Sovereign Read Free Page B

Maker I swear it.”
    She lifted her eyes to the moon shining through an opening in the clouds on the horizon. She had danced beneath that moon once. Its face was cold and foreign now. The sandy knoll already looked like something from another land, another life, distorted and jagged on the horizon.
    The knoll moved. Only then did she realize what she was seeing, and the awareness of it stalled her breath. A line of horses stood on top of it, silhouetted by the cold light of the moon.
    Black horses. Seven of them abreast, mounted by seven hooded warriors dressed in black. Staring down at the scene before them.
    It was the first time Jordin had seen an Immortal in years. Their faces were covered in black. Like wraiths come to collect souls before vanishing into the wasteland once again. The Dark Blood before her must have seen her eyes widen. He twisted around. It only took him an instant to know what he was seeing.
    “Form up! Immortals.”
    As one, the Dark Bloods spun to the east. The line of horses began to descend the sandy slope, slowly at first and then breaking into a full gallop, riders bent low. Fearless. Silent.
    The sight of such raw power and stealth was so compelling that Jordin didn’t immediately recognize she had just been granted her means of escape. The Dark Bloods had forgotten their single prey, now clearly prey themselves.
    She spun just as the two Bloods who’d taken up behind her rushed forward. One took a swing at her, which she easily sidestepped. Then they were past and scrambling for position on either side of the street with the others.
    Jordin reached down, snatched Triphon’s amulet from his neck, turned up the empty street, and ran.

C HAPTER T WO
    T HE STILL figure stood looking out the six-foot-tall window, a dark silhouette against the night. Her hands were folded before her. The flicker of a lone candle on a table ten feet away lapped at the folds of her gown. All the others had long burned out.
    Black, the velvet. Obsidian, the constellation of beading upon it. Ebony, the fall of unbound hair to the small of that back.
    White, the skin.
    It itched sometimes, on nights like this, as though the churning sky called to the inky dark of her veins beneath. Her skin had always been pale, but the shadow in her veins was six years new. A gift of the Dark Blood by her half brother, Saric, who had been Sovereign and Dark Blood before her.
    Lightning flashed on the horizon, to the east. For an instant, a jagged finger of light illuminated the capital of the world. Her world. A dominion of state religion and new Order. Of loyalty fearfully given because it was demanded by an all-seeing Maker who would, without qualm, send those who did not obey to Hades. For the common Corpse, that Maker was the source of life they believed they had.
    But to her Dark Blood minions, she was that Maker.
    Feyn Cerelia, the Sovereign of the world. Destined to it by birthright, she had once laid it down along with her life for the sake of a boy. Nine years later she had been forced to the throne by herbrother’s ambition. Today, the brother was gone and the boy was dead. Each had been the other’s undoing—she had seen to that. Now she ruled by one will alone: her own.
    Eighty thousand Dark Bloods patrolled the capital city, guarded her borders, and controlled her transport ways. They were not “children,” as they had been to Saric, but minions. Lethal, rabid, loyal…. and expendable. After all, Dark Bloods might be made anytime, at will.
    Hers.
    She instinctively touched the ring of office on her finger, straightening the heavy gold sigil, which had a habit of twisting. She found herself in this posture often at night, looking out at her realm from the palace tower, trying to understand what, if anything, she was missing. What did she search for through those windows that she didn’t already have?
    Saric?
    No. She seldom thought of him since the day he’d staggered off into the wilderness, broken, defeated,