In the Ravenous Dark

by A. M. Strickland

  Ivrilos makes a complicated gesture. “You don’t understand. The magic shielding the king is incredibly powerful—it’s both blood and death magic, woven together.”

  I gape. “I thought blood and death magic couldn’t mix. Not without killing the wielder.”

  “Perhaps a bloodmage and a shadow priest worked in tandem? How it was done, I don’t know, but it makes the barrier around the royal gallery look like a straw fence. It surrounds whoever is the current king, whenever he is where you or I can see him, and it is especially strong around his private quarters where no one is allowed, encircling it. I think my brother is there, perhaps having been bound to each successive king during the ritual they undergo when assuming the crown, somewhat like I am bound to you. The problem is, I need to be let in to discover the truth. If I tried to break in by force, I would either fail or the king would be alerted I was coming and have me stopped.”

  “So all you want to do is get in there and look for your brother? What happens then?”

  Ivrilos falls silent.

  “You have to give me something.” I don’t resort to threats. Instead, I say, “Please.”

  He tips his head back to look at the ceiling. His profile is downright statuesque. I try to think of something else while I wait.

  The Goddess of Patience, I am.

  The words draw out of him slowly, unbelievably, like one of those absurd cloths that street performers pretend to unspool from their mouths. “If my brother is here, I want to do everything in my power to take his essence for my own and end him, quickly, before either he or my father can stop me. And then I’ll be strong enough to go to the underworld and destroy my father and everything he has built.”

  My mouth falls open. A laugh burbles out of me before I can choke it down. “And I thought you missed your brother. Maybe even wanted to rescue him.”

  Ivrilos’s lips twist into a grimace of pure contempt. I’ve never seen anything like it on his perfect face. “My royal family, my brother and my father especially, are evil, Rovan. You have no idea to what extent.”

  “I have … some,” I croak. “What I feel for Kineas and Tyros aside, I saw what Athanatos did. And he didn’t just kill you.” I take a deep breath. “There was a woman and a girl.”

  “You saw everything?” Ivrilos’s expression is deadly when he faces me, but I know the sentiment is directed elsewhere. “Then you know the full horror: My family not only devours the essence of bloodlines from the living world, they hunt down the shades who end up in the underworld. All of them. And not just to glut themselves. Since there’s only pneuma down there, it’s the only material available to consume or to build with.”

  I remember the two women, their faces pressed to the wall. I still don’t quite understand what happened, though I’m beginning to get a sense. “Build?” I whisper, feeling sick.

  “They use people, Rovan, to pave the very streets. Pneuma is used like mortar to construct towers, to paint walls. And like everything in the underworld, these structures need constant replenishing, repaving, repainting—an endless parade of shades sacrificed at the feet of my family. I’ve seen these atrocities happen so many times after the first, when my father killed my mother and sister right in front of me.” He smiles faintly, sadly. “Though none have been so bad as that. Their memory hasn’t faded, over time. Just as I haven’t. It lives on in me, growing stronger and darker. Like me.” He adds, like an afterthought, “I witnessed their first deaths, too, in the living world. They were beheaded right before I was. I had to watch.”

  I can only stare. That’s what Ivrilos has been waiting four hundred years to do: take revenge. To bring down his father and his underworld kingdom. To help the living who’ve had their essence stolen from them for hundreds of years. Who’ve then had their second lives stolen. That seems worth waiting for, to me.

  Perhaps even worth the sacrifices he’s made along the way.

  “Okay,” I say, throat dry. “So if I’m hearing right, you basically want to burn down the palace as much as I do.” I take a deep breath, and then slap the tops of my thighs. “I’m in. What do we do?”

  Ivrilos rolls off his knees and sits back on the floor, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You do nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He drops his hand to glare at me. “You should forget all that has happened tonight, all that I’ve told you, and everything should go back to normal.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Back to you leeching off me and swamping my boat while you carry out your own plans without me? Let’s not.”

  “There’s no other way.”

  “Yes, there is. You just tried it, tonight, when you kissed me.” Finally, I can say it. My rage gives me the gall. “I thought a kiss on the back of the hand was supposed to ‘suffice,’ by the way.”

  Ivrilos’s gaze skips away again. He’s embarrassed. “I didn’t think. I just did it. And I can never do it again.”

  Somewhere in the complicated tangle of my emotions, I feel a strange twinge—one thread, pulled too tight.

  “You don’t understand,” my guardian continues. “Not only is giving you my essence beyond taboo, it’s … not good for you.”

  “I’ve always heard that blood and death magic can’t mix. That they would kill you. But I’m alive.”

  “I’ve given you a breath in your lungs that you can yet expel.” He shakes his head. “No more.”

  “What would happen if you did give me more? Would I die?”

  “Possibly. Most definitely, given enough. But that’s not the only problem, or else the rules wouldn’t be so strict. After all, we kill the living all the time.” His smile is grim, but then it falls away. “I think some form of madness might take you before death would. And with how powerful you are, the consequences could be … horrific.” I must look unconvinced, because he adds, “Just imagine, Rovan: If your father thought death magic was already too close to you, too close to the city with the guardians and shadow priests that walk its streets, then what would he think about death magic being inside you, right next to your bloodline?”

  I felt it filling me, and I can still sense the coldness. It inhabits the shadowy space between the glowing lines of my blood magic—a space I can now feel the shape of.

  A breath, filling my lungs. A shadow’s kiss.

  “But I feel fine!” I say, throwing out my arms, the blanket dropping farther away. Ivrilos’s gaze seems to flicker over the skin bared by my loose gown, or maybe I’m imagining it. “At least I’m not mad, and this is certainly better than being dead or so exhausted and hopeless and defeated that I wish I were dead.”

  “As I said: for now. This is a poison, maybe a slow poison in small doses, but fatal nonetheless.”

  “So that’s it, then,” I say. “Just like that. You won’t help me be free of you, and you won’t help me be free of Kineas.”

  And you’ll never kiss me again, I think. When I realize that’s something I’m mad about, I curse myself for an idiot.

  It’s Ivrilos’s turn to throw out his hands. “Your position is too valuable. I’ve come too far, pretended to be the perfect guardian for too long. I’m too close to risk anything now, until the perfect moment.”

  “How is my position valuable?” I demand.

  “You’re betrothed to the crown prince.”

  I gape at him. “So let me get this straight. You could have helped my father escape, but because he wasn’t perfectly positioned and you had to maintain your mask, you let him waste away while you grew fat on his essence, extending your existence a few more steps toward forever?”

  “I told you—”

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s for a good cause, Ivrilos!” I cry, wadding up the blanket and hurling it right through him. He blinks. “It’s shitty! That makes you a shitty person!”

  His expression stills. “I never said I wasn’t one.”

  “And what if they never let me close to the king, into his inner sanctum?” I continu
e, ignoring him. “Even if you’re the perfect guardian, what if I remind everyone too much of my father and they keep me away?”

  “Kineas will become king. You’ll be close by necessity.”

  “Cylla didn’t live long enough to become queen. Wards never last that long.” By design, perhaps, so no bloodmage or guardian ever could come close to this inner sanctum?

  “Your children will be his heirs, and I’ll be assigned as a guardian to the one who inherits your bloodline. In four hundred years, I’ve never been this close. Never trusted enough. Until now.”

  I’m nearly spitting with rage. “So you’ll use me and them, my nonexistent future children, to get to the king? That’s what you want from me? You’ll just ride your wards like a caravan, one generation to the next, until they take you where you want? I’m not a fucking horse and cart, Ivril! And I’m never going to have children with that monster, so you can get that thought out of your insubstantial skull right now.”

  “Ivril,” he repeats. “Why would you call me that?”

  “I don’t know!” I explode. “Convenience? I’m busy yelling, and it’s short?”

  “I just haven’t heard that in a long time. It was an old family nickname.” He shakes his head, as if ridding himself of some memory. I can’t bring myself to care.

  He continues, “As much as I admire your determination, you might not have a choice in any of this. As you well know, Cylla didn’t. She never wanted to be crown princess, let alone pass the burden of her bloodline on to her daughter Lydea like an heirloom in the family collection. But she did. She was made to.”

  “By her guardian.” I meet his eyes. “I’ll kill whomever I need to before I let that happen. I’ll kill myself.”

  He stares back. “You know I can stop you. That’s my job.”

  “Do you want to stop me?”

  “From killing yourself, yes. At all costs. As you so delicately pointed out, your bloodline is my key. But for the rest of it … it depends.”

  “Right, if I were perfectly positioned.” I pause. “So how do I do that?”

  He raises an eyebrow at me. “Are you suggesting, somehow, in some way, you might be willing to work with me?”

  “Maybe.” I feel just as surprised as he sounds. “If you’ll work with me. It’s not like I have many other options.”

  Actually, I have other paths—sigil-lined paths, if only I can figure them out—but I can’t let Ivrilos know that. I have to wear my own mask, pretend to be the perfect ward, just as he’s pretending to be the perfect guardian. We’ll be doing the same thing, really. Falling in line, waiting for the right moment to break rank. And if Ivrilos can help me in the meantime, so much the better.

  It’s not that I’m fine with bloodlines being used as the main course for a host of royal dead, or with the rest of the world becoming their paving stones in the afterlife. But I’m not going to simply let myself be a victim, a stepping stone for Ivrilos. And I can’t risk my mother meeting the same fate. Because once I’m gone, having served my purpose, there will be no one to guarantee her safety.

  Ivrilos can find some other way of accomplishing his ends. If his purpose is grand, mine is simple. I have to protect my mother and get out of here, with Japha and Lydea and whoever else wants to come with me. As soon as we’re all safe, then I can bend my mind to figuring out how to free the bloodlines. Preferably when I’m as far away from Thanopolis as possible.

  Not that I can do any of that without freeing myself from my guardian first.

  I bury my face in my hands, half to hide any duplicitous thoughts that might betray me, and half because I can feel despair clinging to me, grasping, trying to pull me down. There are some things I can’t pretend. And maybe that’s where Ivrilos can help me.

  “I just can’t—” I choke for a moment. “I can’t … with Kineas. I need some way to avoid him.”

  “I don’t know that there is one,” my guardian says slowly. “I doubt the king would break off the engagement—your bloodline is too valuable. And attempting to make that happen will only make him trust you less. Make your position less ideal.”

  “So, what, I’ll just pretend to smile and you’ll just pretend to kiss me in order to hide that it’s actually Kineas? I’m afraid that won’t work, especially not now that I’ve had the real thing from you.”

  His mouth opens. Then closes. Finally, he manages, slightly hoarse, “It might not come to that. You have three weeks until you wed.”

  “And then what? You’ll charge in and interrupt the ceremony and maybe stab the crown prince while you’re at it?”

  Ivrilos breathes a laugh that’s the opposite of mirthful. “I can’t do anything like that until I’ve found my brother. But maybe, with your help, we can manage that task before the wedding.”

  Even he barely sounds hopeful. And why would he? It’s taken him four hundred years to reach this point. It could take him another fifty, for all he knows.

  I don’t have fifty years. I have three weeks until my wedding, and the rest of my life at stake.

  “You really want me to do it,” I say incredulously. “Go throw myself at Kineas for the sake of your plan. I can’t believe you.”

  “I’m just asking you to wait,” he nearly begs, holding up his hands. “I will protect you from him however I can without raising suspicions. You can feign sickness to avoid engagements, and I’ll vouch for you. I can use my magic to make you look less appealing, I…” He falters as I glower.

  “That’s your idea of helping me? To turn me into a sickly shadow of myself so he doesn’t want me? He already doesn’t!”

  “Then you can carry on like usual, and we take it as it comes. You’ve been able to manage him so far. Admirably, in fact—”

  “How could you ask this of me?” I force him to hold my gaze, to really look me in the eye as he says it.

  To his credit, he doesn’t turn away. “I have to. I wish that I didn’t, more powerfully than I’ve wished for anything—anything except the end of my father’s reign.” He sounds nearly helpless.

  And yet he isn’t helpless. He wants me to think nothing has changed, but everything has. Now I know: He could help me if he wanted to, truly free me, but he’s choosing not to.

  Sure, the lives and afterlives of countless other people hang in the balance, but still, there it is—the truth, and it cuts like a knife. I’m not sure why. What else did I expect from him? Even so, a fierce heat stings my eyes.

  “Rovan…”

  I stand abruptly and stalk away from my guardian, snuffing the fire in its gaudy lion’s mouth, leaving him in darkness.

  At the door, I only turn enough to say over my shoulder, “I wish you luck.” And then I shut him out.

  20

  Over the course of the next week, everything carries on almost as usual. Other than a royal luncheon where Kineas refuses to speak to me or meet my eyes, I’m not forced to see him. Lydea and I continue to exchange secret glances and discreet touches in the hallways, and much more in private. I spend as much time as possible with both her and Japha. I even manage to decipher some of Japha’s notes and shakily scrawl a few of my own. We all long for freedom and adventure, and have the financial means to pursue whatever dreams we can think of—a strange new reality for me. But none of that changes the fact that we’re all still engaged to other people, bound to our guardians, and trapped in the palace.

  As usual.

  My guardian won’t help me, and I can’t be rid of him. Discovering that all guardians are royal hasn’t brought me any closer to figuring out how they’re bound to their wards, despite the cost of that discovery—my near death and the lives of two guards lost in a “drunken brawl.” I can barely think about the latter. And I haven’t managed to decipher the puzzle of those special sigils my father left me in his office. I even double-check his office to see if I missed something, perhaps another sigil, when I find a spare moment between social engagements and lessons. Nothing works—neither looking for more pieces to the puz
zle nor further experimentation with the sigils in private. They don’t seem to do anything.

  Even though Ivrilos hesitantly tries to talk to me about what happened in the royal gallery, I ignore him. He wants me to forget about it, after all—for everything to go back to the way it’s been. As far as he’s concerned, I’m obliging him.

  But some things have changed. And for me, there’s no going back.

  I have to struggle not to gape whenever I pass a ward while walking down the spiraling hallways of the palace a full week later, heading to one of my lessons. Ever since that strange night, I can peer into shadows like never before. All shadows, including those that lurk near every bloodmage. In that once-murky darkness, I now glimpse faces, flashes of hands against dark armor, the gleam of weapons.

  Guardians. I can see them now, after what Ivrilos did to me. After what he gave me. A week later, it hasn’t faded.

  I don’t entirely mind. It’s something different, powerful … and I like that. Even if it’s dark and dangerous.

  “Rovan, my dear.”

  The words make me flinch.

  I turn to see Crown Prince Kineas, my wretched betrothed, striding down the hallway, attendants fanning behind him like a fluttery flock of birds. I’m pretty sure a few of them actually have birds perched on their shoulders. One has a milky white snake with yellow stripes wrapped around their neck. There isn’t time to try to slip away and escape attention, though I find myself wishing I could open doors in solid stone like Ivrilos.

  “Where might you be wandering off to?” Kineas asks, the pompous ass. Before I can answer, he tosses his perfectly coiffed waves of pewter hair and adds, “It can’t be that interesting. Come.” His attendants all gather behind him as he approaches, preening.

  The dance lesson I’m heading to isn’t that interesting, but it’ll be better than spending time with him. Etiquette lessons would be preferable. Maybe even torture. But I can’t think of a way to refuse him that won’t end poorly for me.