Because she isn’t alone. Two girls stand with her—one at either shoulder, as if she’s pinned between them—on the other side of the stone slab. It’s as if they want a barrier between us and them. I recognize the first girl immediately. Even in her death shroud she looks more like a warrior, shoulders squared, face set. Crisea. The second takes me far longer to place, because of the dark circles under her eyes, her pallid skin no longer sun-kissed, her lank hair like wheat that’s dying instead of thriving, and the iron collar crawling in spirals up her throat as if already reaching to cover her face.
Bethea.
And she doesn’t look happy to see me.
23
Lydea, Japha, and I freeze in the doorway to the strange, dark room. We’ve been expecting—hoping—that Delphia would be here, while planning to ease Crisea into talking to us if she would tolerate it. But we never expected to find both of them. And definitely not Bethea.
Japha and Lydea don’t even know her, I realize. Of course. How could they? My two lives are colliding in this windowless room with no escape.
“What’s going on here?” Lydea snaps, closing the door quickly behind us.
Delphia tries to move around the stone slab toward us, but Crisea places a firm hand on her shoulder.
“Shouldn’t we be asking you that?” Bethea demands. She keeps the stone slab firmly between us. “This is our temple.”
“And a lovely one it is,” Japha says, tossing a hand at the glassy black walls. They pause. “Who the hell are you?”
Bethea shakes her head. Her neck is chafed under the iron collar, and her throat sounds scratchy. “Again, I’m not the one who owes the answers. You trespass here under a false purpose. You’re leading our acolyte astray. Who do you think you are?”
“I’m your princess, you wretch,” Lydea declares, sounding every bit as royal as she is, “and that’s my sister you have there. My cousin, too,” she adds, “if she still recognizes me.”
Crisea’s set expression deepens into a scowl, but she doesn’t say anything. And she still doesn’t let Delphia approach us.
Bethea shrugs. Even her shoulders look bonier than I remember. “In death, we’re all made of the crone’s breath.”
Lydea bares teeth that look sharp between her red lips. “Are you telling me you want to die?”
“Are you threatening me, an acolyte studying death magic in the grandest temple of death?” Bethea scoffs. “You’re lucky I haven’t turned you in already.”
“Now, now,” Japha says hastily. They slide to stand in front of the stone slab as if it’s a negotiation table. “There’s no need to threaten anyone. We’re only here to speak with the shades of our illustrious family, and we invited Delphia as part of that family. We didn’t mean to break any rules. Right, Delphia, dearest?”
Delphia looks between us desperately. “I—” Her voice breaks. “She caught me with one of your notes.”
“I only said we wanted to meet you here,” Lydea supplies quickly. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Where no one can overhear,” Crisea recites in a hard voice. “I wonder, were you going to invite me to this secret meeting? I didn’t get a note.”
“Because you make it so easy to talk to you, now, don’t you, dear cousin?” Japha asks breezily. “Or should I say sister? I suppose there’s no need to hide it now that you’re locked away in here.”
Lydea rolls her eyes. “Of course we were going to contact you eventually, you dolt. We just didn’t know how you’d react, so we were playing it safe. You’re proving our caution was wise.”
Bethea steps forward as if reasserting her authority, and yet she looks too sickly to command much. She grips the opposite edge of the stone slab more to steady herself than anything. “You’re all forgetting there is something wrong with this, beyond misusing this room. Acolytes aren’t allowed to meet with outsiders, let alone family, until they’ve been raised to the rank of shadow priests. You’re breaking the rules by even sending notes to Delphia, never mind speaking with her.”
“Then we’re breaking the rules by speaking with you, too,” Lydea says cannily. “So why are you here instead of some withered priest to reprimand us?”
“Maybe I want to talk,” Bethea admits, both her gaze and voice dropping. She picks at the stone with a ragged fingernail and then looks up at me. “And you, Rovan? You have nothing to say to me?”
She’s right: I’ve been standing here, mostly frozen, my mouth open like a simpleton’s, unable to take my eyes off her.
“Or have you forgotten me?” she continues, before I can speak. “You didn’t try to pass me any notes or pay me any secret visits. It must have been hard to remember me, living in the palace, in luxury, while I was sent here to die in dust and darkness.”
Japha arches a questioning eyebrow. “I’m guessing you two know each other?”
Lydea looks back and forth between Bethea and me, understanding dawning in her eyes. “Is this about us breaking the rules or your feelings getting hurt?”
“I didn’t know that they’d sent you here!” I insist to Bethea, willing Lydea to stay quiet.
“And you didn’t bother to check,” Bethea says, her hand tightening on the stone, her knuckles whitening. Her fingernails look bluish. “You didn’t even try to find me. You didn’t care. You’re just like the rest of the royals, throwing us commoners away like we’re trash when you’re done using us.”
“I am not a royal.”
“Your new friends are,” she says. Her glare takes in Lydea and Japha. “Your betrothed is. Yes, I’ve heard about him, even in here.”
“You think I wanted this?” I burst out, throwing up my arms. My baggy sleeves fall away to reveal the red sigils streaking my skin. “You think I want the crown prince or this bloodline?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. What has your powerful blood magic done to hurt you?” Her voice is flat, but her sarcasm sharp. “Has it given you a new life in the palace? Status and wealth? Must be terrible.”
“It got me caught, bound to a dead man, and engaged to a monster! It killed my father when he gave me his bloodline, and my mother—”
“Death magic killed my mother, too!” Bethea nearly shrieks, and I briefly hope the walls block the ears of the living as well as the dead. “They sent her here with me, and she died almost immediately.”
For a moment, I’m too stunned to speak. I didn’t know Bethea’s mother well, but she told fortunes and communed with the dead in a manner not exactly sanctioned by the necropolis. She charged people a lot less than shadow priests do, for one, and she didn’t have any formal training. My mother knew her better, and had often given her spare loaves of bread or fabric.
Gone.
“And I’m dying almost as fast!” Bethea continues, reaching up to grip her lank hair. “The whispers are louder in my head every day, telling me what to say to call the darkness. Sometimes I can’t shut them out. Sometimes I can’t resist drifting closer to them.” She chokes on a half laugh, half sob. “You should have just let me fall from the gazebo that day. You saved my life, but then you threw it away. I was left all alone, with only death for company. I needed you,” she nearly spits, slapping the stone slab. “I loved you.”
I can’t hear anything over the thudding of my heart. I don’t know how I feel about Bethea—how I ever felt—other than temporarily happy to be with her. What I do know is that a pit of shame is opening up inside me. “But I couldn’t—I don’t—” I stammer. “You’re not even allowed to … you know.”
“I didn’t need you like that,” she snaps, jerking her hand back. “It’s not only passion that holds off death. It’s any light in the darkness. The warmth of a friend is just as powerful.”
I know this from Japha already. It’s something I could have given Bethea without question or hesitation. And yet I didn’t. She’s right. The thought shames me even more.
Bethea takes a deep breath. “If not for Crisea, I—”
“Crisea?” I can’t
help but exclaim.
Crisea takes a strong step forward and seizes Bethea’s hand. “Yes. We’re friends. Maybe we’d be more, if we were allowed. What of it, bitch?”
“Nothing,” I say, stunned. “I just didn’t think you could make friends, is all.”
She sneers. “I didn’t think you could, either. Not true friends, I mean, who you weren’t just using to get ahead. You even used your father’s life for gain.”
For a moment, my vision narrows to Crisea’s face and what I’m going to do to it—with sigils, fists, anything. Then I feel a hand take mine and squeeze tight, anchoring me.
“Rovan’s not using me,” Lydea says. “She’s my friend. And more. Because we are allowed. Or rather, we don’t care enough about the rules to bother with them.”
Bethea stares at our entwined hands, and then at me. “So that’s why you didn’t bother to remember me. Why think about a commoner when you have a princess—”
Crisea scoffs. “I’m a princess, too. Trust me, it’s not all it’s made out to be.”
A smile, as brief as it is, breaks the pall over Bethea’s face, and for a second she looks as I remember her: bright, happy, beautiful.
“Bethea, I’m sorry,” I say. “I was so caught up in my own misfortune that … you’re right. I was completely selfish. I am still selfish.”
More than I want to admit, especially as I’m holding Lydea’s hand and yet hiding what I’ve discussed with Alldan about her.
Bethea doesn’t say anything, only stares back at me. Her smile chased away some of the shadows on her face, but she still looks hollow.
Crisea cuts in again. “Don’t worry. Rovan will forget Lydea, too, as soon as she’s done with her.”
Lydea’s eyes flicker to me. There’s not doubt in them, exactly, just the slightest hint of a question.
I should speak up, reassure her, but I’m frozen. It’s like Crisea has found the beating heart of all my guilt, taken it in her hand, and squeezed.
It’s Japha’s turn to burst. They throw up their arms. “Dear goddess, can we do what we came here to do? This romantic drama is killing me piecemeal! No offense, death acolytes. But can we get on with it?”
“Yes,” Crisea says. “What do you want to say to us? All of us? Because I’m not leaving, in case you were going to ask.” She lets go of Bethea’s hand to fold her arms, the picture of stubbornness.
Japha throws a cautionary look at me and Lydea. “Maybe we shouldn’t…”
But if we can’t talk now, when will we ever be able to? Lydea must be thinking the same thing.
“If you try to betray us, I’ll say you’re lying,” she pronounces. “And that you were breaking the rules, to boot. Rovan, Japha, and Delphia will support my claims. Who will they believe? At the end of the day, we have more power than you.”
“Well, then,” Bethea says wearily. “What do you want with Delphia?”
“We want to leave, and we want her to come with us. You, too, Crisea, if you want.”
For a moment, Delphia brightens so much I think she might lift off her feet. She truly doesn’t belong here, if anyone does, surrounded by so much heavy darkness. But then her silver eyes dim. “Father will never let us go,” she says quietly. “He put me here himself.”
I can see how much that knowledge hurts hers, and I hate King Tyros all over again.
Lydea’s voice is almost gentle. “It won’t exactly be with his permission, little dove.”
“How do you propose to manage that?” Crisea demands. I wonder how long it would take the necropolis to snuff that fire of hers, and the thought doesn’t give me any pleasure. “You have guardians, remember? I can’t believe they even let you come in here where they can’t follow.”
“Why should their guardians care?” Bethea asks, distantly, bleakly. Even an extra week in the necropolis has faded her so much in comparison to Crisea. “What can they even do in here?”
“We can scheme,” Japha says.
“It doesn’t matter,” Bethea says. “You’re bound to your shades forever. When you leave this room, you still will be. Nothing can change that.”
“That’s one thing I wanted to ask,” I say hesitantly, stepping up to the stone slab. “How long is forever? Is there a way to be rid of them, even if it means using death magic?”
Bethea shakes her head. “Death is the only way. Your second death, or your guardian’s. You’ll still be bound to your guardian even in the afterlife. The bond is deeper than the flesh—it’s of the spirit. Pneuma. And only with the dissolution of pneuma will the bond break.”
It makes a horrible kind of sense. Blood magic dies with the flesh, death magic with the spirit.
That’s it, then. There’s only my father’s special set of sigils. I can only block what I can’t sever. It will have to be enough. Because for some reason I don’t want to think about, I can’t imagine giving Ivrilos his second and final death. If even such a thing could be done, I don’t think I could do it. I wouldn’t want anyone to do it.
“Okay, say we have a way to avoid them anyway, however we manage it.” I take a deep breath. “We’re going to leave Thanopolis. Will you come with us? All of you?” I ask, looking straight at Bethea. Lydea, Japha, and I never talked about her coming, because they didn’t know she existed. But I’m not about to leave her here.
Delphia barely lets me finish speaking before she squeaks, hopping on her toes, “Yes!” She looks ready to leap over the stone slab and head for the door.
I can already see the answer in Bethea’s eyes, but surprisingly, it’s Crisea who answers. “I can’t leave. This is my duty. If Delphia wants to shirk hers, it’s not my business. That’s between her and the goddess. I serve the crone now. For my mother.” She looks away from me, sheepish, almost. “And I won’t turn you in … for your father. He”—she chokes slightly—“he wouldn’t have wanted me to.”
Tears build in my eyes. Once again, she’s found my heart and stabbed it. But as much as I want to hate her for being closer to my father than I ever was, I can’t.
Bethea says softly, “And I’m with Crisea. I’m not leaving. It’s my duty, too.”
“But how can you stay in this horrible place?” I demand, gesturing at the stone slab and all it stands for. “This isn’t your home. It’s everything you’re not. It’s killing you.”
“This is what I am now, for better or worse,” Bethea says. “This is my home now. I’m sworn to the crone, and I’m loyal. I haven’t always had one foot out the door, like you.” She glances at Crisea. “Crisea is keeping me alive, pulling me back from the dark, and I’m helping her. And for her sake, I won’t turn you in, either.”
Making it clear it’s not for my sake. I never thought I would be dependent on Crisea’s goodwill.
Delphia lets out a quiet cry and comes dashing around the stone slab. She throws herself at Lydea first, then Japha, and even me, surprisingly. When she pulls back, she doesn’t go far from us, as if not wanting to let us go.
Japha pats the back of Delphia’s head and smooths her cloud of white hair. “Now, can we get to the scheming part?”
“Yes, what exactly is our plan?” Lydea asks, facing me. “I’ve said we should buy passage on a ship—or hell, buy the whole ship—but you told me to wait.”
Nervousness stirs in my belly.
“That must be the smartest thing Rovan has ever said. Because you have guardians?” Crisea sounds almost grimly satisfied. “Remember them?”
I still want to strangle her, but instead I say, “About that.” I pull two pieces of paper from beneath my death shroud and pass them to both Lydea and Japha. “You’ll know what these are,” I murmur as they unfold the papers to find my string of shakily written sigils. “My father left them for me. You just need a piece of what you want to block out, and then it will be like the veil between us and the blight.”
“And it will work on … all blights?” Japha asks, amazed. “Including the shadowy, brooding type?”
“That’s th
e idea, but you have to have a piece of that shadow.”
Delphia’s silvery gaze darts back and forth between us. “I think I can help with that. I’ve learned enough to … gather it.” She grimaces. “And after I do that for you, I’m never touching it again.”
“Delphia, Rovan, this is fabulous,” Lydea nearly gasps. “With this we can leave as soon as we want. We can go wherever we want—”
I don’t want to say it, but I force myself. “I have some thoughts on that, too.”
“Yes?” The eagerness in Lydea’s eyes nearly makes me wince. Because I know it’s about to vanish.
“Perhaps we should consider Skyllea,” I say quickly, as if to get it over with. Never mind that the worst is yet to come.
“Skyllea?” Lydea’s brow furrows. “Why would I want to go there? Alldan is a Skyllean prince. It’s not as if I could easily avoid him.”
“I was actually talking to Alldan about this plan.”
She blinks. “You were talking to Alldan? About our escape?”
“Yes,” I admit. “He wants allies. Skyllea thinks the source of the blight is here. They’ve been studying it, and found out death magic is causing it. From within Thanopolis, Lydea. And they think they can do something about it.”
“Great,” she says abruptly. “But I don’t see how this concerns us leaving Thanopolis. If Alldan wants to stay here and study the blight, he’s welcome to.”
“This does concern us,” I insist. “It concerns everyone. The blight is still expanding. It’s going to devour the whole world! Skyllea has done their best to develop shields against it like the veil. These are shields against death magic, like this one my father discovered.” I gesture at the papers still clutched in their hands. “But they’re not enough. This all has to do with Thanopolis’s dealings with the dead, everything that’s wrong here—the blight, guardians, condemning people to the necropolis.” I wave at Bethea and Crisea. “And Skyllea wants to fix all of it. They want to stop the blight, free bloodmages from their guardians, and keep more people from dying. If we can help them, we should at least consider it, don’t you think?”
In the Ravenous Dark Page 23