Free Forbidden by Ted Dekker Page A

sight of her filled Portia with rage.
    “How dare you bring another woman into our room!”
    “This is unbecoming.” Saric settled onto one of the sofas. He lifted one of the leftover goblets and took a sip from it.
    The crumpled heap of the woman moaned and grasped at Portia’s foot. She kicked the concubine away.
    “Tell me what you did to me.”
    Saric contemplated the goblet. “You, along with all of humanity, have been subject to a pathogen named Legion, which altered your genetic code. It dulled you to all emotions but fear. I have now remedied that.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Are you deaf? I’ve fixed you. Show some appreciation.”
    “Legion? Remedy?” She stormed across the room. “You know what I think? That you’re killing me.”
    “At least you feel.” Saric drew a slow, steely breath. “I couldn’t stand another day of watching you waft around like a ghost, though I think I may come to regret that decision.”
    “Look at me—I’m dying!”
    “You’ll die a whole woman, at least.”
    “Where did you get it? Where did it come from?”
    “From the alchemists. At Pravus’s bidding.”
    She blinked. “Pravus?”
    He set down the goblet. “There’s a serum rumored to be even more powerful—a blood remnant from Chaos kept all these centuries by a clandestine group called the Order of Keepers. Soon I will have it, too.”
    Her head hurt. It throbbed. Her blood pounded in every part of her body—in her ears, in her temples, in her fingers.
    “To what end?”
    “To possess power, of course. Can you not think of these things for yourself?”
    “Power over what?”
    A smile nudged his lips. “Over everything.”
    The same mad desire now coursing through her veins, she realized, had taken her husband’s mind as well.
    “Everything? Have you lost your mind? Your sister will be the one ruling the world in a short number of days. You will bow the knee to her .”
    In one swift movement he stood and struck Portia with enough force to snap her head to the side and send her staggering.
    He was shaking, his eyes glassy and fixed. “She will give me charge of the senate by the time she takes the oath.”
    Portia lifted a hand to her cheek. “The senate? And you suppose that will give you the power you need?”
    “No. We’ll need an army to do that.”
    An army? It took her a moment to dredge the meaning of the word from the murk of history. She shuddered. Courting the very notion was treason and cause for a swift execution. The world hadn’t seen an army for centuries. It was unfathomable.
    “How do you propose to raise an army?”
    “Put on some clothes.” He plucked up a silk robe and tossed it at her. It wasn’t even hers. “Get control of yourself.”
    She slipped her arms through the wide sleeves of the silk. It smelled like sweat, like everything in this rotting chamber did.
    “I’ll get control of myself when you remove that filth from here.” She glanced across the room to the bed, where the woman, her blond hair a tangled mess, had crawled.
    “What do you care about a concubine?” Saric demanded.
    She went to him then and pressed up against him. “Get rid of her.”
    He tilted his head. “What do you suggest?”
    She slid behind him. “I suggest you slit her throat,” she whispered against his ear, her gaze sliding to the bed. “Feed her to the dogs. To please me.”
    He turned slowly, took her chin firmly between his thumb and forefinger, and lifted her face, kissing her deeply.
    Suddenly he released her, reached for the steak knife on the table, strode across the room to the bed, and unceremoniously grabbed the woman by the hair.
    “Take note,” he said, eyes on his wife. “That I kill whom I wish, when I wish. And that I do it to please myself.” He sliced open the girl’s neck.
    Portia did not miss the way he watched the woman bleed out on the bed, the way the muscles twitched along his jaw.
    The cold shaft of fear surged up her spine again.
    But