In the Ravenous Dark

by A. M. Strickland

  I don’t know how Kineas can presume to judge his father for anything, but I don’t interrupt. I remember Japha, and even Lydea now that I think about it, hinting that Tyros has been acting strange since his coronation. I squint at him over the crown prince’s shoulder.

  Ivrilos comes up to stand next to me, studying the king just as avidly. Tyros only stares off into the distance behind his son.

  “Perhaps you see more of yourself in me than you ever have before. Pity it’s not enough.” The king seems to shake himself, as if knocking a piece of mosaic tile back into place—completing the picture of a ruler with everything under control. He turns back to me, disregarding Kineas entirely. “Love or cruelty doesn’t enter into it. I did what I did because that’s what I was told to do. Like Kineas would have if he’d had the chance to do his duty. But neither he nor Ivrilos appear to be up to the task of managing you. Perhaps Skyllean bloodmages are too much of a challenge. Perhaps we should rid the world of them entirely.” He sighs. “We’re certainly finished with you. Kineas needs someone more biddable. I thought your bloodline would be too great a shame to lose, but it’s not worth the trouble.”

  I shake my head, marveling at him. “Why do you hate bloodmages so?”

  “I don’t hate you. You’re tools,” he says bluntly. “Meant to be used and discarded when no longer useful.”

  And almost all these so-called tools in the palace are women. They’re doomed to short lives and even shorter afterlives, while royal men go on to become immortal guardians.

  “Why do you hate women, then?” I ask.

  “I don’t, as long as they do as they are told.” His eye twitches, giving away the lie. “As must we all.”

  “You’re the king,” I say incredulously. “Who do you answer to?”

  “Certainly not you,” he says, some sharpness entering his tone. “Now, where does all of this pointless talk leave us? What do you want from me that I could possibly wish to give?” He raises his eyebrows, shifting that marble face. Exposing the cracks again. “What do you want—your freedom? An apology? I’m afraid I can’t bring your mother and father back to life, but is there something I can do to make amends?”

  The falsely honeyed tone of his voice, his disdainful sarcasm, his sheer arrogance, is enough to make my hand tighten on the dagger and my vision leap into strange, unearthly focus. He’s right about one thing: This conversation is pointless. He’s not going to give me the answers I crave, and he can’t bring back what I’ve lost. But he can do something for me. It’s the real reason we’re all here.

  “Yes,” I hiss. “You can die.”

  With the hand hidden in Kineas’s hair, I hurl sigils too quickly for the king to dodge. A column of fire as thick as my leg shoots from my sketching fingertips and blasts toward Tyros’s face. I’ve unleashed the heat of a forge. It will burn everything in its path—shadow, flesh, even stone.

  But the flames don’t touch him. The burning column parts around him like water, dissipating in the air behind him. His arm is raised as if it were a blade that cut my fire in half. In the dying glare I see his hand fall still.

  His fingers were moving. Sketching sigils. Maybe someone like Kineas won’t have noticed, but I have. So has Ivrilos, next to me. His eyes are wide. Before I blink, the invisible hold I have on the crown prince is ripped away by more sigils, rendered as ineffective as my fire.

  The king is a bloodmage.

  I don’t have much time to consider it, because he charges for me, where I stand with the blade at Kineas’s throat. I don’t know why he doesn’t use sigils now—maybe to hide his power. But I do know that he can’t affect metal with his magic. A blade should be able to pierce him like anything else. He’s not wearing any armor, just his thickly embroidered tunic.

  And I have a hidden power, too.

  I whip the dagger away from Kineas’s neck. With the same motion I used against Damios and borrowed from Ivrilos, I hurl it at the king. The ruby flickers as it flies end over end.

  The blade slams right into Tyros’s heart, burying itself up to the hilt. He jerks back midcharge, teetering to a halt. And like Damios, he looks down in surprise at the jeweled pommel protruding from his chest.

  But he doesn’t fall. He frowns at it. “This is inconvenient,” he says.

  My mouth drops open. Kineas is too shocked to even pull away, let alone attack me. We both just stare as the king reaches up to take the hilt and slowly draw the dagger from his chest, as if he’s in no particular rush.

  No blood comes pouring down the gold embroidery of his tunic. There’s none even on the blade. Tyros doesn’t seem relieved by this, or disturbed. He merely looks from the dagger in his hand up to us.

  “Father?” Kineas says. He doesn’t say it like he’s asking if he’s all right. He says it like he’s asking if it’s him.

  “No,” Ivrilos says. And when he speaks, the king looks right at him.

  “No,” the king agrees. “Hello, brother. It’s been a while. But I’ve seen you around, of course.”

  “Kadreus,” Ivrilos breathes. “Rovan, run.”

  The king smiles, and the hair on my arms stands on end. “She’s not going anywhere,” he says, and then turns to me. “While this business with Kineas is unfortunate, you actually did me a favor by drawing me away. If you’d betrayed what I am in front of so many witnesses, it would have been much more bothersome. Why else do you think I agreed to come with you alone?”

  “Because you care about the life of your heir?” I suggest, shifting closer to Kineas. Maybe there’s a chance I can seize him again, try to use him as a shield. He’s still unmoving, useless, staring at the man who’s not his father. It would be easy to overpower him.

  But then the king says, “No more than the lives of my many other heirs. There are always more, to keep me alive. To keep our legacy alive.”

  And then he lunges. I’m not ready for it, and neither is Ivrilos.

  And neither is Kineas. Because the king goes for him. The knife flashes toward his throat. Kineas jerks. Gurgles. Unlike the king, Kineas can bleed. Blood cascades everywhere over his chest from the gaping wound in his neck. It’s like a red smile.

  I can’t help turning for Kineas. Not because I want to save him, but because of the blood. My guard utterly drops, no thought in my head other than the overpowering urge to drink. I lunge … right into the king’s dagger.

  Ivrilos is ready this time, but he only manages to throw his hand between the king and me, to make that one part of him solid. The dagger still slides right through the back of his hand, like a knife through bread.

  And pierces my heart.

  It pins Ivrilos’s palm to my breast for a moment, which at another time might have been funny. Not now. My guardian shouts, agony in his voice, especially as contact with my shield burns him. But his cry cuts off as he vanishes.

  There is a terrible pressure in my chest. It’s cold. So sharp. I can’t breathe. I can’t speak. When I reach for the dagger, my hand closes inadvertently around the king’s, which still clutches the handle. I want to coil around that spot, but I can’t bear to move. It’s like a muscle cramp has seized my entire body.

  The king grips the back of my neck, pulling me into his chest and making pain explode through me. I scream. But he holds me tight, steadying me, shushing me. And then he whispers in my ear, “I could have used sigils or something else, but this is just so much more personal, yes? It’s personal between us, Rovan. Especially since you’ve forced me to kill my heir far ahead of schedule. He couldn’t know what I am.”

  What are you? I want to ask, but I still can’t speak. I want to lie down.

  I know who he’s not, at least—not Tyros.

  He keeps me upright, embracing me. Perhaps I should focus on the dagger in my heart, but I glimpse something strange on his arm as he touches me. It’s like a shadow lifting from him, revealing a bloodline marking his skin. He was hiding it. Along with everything else about him.

  I still have my shield a
gainst death magic. It would be the only way to hide a bloodline—my father could never hide his with blood magic alone. Which means the king wields both blood and death magic. And he can’t die.

  Obviously, if he’s somehow Ivrilos’s brother, Kadreus.

  I look up into his eyes. They’re bright red now, but other than that, he’s much like Ivrilos. About my guardian’s age, maybe a little older. Slightly lighter hair, cropped closer to his head. But it’s his eyes and the expression on his face that are different. He’s so cold and … utterly mad. I was looking through the cracks in his previous mask to something hidden underneath. I just didn’t realize how far down and dark they went.

  And yet, the shadow behind him is even worse. I see it even as the gilt-lined room dims at the edges. Something like a guardian, looming over us both, mostly too dark to make out but with burning, sickly blue eyes I recognize now and I’ll never forget. I’ve only seen them in Ivrilos’s memory before now, but there’s no mistaking whom they belong to.

  Athanatos.

  The king gently brushes my hair aside and leans toward my neck, lips parting.

  “I can’t wait to taste you,” he says. “Your mother was delicious.”

  But then there’s a shout, and the already-bedraggled doors to Kineas’s apartment shudder. Maybe the guards out there, or Tumarq or Acantha, heard me scream.

  The king’s eyes flicker in that direction. “Damn the timing, but we must all keep up appearances, hmm?” He grips my shoulders and pulls back, only stooping to kiss the side of my mouth where a trickle of blood has escaped. He licks it from his lips. “Congratulations, you’ve succeeded in your mission. You’ve just slit my son’s throat and stabbed yourself in the heart. Tragic, really.”

  And then he rips the dagger out of my chest. The pressure escapes in a rush—and everything keeps rushing, all of it, gushing out of me in a hot burst. I wish I could pull it back. Instead, my knees buckle. I sink into the flood—the river of life carrying me away.

  I collapse onto the ground, but I feel like I’m floating.

  His voice drifts above me. “Farewell, Rovan. I doubt we’ll see each other again. If you run into Ivrilos before your final end, which will be swift, tell him someone wants to see him.”

  I want to see him, I think. I want to see Lydea. Japha. I still want to kill the king. There’s so much left to do. But it’s too late for all of it.

  Mother, I think. Father.

  My heart kicks once.

  And stops.

  27

  IVRILOS

  Ivrilos falls hard into the underworld. Sometimes the sensation is like drifting off to sleep and then waking up suddenly—or at least how he remembers sleeping and waking, since he doesn’t exactly do that anymore. And sometimes it’s like being thrown into a cold, dark lake and launched out of it again, saturated by the chill and dark. This time it’s the latter.

  He immediately crouches into a fighting stance among the drifting gray dunes, drawing both of his half-moon blades. He’s tired, weak. Damios’s pneuma was enough to bring him back from whatever brink Rovan sent him to, but it wasn’t enough to fully restore him. And then he made his hand tangible and shoved it in front of a dagger.

  Idiot! You know better. It was a useless gesture, one that hurt instead of helped.

  I couldn’t save her. The thought is far more excruciating than the dagger was.

  He needs to find her. He doesn’t let himself dwell on what it will mean when he does.

  … But of course it’ll mean that she’s dead.

  Don’t think about it. Everyone dies eventually.

  But it means something to him that she’ll be dead. He’s not entirely sure what, but it might amount to more than what anything else has meant to him in his long, dreary existence.

  Worse, he doesn’t know if he’s strong enough to keep her safe down here.

  She still may be better off here than up there. With his brother, whatever he has become. Not fully alive. Not fully dead. Caught somewhere in between, like a venomous spider at the center of its own vast web.

  “Where am I? Who the hell are you?”

  Ivrilos spins to find none other than Crown Prince Kineas standing next to him. If a death occurs near Ivrilos in the living world, and he crosses over to the underworld at the same time, he’s likely to turn up next to that new shade. Now here they both are. Kineas looks confused and alarmed, but otherwise every bit as whole and arrogant as he ever looked in life.

  “Finally,” Ivrilos says with a sigh, approaching slowly through the dark sand and bowing. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a while.”

  The crown prince arches an eyebrow. “I wish I could say the same, but I’ve never had the pleasure.”

  “I have, though ‘pleasure’ is not the word I would use.” Ivrilos pauses. Smiles. “Rovan sends her regards.”

  He doesn’t even give Kineas a chance to scream before he lunges. The crown prince tries to struggle, but he’s no match for Ivrilos, who quickly traps his hands and draws him in.

  Drinking Kineas’s essence is every bit as satisfying as Ivrilos thought it would be. And as it comes from a life taken in its prime, it’s strong.

  Delicious.

  When the crown prince is gone for good, Ivrilos rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck, readying his weapons.

  Much better. But like any fresh kill, it will likely attract other predators.

  Ivrilos casts around, his eyes tracing the horizon. He can’t see far, with the dark dunes cresting around him like a wave-tossed sea. An unfelt wind whips sand into the air like spume. The sand never falls, just drifts up into the sky in darkening funnel clouds. The world dissolving.

  As always.

  Ivrilos feels unseen bits of him try to drift up and away, but he holds them firmly to himself. A little dissipation is always natural, but he can’t spare anything.

  The link between him and Rovan means she should arrive close to him. The bond always keeps him near to his ward in the living world, and the same is true down here. But he doesn’t see her.

  Could she … not be dead? He saw the blade enter her heart. He felt it, and not just through his own hand, but through their shared essence. She doesn’t have long to live, if she isn’t already here somewhere.

  “Look, it’s the illustrious Ivrilos.”

  That’s not the voice he wants to hear.

  They don’t even try sneaking up on him; they know he would sense them. They approach, five shades all from opposite directions, pinning him between them. Creating a web of their own.

  But, little do they know, Ivrilos is the spider.

  “The king sent us,” the first shade says. “You have the choice to come along quietly. But just to warn you, he’s not pleased. And he especially won’t be pleased when he learns you took the lad for yourself. He was of the family. It’s for the king to decide whether or not he was worthy to stay.”

  “Standards are slipping, clearly,” Ivrilos says. He struggles to remember the shade’s name, a minor lord who died twenty or so years ago, not yet elevated to a guardian. Which means he’s hungry. The rest are even younger shades.

  The king is testing Ivrilos—the king here. His father.

  There are two kings, one above, one below, though there may as well only be one with how tethered the two of them are. His brother’s barriers never before faltered enough for Ivrilos to catch a glimpse of his father lurking in the background. But for a moment, he sensed Athanatos in the living world. And he’s probably been there all along, standing behind Kadreus.

  Ivrilos doesn’t have time to consider the implications of that. The shades are closing in.

  His feet shift in the sand as he tries to keep an eye on them all at once. If he fails to go with them, to explain his actions to his father in a way that will excuse him—and he doesn’t think he can—then these shades are meant to take the measure of his strength and wear him down. Only then will his father come to finish him, to make good on his four-hundred-year-o
ld threat. It might not be immediate. And even if Ivrilos wins the fight against these shades, he’s likely to lose as much essence as he gains. And his father can keep sending shades to harass him across the dunes until, like a man dying of thirst in the desert, Ivrilos begs for mercy.

  His father will give him mercy in the only way he knows how.

  And yet. If Ivrilos uses this test to his advantage … If he loses nothing … His hands tighten on the hilts of his half-moon blades. He thinks of Rovan.

  The other shades take note of his resolve. And, as one, they charge.

  They come at him in predictable ways. After all, he’s seen just about everything.

  When Ivrilos meets them, he’s smiling again.

  * * *

  He doesn’t know how many hours or even days later, how many shades have hunted him and become the hunted, when he sees the dark silhouette on the horizon. He’s been steadily making his way in the direction of those black towers, and now his goal is in sight.

  He’s given up on finding Rovan. There’s a chance she never died, but since he can’t use their bond to go to her, he doubts it. His access to the living world has been cut off as if she were dead. She must have slipped through his fingers and either passed directly to her second death, or else their bond was so weakened by her shield that she appeared somewhere else. Maybe she fell victim to another shade before he could find her. Packs of the young and weak roam the dunes for exactly that purpose.

  He can’t think about that, or he won’t be able to put one foot in front of the other.

  His father never came for him. Maybe because of those shades he sent in advance; Ivrilos defeated and drank every last drop of their essence. They stopped coming a while ago, because Athanatos realized they were only fodder.

  Maybe his father is scared. Hunted, instead of the hunter.

  Ivrilos still doesn’t believe he’s strong enough, not without the essence of someone as powerful as his brother, but there’s nothing left for him now. Early on, he did his best to reach Bethea or Delphia or whoever could hear him and answer whether Rovan might still be alive, but he never heard anything back.