Forbidden Read Online Free Page B

very tall. He felt great in this room, as though he filled it merely by standing in it. As though the Citadel could not contain him, as though the world itself would not, perhaps, sate him. Everyone else—everything else—felt minuscule in comparison.
    “I wonder, my lord,” Corban said, coming closer. “Do you feel anything else? Joy perhaps?”
    “Joy?”
    “They also called it satisfaction . A sense of well-being, according to the record. Fulfillment.”
    Saric looked at the relics around him. “I feel joy every time a new woman is brought in for me. I feel joy at the sound of her screams.”
    Corban was studying him with intense scrutiny.
    “Has your lab rat satisfied your curiosity, then?”
    “You misunderstand my motivation,” the older man said. “And I do not believe that what you describe is joy. We have reignited some emotions, but not all. Only those of a darker nature, apparently.”
    “My appetite for meat has increased. It’s what I crave, to the exclusion of all else—”
    “That isn’t unusual. Meat is the mainstay of the world diet.”
    For nearly two centuries, the law had restricted citizens’ caloric intake, monitored carbohydrates, and eliminated sugar. It was common knowledge that carbohydrates, even those found in vegetables, shortened life. To think, in the age of arcane science there had been diets based on vegetables!
    “No. I can’t even bear the thought of overcooked food. It repulses me. In fact, the smell of the venison that you ate for supper repulses me.”
    “You can smell that?”
    “I can smell blood anywhere and prefer my meals running with it. And then there is this—” Saric pulled away the sodden neck of his cloak and in three strides loomed over the alchemist.
    “Do you see how my veins stand out against my skin?”
    In just the last day his jugular had turned nearly black beneath the surface, as though it ran with ink. Saric’s skin was already translucent, so much so that he never needed to accentuate the vein along his forearm, as some royals did, with blue cosmetic powder. Indeed, Saric had been pleased at the change and marveled at it. But as he had watched the blue branching of his veins darken, he had wondered with fear and fascination what it meant.
    “As far as side effects go, I would think you’d find it pleasing,” the alchemist said. “Now, if that is all, my lord—”
    “It is not all. I want to know what the Chaos serum might do to my wife, Portia. Each of the women I’ve given it to has died, sometimes before I finished with her.”
    Corban shook his head. “I strongly urge against it. We’ve allowed it in the women brought to satisfy your new tastes, knowing they would not survive. But giving it to Portia is inadvisable. We studied your bloodline for months before administering the serum. Clearly, it does not suit all bloodlines, and many of our initial samples did not yield…favorable results. Let me remind you that there are only three who know of your recent conversion, including yourself. It is extremely dangerous to share this secret with anyone.”
    Saric turned away. So there it was. Was he even now dying as a result of his reanimation?
    If he was, he would wrest from this world every drop of pleasure and power he could. What did it matter? The very foundation of the Order was a lie.
    Besides, he was in Hades already.
    A shudder passed up through his spine. It took all his resolve to keep it from overtaking his limbs.
    “And yet, Corban, we will have to get a fresh sample of the serum. Because I am most interested in sharing this—these new passions—with my wife.”
    A sharp rap came from the other side of the door. And then he smelled it: copper and salt.
    Blood.
    “Come!”
    Two guardsmen entered the chamber. One of them, the taller of the two, carried a sack, the mouth of it gathered in his fist.
    “My lord.”
    Saric took the sack from him, hefted it once as though weighing it, and then emptied it with a heave in