AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Of course,thiswould be the day Madeleine had let Jayla leave the house, thinking she had no need for a guard. But she was not going to subject any of them to the indignity of having the servants throw Reese out of the house when he clearly was unwilling to go. “No, everything’s fine,” she said. “Don’t raise an alarm.”
The maid curtsied and withdrew. Reese shut the door firmly, then turned to stare at Madeleine. The window was still open, admitting enough light for them to see each other plainly. She stopped worrying about how awful she must look, because he looked even worse.
“Reese. What’s wrong?” She had been about to warn him to keep his distance, but now she took two steps toward him, extending her hand. His face was ravaged.
“I’ve just come from my father’s—”
“Oh no! Reese, has something happened to him? Is he—”
He shook his head impatiently. “No, he’s fine. Well—he’s fading, but—that’s not what I came here to talk about. I saw him and he told me—what apparently he’s been trying to work up the nerve to tell me for the past six months. And I—Maddie, I—it’s too terrible.”
Now she took his hand in hers and held it in a comforting clasp. His other hand came up and clutched hers. “Tell me,” she said. “I’ll help you through it.”
“You can’t,” he whispered.
“Just tell me.”
He stared at her a moment, his blue eyes burning into hers. His expression was so complex it was hard to decipher, but she thought she saw anguish. And fear. And rage.
“There is a secret that the heads of all the Council families know,” he began. “And because my father’s death will make me the head of my family, he wanted me to learn it. I swear to you, Maddie, I never—not once, notever—did I have the faintest idea about any of this.”
“All right. I believe you. What is it?”
“The city—the whole country—it was all stitched together by Cordelan centuries ago.”
She was completely bewildered.Thiswas what had upset him? Some ancient religious mythology that everybody already knew? “Reese, what in the world—”
His hands tightened painfully on hers. “But there’s a cost to it,” he said, speaking over her. “The world is held together by some strange device that Cordelan left behind. And every few years it has to be primed with the blood of one of his descendants. And right now, the only one of his descendants who is still living is you.”
The words were so nonsensical she could hardly take them in. Maybe Reese was experiencing a temporary bout of madness. “That’s just ridiculous,” she said.
“Outrageous,” he agreed. “Almost incredible. But you know my father doesn’t lie.”
“But Reese—what—tell me again, only this time make sense.”
“It doesn’tmakesense!” he exclaimed. “It seems the god created some mechanism that would hold the whole continent together. But it has to be fed every few years with blood, and that blood can only come from someone related to him. And if the blood isn’t poured into this device, the world comes apart at the seams. Tremors. Geysers of fire. Destruction.”
“The quakes,” she whispered.
“Exactly. The quakes. And they’re only going to get worse.”
“But then—what—whoseblood? How much of it?”
He looked as wretched as she had ever seen a person look. “The blood of someone who is directly descended from the god. Whose heritage has been traced for generations and generations. And apparently the only person left alive in this whole world who meets that requirement is you.”
She just stared at him. After a long silence, he said, “Did you understand me? Say something.”
“I’m not descended from Cordelan,” was all she could come up with.
“Everybody seems to think you are.”
“No onethinks it! My mother was an orphan, raised by the Kissidells out of kindness. No one even knew who her parents were.”
Reese raised his eyebrows. “Someone knew. My father says that, decades ago, the Council decided to conceal the truth from these descendants because—understandably—they would not be eager to embrace their fate—”
She wrenched her hands away and threw herself across the room. “This is too fanciful to be believed! First you say the world will be destroyed without some blood sacrifice, then you say that I’m the one who will be that sacrifice—oh, and right, the reason I’m qualified is that I’m related to thegod?Do you have any idea how insane you sound?
“I know. It sounds crazy. I know. But look at the facts—”
