Forbidden Read Online Free Page A

of the skin that you Brahmin seem to favor, the paleness of your eyes that you consider beautiful.”
    “By simply turning off the switches to those emotions that no longer serve us.”
    “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
    Whatever this virus had done to humanity, the alchemists had found a way to undo it in him. The chaos of emotions had come roiling back into veins and neurons too tepid to house their fire, and Saric wasn’t sure if he wanted to kill the alchemists or thank them for it.
    Emotion. So long forgotten, even the words for emotions had become nothing but a wisp, a feckless currency without backing. Hope. Envy. Disgust. Love.
    Love. The archaic emotion in the Age of Chaos was now simply understood as a duty based on honor and respect, stripped of emotion. But what had it felt like? He tossed the jeweled knife atop the console.
    “So that’s it. The world has been castrated.”
    “Despite our vast knowledge, emotion retained her mysteries. The most complex workings of Legion were not completely understood by us.”
    Saric glanced at him.
    “The alchemists continued to study emotion’s underpinnings. Through the process, we learned to restore some of the emotions we once turned off with Legion.”
    “The serum.”
    “Yes, the atraviridae. We call it Chaos, for obvious reasons.”
    “The dark virus,” Saric said softly.
    Corban continued. “And so I came to you seven days ago and the rest you know. You are looking on the world as a new creature. I say new because although we have reanimated the emotion centers of your brain, it is not exactly the same as it would be had you been born that way. It is, I like to think, an improvement. Pravus chose well.”
    Pravus the Elder, foremost among the Peers. He, too, had taken the serum quite a while before ordering Corban to administer it to Saric.
    “You are his right-hand man,” Saric said. “I wonder why he didn’t choose you for this…honor.”
    Corban’s gaze slowly lifted. It was flat but guileless.
    Saric said, barely above a whisper, “You would have done it, wouldn’t you?”
    Corban was silent.
    “But you don’t have the royal blood that Pravus needs. Ah. Pity.”
    But Corban could not comprehend pity. Even for himself.
    Saric felt a sudden stab of something like loneliness. He wondered where Feyn was, if she had finished writing her inaugural address, and in what posture she sat now, at this moment. He wondered what she had chosen to wear today and what supper her breath smelled of and the directional cant of those ice-cloud eyes.
    Corban must have seen the tremble in Saric’s hands or the sweat on his brow, because he pressed with a question of his own.
    “You are confused about what you’re feeling?”
    Saric stepped away and took a deep breath. “I have…strange sensations that I don’t know how to describe. I can barely contain them. The effort of it is like pain. I crave things I never wanted to possess. The women—”
    The man whispered. “Desire, my lord. Lust.”
    Saric gave a slow nod. “I crave to take things from others. I think of killing someone just to push the life out of their lungs with my hands, especially if they would stop me.”
    “Anger. Perhaps jealousy.”
    Anger. Jealousy. They might as well have been the names of colors to the blind.
    “Anything else?” the alchemist asked.
    “I want things. The robe of my father, which is fine velvet embroidered with gold. But more, I want the office that goes with that robe. I am jealous for it.” There, he had said it, given voice to the two-headed asp that struck even now with great pleasure and fury at his insides.
    “Ambition, my lord. And clearly, that is the whole point. Pravus would return power to the house of alchemy through you, who is half alchemist by blood.”
    Indeed, the plan. So Pravus had the same thirsts but needed Saric to quench them.
    Ambition. It was the greatest of those serpents within him. It made him feel full, to have them inside him, and