Sovereign by Ted Dekker

die, Kaya. I won’t let you.” She said it for the girl’s sake. She said it for her own. She hoped it was true.
    “Isn’t becoming Immortal like death?”
    “Maybe. But we aren’t Immortal, are we? So right now we can rest in Jonathan’s love. Both of us.”
    Kaya sat cross-legged, staring beyond the cliff at the darkness.Silence stretched between them for a minute. Nearby, a lizard scurried over a pile of loose pebbles.
    “Do you feel his love now?” Kaya asked.
    That was the question, wasn’t it? The one that had taken up permanent residence in all of their minds.
    “Sometimes,” she said. “Not enough.”
    “Then why be Sovereign?”
    Jordin knew the answer, but it didn’t warm her heart. She remained quiet, thinking that in her simple way, Kaya voiced the impossible irony of Sovereignty itself.
    “If we have Jonathan’s blood and are like him, shouldn’t we feel his love at all times? And if love is so beautiful, why does everyone seem to live in misery?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I think they’re pretending. I think they’d rather be Immortal to feel the love and peace they once felt.” She paused. “Is that why you’re going to become Immortal?”
    Jordin blinked in the darkness.
Was it? Maker, no.
Then why did the question bother her?
    “No,” she said.
    “But you’re still sad, even though you have Jonathan’s love in you.”
    “Because I’m only human, Kaya. I lost the love of my life.”
    “He’s not gone.”
    But he’s not here.
“Don’t you miss him?”
    “Yes. But I’m not miserable.”
Like you
, Jordin heard without Kaya saying it. “He saved us from death and gave us love—so why is everyone so miserable? He saved us.”
    “Yes, of course. And one day we’ll all relish that love. But today we survive.”
    “What good is ‘one day’ when that day doesn’t come until you die? Then why survive at all?”
    Jordin wanted to tell her that she was thinking in too-simpleterms. But there was also strange magic in the simplicity of her logic.
    “You still feel him, don’t you?”
    She should. And in some ways she often did. But not the way Kaya meant, like breath itself, every moment, made possible by the very blood in their veins. It struck her then, as clear to her as a blue sky. Something was wrong with their understanding of Sovereignty. Somehow they’d missed the whole point.
    “Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
    Why she felt such annoyance at Kaya’s obvious questions was beyond her. Weren’t these the same questions she’d asked herself a hundred times? But it was there, niggling beneath the surface: somehow, they were getting it wrong.
    “We have to be quiet now, Kaya. Ask Jonathan in your dreams. Maybe he can answer.”
    “I’ve decided,” Kaya said, ignoring the urge for silence.
    “Decided what?”
    “I’m going to do whatever you do…. if we get the blood.”
    The faint sound of a jingling tack drifted to Jordin’s ear. Or was it? She held up her hand for silence and listened.
    There, again, the sound of a horse’s hoof on rock.
    The Immortals had come.

C HAPTER E IGHT
    F OUR. All mounted on black horses, shadows swathed in pitch black from head to foot.
    Jordin lay on her belly, peering through the scrub at the cliff’s edge. The Immortals came slowly into the wide section of the canyon to her far right, guided by scent. The scent of Sovereign. They appeared not to have a care in the world—what was this to them but a wounded animal whose misery they would end with a single blow?
    But they weren’t stupid. Their apparent ease was as much caution, finely tuned to the night terrain around them. The scent had brought them, but acute sight and hearing would serve them now…. as well as that sixth sense known only to those who lived to prey or be preyed upon.
    Jordin held her bow in her right hand, heart pounding against the rock face beneath her chest. She could not deny her envy at the sight of them. While Sovereigns cloistered hungry and