Sovereign by Ted Dekker Read Free Book Online Page B

understand it. Seek him. Find him.”
    She spun around. “How? Tell me and I’ll do it. Show me where to find him. But no, you can’t, because you don’t know either. No matter how much we might wish it otherwise—and believe me, I’ve wished myself to the bone—we can’t. We can’t because he’s dead.”
    “Is he?”
    “I’m not talking about his blood.”
    “Neither am I,” Rom said.
    She took a long, steadying breath. “What do you mean?”
    “I mean I dreamed the same dream you told me about a few nights ago. His voice calling from the desert.”
    “It’s a dream, Rom.”
    “Is it?”
    “Haven’t they all been?”
    “I pray you lead the Sovereigns with Jonathan’s heart, Jordin,” he said in a soft voice.
    The ugly echo of her words hung in the air. How could he have such surety about the heart of the man she had loved more than any of them…. while she felt only lost?
    “I have to leave now, while it’s still dark,” he said.
    “Where?”
    “To the Citadel.”
    She wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.
    “To the witch?”
    He only looked at her.
    “You’ll never make it! Even if you do, she’ll kill you.”
    “It’s a chance I am forced to take. I hope I’m right in saying that you underestimate her. She hosts the ancient blood somewhere beneath her death.”
    “You’re going to just turn yourself in?”
    His gaze was quiet.
    “It’s madness!”
    “I beg you, Jordin, never vacate your love for Jonathan or your vow to follow him. Tell the others that I’ve gone to Feyn to barter a way for our survival. Tell them Feyn will attempt to turn me into one of her Dark Bloods. If she succeeds, Mattius’s virus will kill me as well. Tell it to every Sovereign—not just the council. Promise me that much.”
    “This can’t be the way.”
    “It’s the
only
way!” He turned and strode toward the curtain as if to leave. “If Mattius is willing to kill me, so be it. But the others will think twice. If it’s true that we’re all doomed, then I have nothing to lose. And neither do you.”
    She stood rooted in the dim light, feeling shame in the face of his commitment.
    Rom turned back at the entrance. “You remember what we discussed about Roland? If there were no other options?”
    How could she forget? “That, too, is insanity,” she said.
    “They said that about Jonathan before his death.”
    She stared after him long after he had left, the waistband of her pants still clutched in her hand.
    “INSANITY!” Mattius’s voice rang out in the chamber. The man’s stoic face had gone red beneath his whitening beard. “How dare he attempt to take hostage our salvation by putting himself up as a martyr!” He paced, his robe sweeping the stone floor at his heels. He turned on Jordin, green eyes glaring. “No one must know of this. Not a word beyond this hall.”
    “They already know,” Jordin said.
    “Who knows?” the alchemist demanded, glaring at Gamil then Adah.
    “All of them,” Jordin said.
    “Insanity!”
    “So you’ve said.”
    The moment Rom left, she had fallen onto her bed and wept with frustration until, frantic, she’d tried to chase him down, planning to restrain him if she must. But when she reached the tunnel to the surface, Stephan, the elderly man on third watch, informed her Rom had left ten minutes earlier.
    It had been an hour and a half to sunrise. Three hours to the customary rising hour. She’d spent half the time pacing in her room, wrestling with madness. Only in an extended moment of clarity, with the image of Triphon slain before her in a manner so similar to Jonathan, did her course of action become plain.
    She would do as Rom asked. For Jonathan. For Sovereigns. For Rom. For herself.
    Peace had come like a flood, and on its heels, absolute surety. She’d quickly dressed and made her rounds of the chambers still occupied by the living. With so few left, it took only moments to spread the message that Rom had gone to win favor with Feyn. She