shook Jordin to her bones. Jonathan had called her to wake, and she had woken. To love. To the heart of the Maker himself.

Love. She was filled with it. It rushed inside her, rolled down her spine, coaxing from her every nerve a pleasure so exquisite she wondered for a moment whether she might die—a thought that brought not a single fear of death with it.

She spread her arms and stared at her fingers, moving them through the air. Space swam with visible power, barely seen but palpable as a stream of water curling around her fingers.

No. She was the stream. She was flooded with love, from the crown of her head to the heels of her feet. She felt it mushroom, gather in her chest, and pass out of her body.

She saw the silent shockwave of it entering the air before her. Watched the ripples of it spread through the space around her.

She stood in awe, aware that the power of it had in no way been depleted by its departure. It seemed to occupy two places at once. Both inside and outside of her. In infinite supply.

“Hello, Jordin.”

She whirled around and saw the thing she had craved all her life. Even in her life before she had known what it meant to live.

Jonathan.

He was standing not ten feet away, dressed in the same kind of tunic she’d seen him in dozens of times before. His hair was long, tangled, and free, and his eyes glimmered with mischief above a broad smile.

A scar just visible in his neckline angled down, disappearing beneath his tunic, a vestige left from his execution at Saric’s hand.

Tears slipped down her cheeks. They were not born of sorrow but of joy.

Jonathan’s eyes pooled with tears above his smile. He laughed and ran forward, unable to contain his own joy. Throwing his arms around her, he swung her off her feet in a hug so exuberant that she couldn’t help but wrap her arms and legs around him to keep from falling backward.

He chuckled with delight, twirling around with her arms clamped around his shoulders as she buried her face in his neck and wept her gratitude.

“Here you are!” he cried. “You’ve finally come home! I missed you so much, Jordin. I love you so much.”

She was lost in him. In love. His love.

They were one.

One!

Jonathan set her down, twirled away, and bowed at his waist, one arm extended in invitation.

“Welcome to my dance,” he said, flashing a daring grin. “I call it the Sovereign Realm. It doesn’t get any better, I can assure you.”

She laughed, smiled, as she stepped up to him. She took his hand in hers. “Well then, my prince. Show me this realm where you’ve been hiding, waiting to rescue me in my hour of need.”

He straightened and cocked his head. “Hiding?”

She immediately knew his meaning.

“No, you haven’t been hiding, have you? I am the one who has been hiding.”

He dipped his head once.
Go on….

“Hiding behind a dream from which I’ve finally awakened,” she said. She considered her own statement, then asked, “It was a dream, right?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. The dream you call your life.”

“All of my life? Not just the images I saw before passing the veil?”

“All of it. Like a dream. Is it more real than what you see now?”