Lydea is silent. Her expression is unreadable.
“This is all very noble, Rovan, dear,” Japha says. “But how can we help?”
I swallow. “Alldan thinks if they plan things just right”—kill Kineas and the king, I don’t add—“they can use your position, Lydea, to really change things.”
“My position,” she says flatly. “With Alldan, you mean.”
I flinch. “Yes. If you go to Skyllea…” I hesitate. I’m not sure how I’m going to explain everything without mentioning the murder of certain family members of hers—family members of almost everyone in this room—but she doesn’t give me the chance.
“Wait, wait,” she says, closing her eyes and lifting an elegant hand. “This plan involves me marrying Alldan, still?” She opens her eyes to stare at me, red lips parting in shock. “And you’re fine with this? You want me to marry him?”
“No, of course not! I wish there was a better option. But they can help us escape, offer us sanctuary, and we can help—”
“We?” Lydea cuts in. “You mean me? You and Japha will both escape your marriages,” she says, glancing between the two of us, her gaze sharp, “but I still have to go through with mine even after I’ve gone to the trouble of abandoning everything I know to run off with you?”
“Hey, this isn’t my plan,” Japha says, raising their hands.
She ignores them, holding my gaze. Hers is shadowed. Sad. “That’s not what I meant when I said, ‘Take me with you.’”
The look in her eyes is killing me.
“I’m sorry. I just thought…” I don’t know what I thought. The plan sounded much better in my head than it does now, and it didn’t even sound fabulous then. It’s still a way for Lydea, Japha, and me to escape; for me to help Ivrilos and Thanopolis, Alldan and Skyllea; and to reach the land I’ve so long dreamed of seeing all at the same time.
And it’s utterly selfish. I know that.
“I just figured it might be a way for everyone to win?” I finish feebly.
Lydea’s gaze hardens. “Everyone except me. I can’t believe you would deny me the same freedom that you seek for yourself. I can’t believe your grand plan involves only my sacrifice and not yours. I don’t see you volunteering to stay behind with Kineas—using yourself to achieve some noble end. Only me.”
The worst part is, she’s right. Ivrilos tried to convince me to do exactly what she’s suggesting, but I refused. I came up with this plan instead. Because I couldn’t stand Thanopolis’s prince, and I thought maybe Lydea could tolerate Skyllea’s.
“I would never ask you to stay with my brother,” she adds. “I would do anything in my power to get you away from him.”
“Kineas is cruel, Lydea!” I exclaim. “Alldan isn’t—”
“You’re going to sing his praises?” she demands, folding her arms. “My, you move quickly! He’s a complete stranger to me and yet you know him so well?” She shakes her head in disgust. “Why don’t you marry him, then, and leave me out of this?”
“I’m not royal,” I say, exasperated. “Skyllea has no path forward through me.”
“You mean no path to the throne,” Lydea says coldly. “And I suppose my womb is that path?”
“Only if you agree to it!” I say.
She stares at me. “Was I just a diversion for you? Did I ever mean anything more than that?”
“See, I told you,” Crisea says. “Rovan will use you and forget you, just like she did Bethea.”
This time, Lydea seems to listen to her. She takes a step back from me. Then another, toward the door.
“Lydea, wait!”
She ignores me as she speaks to the dark room around her. “Maybe I’ll just take myself out of here, along with Delphia and Japha.”
“Hey, now, that’s not my plan, either!” Japha says, backing away from both of us. Delphia looks helplessly caught in the middle.
And just like that, our little group is drifting away. Literally and figuratively. It feels like my heart is breaking apart with them.
“I still want you to come with me,” I say desperately to Lydea. “We don’t have to go to Skyllea! Forget I said anything about it.”
“Maybe I don’t want to go with you anymore,” she says. “Maybe I don’t want to go anywhere with anyone who would even suggest such a thing. For me to let myself be used as just a part of another man’s scheme.” She smiles cuttingly. “Or should I say woman’s scheme?”
“Lydea, that’s not fair!” I cry. “I never meant to use you!”
She shrugs slender shoulders, as graceful as ever. It doesn’t matter that I can barely see them under her death shroud. I see them in my sleep. And that might be the last I’ll see of her. She retreats all the way to the door.
“Maybe,” she says. “And maybe I don’t care about your intentions, if it all ends in the same place.” She reaches for the door latch. “Delphia, await word from me. Japha, decide who you want to go with.” And then she slips out of the room, just like that. Leaving me behind.
I can only stare at the door as it closes behind her. Japha doesn’t say anything, their eyes downcast. Delphia sniffles.
“You deserved that,” Crisea says, her hands on her hips.
I spin on her, fists clenched at my sides. She’s lucky she’s still on the other side of the stone slab. “Shut. Up.”
Bethea shakes her head in wonder. “You really don’t care about anyone other than yourself. I tried to tell myself I was being too hard on you, but you’ve proven it again and again. First with me, and now a princess. I actually feel bad for her.” She gives a feeble, disbelieving laugh. “All you think about is helping yourself. You’ve barely even mentioned your mother.”
“I’m doing this for my mother!” I cry. “I’m trying to get her out of here. To get all of us out of here, and not leave the world to rot!”
Bethea blinks at me. “What do you mean? She’s not…” She trails off.
“Wait.” I squint at her as if trying to see her better. “What do you mean?” My breath hitches. “Do you know something about my mother?”
Her expression freezes into place. She doesn’t respond. Crisea glances at her, looking afraid for once. Delphia covers her mouth with her hands. Only Japha looks confused.
“What about my mother?” I ask. I can’t get enough air in my lungs. “She’s being held somewhere…”
“No, she isn’t,” Bethea says quietly. “When you mentioned your mother earlier, I thought … You really don’t know?”
“Know what?” Already I feel something horrible building inside me. Some hidden knowledge. And when it bursts free, I might break.
“Rovan, I … I saw her here.”
“Where is she?” I gasp.
“She isn’t—” Bethea chokes, tears in her eyes. “She’s gone.”
“Where did she go?” I shriek. “I need to find her!” I’m suddenly moving toward Bethea, reaching.
“Rovan—” Japha tries to grab my arm, but I throw off their grip. Still, it’s enough to stop me in place. My hands are in my hair. The pressure builds and builds.
This can’t be happening.
“You won’t find her,” Bethea says, her voice light as a whisper. “She went where most people do after they come to the necropolis. I helped prepare her … her body.”
No, no, no, no, is all I can think.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this.” She meets my wide-eyed stare as a tear tracks down her cheek. “Rovan, your mother is dead.”
And then I break.
24
I shatter inside, and yet somehow everything stays the same. I continue to breathe, and my heart to beat. Bethea and Crisea remain on the other side of the stone slab in the strange black room. Japha and Delphia keep close to me, but Japha watches me carefully and then reaches out to tug their cousin behind them, as if shielding her from whatever I’m about to do. Lydea is still gone. The same weak torchlight flickers over us all, and yet the glossy walls seem to be closing in on
me. Crushing me to dust.
“How?” I say. My voice sounds hollow. Far away. Like it isn’t mine. “How did she die?”
Bethea shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know. Your mother and I were both brought into the necropolis together, after your trial. I was isolated with acolytes, and she was taken away. The next thing I knew she was laid out on a stone table a lot like this, and I had to wash her—her body. Her skin was very pale, like she had no blood—”
“Stop.” I can’t hear any more. I even cover my ears.
That’s why the royals wouldn’t let me see my mother. They haven’t been keeping her somewhere safe to ensure my cooperation. They killed her for whatever reason, practical or evil, and they’ve been lying to me this whole time. Using my gullibility to their advantage.
But no more.
I’m moving through the doorway and out of the room before I know it. The black walls and the people vanish, replaced by the skull-lined passageway. Gaping eye sockets flash by me. Japha follows, trying to keep up with me, saying something. I can’t hear them. I don’t see anything around me, really. My focus has narrowed to a single, needle-sharp point: the door at the end of the passageway.
Move, move, move. It’s the sigil I’ve used most of my life. The one I can form with barely a thought. I’m like the embodiment of that sigil. If I don’t move, I don’t know what will happen.
But then something stops me in my tracks. Someone. He appears as soon as I exit the skull-lined hallway.
“Rovan? What’s wrong?”
He’s so beautiful that for a moment I want to cry. But those tears belong to another person. “Ivrilos,” I say. “Did you know that my mother’s dead?”
His expression—pure devastation—is answer enough. And yet he doesn’t look even close to how bad I feel. “I knew as soon as your father did. That’s what King Tyros whispered to him at your betrothal ball. Rovan, I’m so sorry. Silvean didn’t want—”
“It’s fine,” I interrupt, even though it’s not. “It’s fine.”
And then I take all of that shadow inside me, that piece of Ivrilos, and drag it to the surface. I feel him in my very skin.
But I don’t use that to block him out. Not yet. First, I want to bring him closer. And now I can do that.
I seize Ivrilos by the back of the neck. I actually touch him, pull him into me, using his own substance to do it. What he gave me of himself. We crash into each other, nearly losing our balance. He’s taken completely by surprise. I fight against my own surprise at how wonderful he feels under my fingertips, curls of his dark hair tangled in my hand. My other palm rests on his chest, above where his heart would beat. I want to keep touching him.
His eyes are wide, his body tense, but he can’t do anything before my lips are on his. I kiss him hard. Deep. He responds, and the feel of his tongue moving against mine sends a distant thrill through my body, like lightning far across the night sky. His hands rove over my flesh as if he’s never felt anything like it before. He probably hasn’t touched someone like this in a very, very long time. And then I feel an answering call inside him, and it’s more than just his kiss, his hands. It’s his very essence. What makes him him. He’s right: We’re connected in ways we shouldn’t be, in ways he can’t control. He can’t help but open himself up to me—exposing that deep well of shadowy darkness inside him.
And then I take.
I take so much. Much more than a breath. His hands tighten on my shoulders, and he sucks in a ragged gasp as if trying to get it back.
“Rovan,” he grates against my lips. “What—how—?”
How could I do this to him, after everything he’s done to help me? But he hasn’t only helped me. He’s also hurt me. And this is what he gets. I need something he has, so I’m using him to get it. I’m finally just as selfish as everyone has accused me of being.
And I can live with that, if only because I might not be alive much longer. If this doesn’t kill me, then what I’m about to do probably will.
“I truly am sorry,” I breathe. I don’t mean for the words to be double edged, but I realize it’s an echo of what he said to me when he bound me to him.
Ivrilos’s knees buckle. It’s as if he’s been gutted. He tries to use me for support, but his grip fails and I let him go. He crumples to the ground.
“Don’t be too mad at me,” I say, my voice numb. “I’m actually helping you. Maybe.”
I leave him there, staring, convulsing on the floor of the necropolis. I keep moving. I don’t look back.
Move, move, move.
I feel so cold, so full, brimming with his icy essence. Powerful. I still can’t help stumbling. Memories blind me. I see the ax falling. I see his mother and sister screaming. I see terrible Athanatos in front of that horrible, dark city. And then … I see my father smiling, tears in his eyes, as the strange earth in that upside-down place drifts up and away around him.
So Ivrilos did see my father in the underworld. He lied to me, like everyone else … But no, I can’t look closer at that memory, or else I’ll lose my focus.
My father is gone. My mother is gone. I can’t do anything to get them back.
But I can sure as hell make someone pay for it.
I move quicker, as if trying to outrun the sight of my father. I lurch through the main chamber of the temple and into the underground passage leading back to the palace. The movements of my body are all wrong. I’m trying to walk like Rovan, the nineteen-year-old girl, and like Ivrilos, the twenty-three-year-old swordsman who’s had an additional four hundred years of experience as a shade. It doesn’t help that my skin is numb from the cold, my limbs deadened. I nearly fall over at several points. When I catch myself against a wall, I’m forced to look at my hand, splayed out on the marble in the torchlight.
My fingernails are blue like Bethea’s, but worse. The skin around them is black. Not just like I’m freezing, but like I’m diseased. Rotting. Dying.
Stealing from Ivrilos may not have been the best idea.
I have to shove down a spike of horror. Drawing too deeply on death magic is bad for a bloodmage, I think with grim humor. That, at least, wasn’t a lie.
As long as I don’t die too soon. I just need my legs to work in the meantime. And the worst of my imbalance is coming from the link between Ivrilos and me that I can now feel, like a chain made of shadow. He’s still trying to control the pneuma I’ve taken from him. He still thinks it’s his.
But it’s mine.
Now I use my father’s parting gift to erect a barrier around me, keeping what I have of Ivrilos inside and cutting off the rest. I only have to sketch the sigils in the air. My bloodline does the rest, calling forth the sigils now that I know where to look for them. I draw them out along with a tiny pinch of what I’ve stolen from my guardian.
Something settles over me, as light as silk. It warms my limbs and muffles Ivrilos’s influence through our bond, nearly silencing his presence. I still know how to use a sword—oh, how I know—and I still remember things I don’t want to remember, but Ivrilos’s movements and memories are no longer trying to bring me to my knees. And now he won’t be able to stop me.
Lydea is nowhere to be seen. A small, distant part of me is glad that she’s not around to see this. Japha is still here, though. They’re shouting from behind me, heedless of who might hear. But we’re alone in the underground passage back to the palace. They manage to snag my arm and drag me around to face them in the middle of a pool of torchlight, next to a skull-filled alcove.
So much death around me, and now it’s inside me.
“Rovan!” Japha cries. Their expression is more horrified than I’ve ever seen, the shadows on their face darker and sharper than my usual eyes would be able to detect. Now I have another kind of sight. Deeper. Keener. “What the hell is happening to you? Look at you! Goddess, you’re…”
I pull away, forcing their grip down to my bare wrist. “I don’t care. I have to go.”
Japha recoils at what must be the cold
ness of my skin, and wipes their hand briskly on their death shroud, as if whatever is plaguing me might rub off. “Go where? You’re falling apart! We need to get help!”
“You can’t help me. Only I can do this.”
“Do what?”
Alldan wants the crown prince and the king dead. Ivrilos wants to breach the king’s inner sanctum. I wanted to help them both without sacrificing anything of myself. I even considered offering up the woman I love in my place.
Not anymore, I think. And then, Love?
I do love Lydea, don’t I? I think I might love Ivrilos, too, but luckily I don’t have to worry about that right now.
Or maybe ever.
“Just keep yourself safe and get out of the city,” I say to Japha—forgetful, for once, that someone else might be listening.
“Abomination,” a voice says over Japha’s shoulder. “Did Ivrilos do this to you? If so, he will answer for his crimes.”
I meet Damios’s eyes as he appears in the underground passage. Now I can see Japha’s guardian as clearly as I can see my own.
“No,” I say. “I did it.”
Japha blinks at me, looking back and forth between me and their guardian, realizing we’re speaking to each other.
“Well, then,” Damios says, drawing his sword. “Prepare to die.”
Japha spins on him. “What the fu—”
Damios places his other hand on Japha’s shoulder, and his ward drops like a bag of rocks. Their head cracks on the stone floor. The sound is loud and sharp, echoing deep inside me.
Damios did that. He’s stealing Japha’s life energy to stop me. And for that, I’m going to kill him. Again.
Because I love Japha, too. And I can’t stand to watch them hurt. Not that I haven’t hurt those I love, myself. Sometimes I feel like I love too much and not enough.
In the Ravenous Dark Page 24