He spins on me, apparently finished with his magic. “Because then the wrong people would have known you were here. I can’t carry you, after all. Now let’s go. I know another exit.”
I square my shoulders, regaining some of my composure, and I don’t budge. “But why do you care if someone catches me, Ivrilos?” I make a point to remind him we’re on a first name basis now, for better or worse.
“No one can think I dropped my guard that much, Rovan.”
My name on his tongue, in that throaty growl, thrills me for some unfathomable reason, lighting along me like fire touched to a line of pitch. Maybe it’s because he has dropped his guard for me.
He must catch my reaction, because his eyes snag on mine above my flame’s light and hold there. His tirade dies on his lips.
Something seems suspended between us then, heavy and charged. His gaze hits me like a punch to the stomach. It’s hungry. Alight. An answering challenge to mine. My heart beats almost painfully in my chest.
I didn’t expect this, not while he was busy yelling at me, not when he doesn’t have a heartbeat.
I’m unready for the force of whatever sparks and flares between me and my guardian. My knees feel weak, like in the silly stories. Ivrilos seems taken by surprise, as well, and nearly looks as unsteady as me.
Finally, he tears his eyes away, breaking the strange spell. I can breathe again.
“I can’t believe you tried to make me think…” He seems about to say more, and then shakes his head. “Only you would be so vulgar as to expose yourself as a distraction.”
I nearly burst out laughing. “I wasn’t actually going to. Besides, you’ve already seen the girls.” I shimmy my shoulders. “It’s not like they can bite you.”
He glares back at me. “You tricked me. Again.”
I arch a brow. “So you wanted me to drop my dress?”
“That’s not the trick I meant,” he says through gritted teeth, his expression strained. “You ran when I turned my back for decency’s sake, when I was at least attempting to trust you. And before you can ask if that makes me angry, yes, it does.”
I swallow whatever I was about to say. Not that I feel bad. Not exactly.
Ivrilos runs a pale hand back through his dark hair, nearly unseating his silver circlet. “I want to trust you, Rovan. At the very least, I don’t want to hurt you. But if it doesn’t at least look like I’m keeping you under control, it reflects poorly on me as your guardian. I won’t be trusted, and I can’t have that. I need to avoid scrutiny—the both of us do—as much as possible. Which ploys like this are making rather difficult.”
I smile sweetly. “Then you should continue helping me and let me in on your ploys, and everything will be much easier.”
His hands fall in fists at his sides. “No, I should have dropped you to the ground before you made it even close to this room. Before you attacked the guards. You’ve shown me exactly how far I can trust you—which is not far at all.” His voice stays low, but he starts pacing before the doors, angry again, more animated than I’ve ever seen him. He’s mad at himself now, I realize. That doesn’t happen often, by the looks of it. “I should have known. And everyone knows you’re new to being warded, still resistant, and that you like your wine. If servants had found you passed out in a hallway, it wouldn’t have created much of a stir.”
“Disapproval of my ‘vulgarity’ and now my drinking—what a surprise! Aren’t you virtuous?” My sneer twists into an evil grin. “But your virtue has been your downfall. You shouldn’t have turned your back on me. And now you can’t knock me unconscious in here. Like you said, you can’t carry me, so you have to keep helping me.”
He freezes, suddenly wary. “What are you doing here, by the way?”
I shrug, nonchalant. “I just want a look around.”
“I wasn’t sure you even knew what this room was—Wait!” he says as I turn away, flame in hand. “You can’t be in here.”
“We’ve covered that already,” I say over my shoulder. “Don’t shout, now. Better keep up.”
He follows at a brisk pace. “I’m serious, Rovan. Nothing good will come of this.” When I ignore him, he says, “I could … hurt you. Until you agree to leave. Make it too painful to go forward.”
I know he won’t, not after his meager pinch at the banquet, and not after that look we just shared. So I raise my flame and peer into the shadows. Statues loom all around me, and the musty smell of disuse hangs heavy in the air. The royal gallery appears as if it never has visitors. A thought occurs to me, and I whip around to see my footsteps marring the thick dust over the black and white mosaic maze on the floor behind me. My guardian, of course, doesn’t leave a trace.
“Shit,” I breathe. “They’ll know someone was here.”
“I can fix that, cover your tracks, but we need to go,” Ivrilos insists, planting himself between me and the way forward.
He really doesn’t want me seeing whatever is in here—which probably means I’m on the right track.
Apprehension stirs uncomfortably in my belly, but I step right through him and raise my flame higher, willing the sigil to burn brighter. Pale marble faces float up from the gloom like drowned bodies surfacing in dark water.
Most wear the faces of men.
“Look here!” I barely manage to keep my voice down as I hurry to the base of a statue. “It says ‘Damios’—the name of Japha’s guardian.”
“I thought you couldn’t read.” Ivrilos sounds stunned, close behind me.
I would be more offended if I weren’t so proud of myself. I turn to give him a grin. “I can read a little, thank you very much, and I’m good at capturing the shape of things. While I can’t string complicated sentences together, I’ve been practicing certain letters and their matching sounds in my head ever since my first horrid lesson here. Names, in particular.”
“This one is probably a coincidence,” Ivrilos says, his voice weaker than usual. “Damios is a common name.”
“Is it him or isn’t it? You’ve seen him. And, remember, it’s vulgar to lie.”
Jaw clenching, my guardian doesn’t say anything. I carry on, rushing down the line of statues, diving deeper into the shadows of the royal gallery.
“Klytios! Captain Windbag’s guardian.” A dozen marble plinths later, I gasp. “Aias.” I hurry on, nearing the end of the line, the dates on the statues going farther and farther back in time, nearing what had to be the era of the first king. “Graecus. They’re all here.”
And then I freeze.
“Rovan.” My guardian’s voice is strangled.
“Ivrilos,” I say. Except this time I’m not addressing him. I’m reading a name. This Ivrilos stands before me cut from marble, not shadow. He’s just as beautiful, if sadder in his expression than the Ivrilos I know. He holds a sword in one hand, a circlet in the other, and gazes at something far away. The sight makes my chest constrict. Even though I’ve been braced to find him here—but still hoping, somehow, I wouldn’t—I’m not prepared for this. “These dates…” I face my guardian, the true Ivrilos.
His face is as pale and still as marble in the darkness, but the rest of him is cloaked in black. “I know.”
“It says you lived four hundred years ago.”
“I did,” he says.
“That would mean you … and the first king…” I press the heels of my palms into my eyes. “Please read what it says. I can’t—I can’t manage that many words.”
“I don’t need to read it,” Ivrilos says, his voice gentle. “It says that I was King Athanatos’s bastard son, recognized by order of my older brother, who succeeded him, only after my father and I … passed.”
I keep my eyes covered so I don’t have to look at his face—either of his faces. They seem to mirror the dual visions of him in my mind: the guardian I detest and the Ivrilos I’m beginning to … like? Can that be?
“So it’s true,” I say. “You guardians … you’re all royals, aren’t you, of Athanatos’s line? You�
��ve been trying to hide it so the polis won’t rise against your living family.” I drop my hands. “It’s brilliant, really. We’re your royal weapons in life and your royal meals in death.” When he opens his mouth, I snap, “And don’t lie to me about that. I know it’s not just about controlling us. You take something from us, too, to sustain you.”
He doesn’t argue.
How many living wards, I wonder with a sick sort of awe, are being used like this? Our numbers are ever increasing because of the first king’s law, requiring those with magic to establish bloodlines and take guardians. Which was intended not only to grow and catalog the city’s magical army, but to accommodate the growing number of royal dead sustained by them. How many of Athanatos’s line have died in the meantime, in the four hundred years since he ruled?
It also begs the question: Who, even among royals, makes it to immortality? I gaze out at the spread of statues all around, standing in the darkness like a small army.
An army of men.
“That’s why there aren’t many women in your underworld palace,” I say. “Somehow, they don’t last long after what you do to them. What you do to us.” I laugh. “You sacrifice the women in your family to bear the most powerful bloodlines—and you don’t even give them statues in the royal gallery for their trouble! You just use them and throw them away. Not to mention every commoner, man or woman, whom you foist guardians upon, as if they’re pack mules carrying you to immortality. Who cares about them?” I finally meet his dark eyes. “And you. You’re one of the worst of them all.”
“Rovan—”
“Don’t call me that!” I shout. Ivrilos gestures for me to lower my voice, but it echoes throughout the gallery. I can’t help it—the truth is too much to contain quietly. “You said you haven’t been dead as long as some. You mean as long as only one or two of your ancient family members? Your father, Athanatos?” I wave about. “This is all of his making, and you’ve supported him from the beginning. For four hundred years.” Heat boils within me. “And now you’ve killed my father, just like you’re going to kill me.”
I should want to burn something—everything—but all I really want is to be rid, once and for all, of my so-called guardian. Those strange, charged moments between us are like the odd falling stars I’ve managed to spot through the veil: entrancing but fleeting, flashes of brightness here and then gone within a much vaster, lurking darkness. I can’t let myself get blinded by them. Ivrilos is evil. Wrong. I need to remember that.
In my mind, I feel the shape of the special sigils my father left me in his office, unfamiliar but glowing—a new path to trace, calling to me like never before. Maybe now is the time, now that I know Ivrilos will never, ever be on my side.
Without a second thought, I follow the sigils, drawing them out like an artist with a brush or chisel. And what becomes of them is …
Nothing. They don’t do anything. The shape of them falls away before it even comes into being. I feel something collapsing inside me. My father left me nothing? How can that be?
Ivrilos’s eyes narrow, as if he can feel what I tried to do. But all he says is, “I hear something.”
“What?” I say, anger overcoming my despair. “Don’t try to avoid—”
“Shh.” He raises a finger to his lips, his other hand going to one of the swords at his hip, shoulders tense. I can’t help it—instinct makes me freeze along with him.
And then I hear it, too. A key turning in a door, the thunk of a bolt. The sound of boots on marble, at the other end of the gallery, where Ivrilos and I came through the double doors. My breath catches.
“Who’s in here?” a voice calls. “I bloody heard you.”
“See,” another voice says. “I told you it wasn’t just that royal bitch toying with us. Someone got in here. Maybe her. Look at the tracks.”
Royal? I wonder if they suspect Lydea—she would certainly be one to play magical tricks on anyone who annoys her. But the guards will find out in no time who’s actually in here. Ivrilos said there’s another exit. Even if they know someone has broken inside, maybe we can still sneak away and escape …
But then my guardian closes his eyes. His jaw hardens, and every muscle in his body goes perfectly still. Just like that, I know something bad is about to happen.
“Wait,” I say in the tiniest whisper. “We can leave.”
Ivrilos shakes his head without opening his eyes. “They know we’re here. And no one can know we’re here.” He smiles faintly, as if in apology, and meets my eyes. “I told you.”
He doesn’t seem to move. One second he’s in front of me, plenty of space in between us. The next, he’s nearly pressed up against me, looking down at me with a shadowed gaze. His fingertips graze my cheek—feather light, almost sweet, as they undoubtedly steal everything from me.
And then he vanishes.
I half expect to collapse right then—that’s what usually happens after he touches me. But I don’t.
“Ivrilos, wait!” I don’t care if I shout now. I know where he’s going. I pick up my skirts with one hand, wield my small flame in the other, and run, heedless of the statues I nearly careen into.
I tear around the last line of them to find the soldiers both staring at me in surprise.
“It’s you?” one of them growls. “You’re not—”
Ivrilos appears behind him, dark and looming, a sinister shadow. Based on the startled cry of his companion, his hand flying to a dagger at his hip, it’s not only me who can see my guardian. The first man has just enough time to turn, halfway drawing his sword, before Ivrilos’s hand closes on his wrist. Solidly.
Horror flares inside me … and then dies as my knees buckle. All feeling drains out of my body at once, like a split barrel of wine. I hit the floor, hard. I expected this after he touched me, beginning whatever dark transaction that steals his ward’s strength, but it’s still an all-consuming shock that leaves me gasping like a landed fish, barely able to breathe.
All I can do is lie there on the marble, cold, empty, and numb, and watch what’s unfolding.
Ivrilos moves like liquid darkness. He helps the guard finish drawing his sword, his shade’s hand still clamped over the mortal man’s, and in one fluid sweep he thrusts the weapon into the other guard’s armpit, skewering him crosswise through the chest and expertly avoiding any armor. Before the wounded man can fall, my guardian appears behind him, taking the hand that clenches the readied dagger. Together, they both bury it under the chin of the other guard.
Both men fall to the ground. Dead.
Ivrilos vanishes again.
For a moment, it’s just me lying there, as still and silent as the guards with their staring eyes. It’s almost peaceful. Much like the blood seeping out around their bodies, the room grows slowly darker at the edges … darker …
And then I can see Ivrilos. It’s as if I’m hovering over his shoulder. But he’s no longer in the royal gallery.
He’s in another world.
He’s lit by a strange gray light filtering through the … snow? ash?… that billows about. All around, deep gray dunes crest like a stormy sea locked in time. The colors of the earth and sky are reversed here, and the dark snow is floating, not falling. Ashen earth drifts upward in lazy spirals, bits and pieces of the entire desolate landscape gathering in heavy, lingering clouds that blot out the shadowy gray sky. It’s as if the power that makes objects drop to earth no longer works, as if this entire new world is upside down.
A fortress sprawls in the distance, as big as a small city. If our strange surroundings are dark, this structure is a splatter of black ink on the horizon. Many towers rise from behind its high, smooth walls, but one dominates the rest, ending in a point. It looks like an obsidian sword piercing the sky. For lack of a better word, the walled city seems wrong. More of a blight than the one consuming the land of the living.
The two guards I just watched die are standing with their backs to Ivrilos, perfectly whole, baffled by the sweeping gray dunes a
ll around us and the terrible, dark stain of the fortress on the landscape and not noticing the creature stalking slowly and silently up behind them. They should have been watching for him. My guardian. Their murderer.
Ivrilos steps up to one, and then the other, inclining his head as if in greeting. I can’t quite see what it is he does—it almost looks like he kisses their cheeks. Before I can even think to cry out to warn them, they’re both disintegrating like so much ash. But instead of floating up and away like everything else, their remains are drawn into my guardian, like smoke he’s inhaling. And then it’s only him standing there, looking darker than ever, with me somehow peering down on him from above.
I still can’t feel much of anything, even though I distantly know I should be screaming.
Ivrilos tips his face back. For a moment, he looks sated, almost blissful, a slight smile playing at the corners of his perfect lips as he gazes at the charcoal sky. Everything around us keeps twisting up and away like swarms of insects as far as the eye can see. And after a moment, I begin to rise with it all …
My guardian’s dark eyes snap to mine, wherever I am. “Not you,” he commands.
And then I’m back in my body, my spine arching against the marble floor of the royal gallery as a great gasp tears through me. Ivrilos crouches above, his beautiful face no longer filled with that strange peace but stricken.
“You’re dying,” he says. “I used too much of you.”
I can’t quite talk. My face is numb. I’m cold all over, so cold. The edges of the room are already fading again.
“You can’t die,” he insists.
I smile somewhat drunkenly up at him. My tongue is heavy, clumsy. “Just try to stop me.”
Ivrilos lets loose a string of curses. “I had to use you, Rovan, but…” He turns away, as if searching for help, but then looks back down at me, wild-eyed. “I can’t—”
“I know,” I breathe, the words rasping in my throat. “You can’t carry me. Or catch me.” My eyelids begin to flutter shut. It feels so peaceful, like drifting off to sleep. My voice hitches. “I’m falling.”
In the Ravenous Dark Page 17