It’s over.
His feet eat up the sand beneath him. They’re powered by the energy of the dozens of other men he’s consumed. He’s stronger than he’s ever been.
This is it. He’s going to defeat his father or die trying. His final death.
As he starts down the last, massive crest of sand that will carry him like a wave to the front gate of Athanatos’s dark kingdom, he suddenly feels a tug in the opposite direction. Like an invisible string running behind him that’s grown taut. He tries to take another step, and the tug becomes a sharp jerk.
And then he’s ripped off his feet. Gone in a blink, as if he were never there.
* * *
The dark towers remain. Waiting. Hungry.
28
A great breath tears through me. Based on the ripping sound, I feel like it should hurt, but I don’t feel any pain. I open my eyes and immediately have to shield them. The scene around me is so bright, colorful, and soft after the sharp-edged, blood-soaked violence of what came before. And especially after the darkness that swallowed me for so long. I have a feeling it almost consumed me entirely. Wherever I am, whatever is happening, I simply bask in the knowledge that it didn’t.
“Rovan?”
His voice sends a bolt of shock through me, followed by delirious, giddy relief. “Ivrilos?”
I squint into the blinding light, and a shadow coalesces nearby. My fingertips brush against a silk coverlet, and the scent of roses is overpowering. It covers a distant odor of rot. Birds chirp outside some window nearby. My body feels cool, heavy, and comfortable. I’m on a bed, I realize, and my guardian is standing over me.
My shadow. I’ve missed him, after being in that darkness for so long without him. I should dread the sight of him, but looking at him is easier on my eyes than anything else is. Maybe my body understands what my mind doesn’t yet: He’s not my enemy. Not anymore.
His beautiful features come gradually into focus. Dark gaze and gently curling hair. Pale skin, black tunic—shorter and simpler than usual, and there are neither bracers on his arms nor swords at his hips. He almost looks exposed, vulnerable. And yet, in the folds of his tunic, underneath the fall of his hair, and beneath his brow, his shadows seem deeper and darker than before. Sharper.
He also looks baffled. Then amazed. Then overjoyed. It’s like watching a sunrise play out on his face. I’ve never seen anything like it with him before. He stares at me like I’m the most wonderful thing he’s ever seen.
“Should I still be shielding against you?” I croak.
He shakes his head, smiling a beautiful, gentle smile. “You’ll never need to again. I promise. You’re safe … for now.”
“Where am I?” I ask, looking around. The room is filled with roses. They grow up the sunny marble walls in intricate curlicues and in every color. I can’t see anything but the veil-shimmering sky through an arching window of glass cut in the pattern of a leafing tree. My voice is rough, dry. It’s like I’ve been sick, and just woken from a fever dream.
“I’m not exactly sure,” he says. “I … I haven’t been with you this entire time. And since I joined you, I’ve been shut in here, too. We’re in Thanopolis somewhere, from what I can tell, but not in the palace or the necropolis.”
“What entire time?” I ask.
“I’m also not sure. I spoke to Delphia briefly—”
“Delphia is here?” I interrupt.
“Yes, but she can’t maintain contact with me for long. She hasn’t yet mastered the trick of speaking with the dead—and she won’t, now that she’s free of the necropolis. But she said it’s been a couple of days since…” He trails off.
“What happened?” I can only remember pieces in fits and starts. The flash of a dagger. The gleam of a ruby. The liquid shine of spilled blood.
My stomach suddenly wakes up, as well. I’m hungry. Ravenous.
“Rovan,” Ivrilos says. The sound of my name on his lips is music to my ears. “There’s something you must know.”
“What?” I feel like I’m missing something important. Maybe something terrible. “Is Japha okay? Lydea?”
“Japha is fine. They’re here as well. Lydea, I don’t know. She’s still in the palace.” The first bit of news is great, the second not so much. “But this isn’t about either of them. It’s about you.”
I stare at him, as a strange sensation starts to creep over me.
“While you’re safe, you … you’re not yourself,” he says, stumbling, looking down at his hands, which are suddenly knotted. “At least not in the way you’re accustomed to.”
And then I realize what I’m missing. After that first, instinctual breath, I haven’t breathed much at all.
I don’t need to, unless I require air to speak.
I tear my gaze away from him, hauling myself onto my elbows. I seize the neckline of my shift—clean, white—and drag it down. I’m in a bed with silk sheets, but it might as well be a stone funeral slab. Because I immediately see the wound in my breast that goes straight to my heart. It looks fresh, but there’s no clotting or scabbing. No blood at all.
The smell of rot was coming from me, I realize, though it’s almost gone. The roses were masking my scent.
“What the fuck?” I say, staring down at my chest. There’s no rise and fall of breath, only that deep rift separating me from the living.
“You’re different,” Ivrilos says. “But we can get through this. I’m right here, by your side.”
I draw my knees toward me on the bed. “Get through this? I’m dead!”
Something swells from deep within me. It’s not my breath. More like the urge to vomit. But nothing happens. There’s only the inescapable truth, with no relief.
“Rovan, just breathe,” Ivrilos says, and then he winces. “I mean … damn it.”
But there’s nothing I can do. I can’t breathe. I can’t even cry out. I just freeze as horror sweeps through me like a tide. My mind is a silent scream. But it passes, at least just enough for me to blink again. Or maybe I grow a little numb to my horror as it inhabits me.
I flex my toes experimentally. Wiggle my fingers.
Several times in life, I’ve felt like my body was simply monstrous. When I first bled on what disappointingly became a monthly basis, it was as if my body had decided to betray me, wounding me from the inside out. And when I woke up with the bloodline covering me head to toe, it was as if I’d been turned inside out, exposing my family lineage and my veins to the world. I’ve heard that pregnancy and childbirth are raw and primitive in their violence, one’s body nigh splitting itself in twain with plenty of blood and gore to go around, but I don’t know firsthand, and now I’ll never know, because I’m dead.
I’m dead. My body moves—responsively, sensitively—but it doesn’t breathe unless I tell it to, out of comfort or the need to speak. I’m not a shade, and yet I have a stab wound in my chest that goes to my still and silent heart.
Except … before my eyes, the wound begins to fill in, eventually sealing over. The pink fades from my skin in mere moments, leaving only the smooth, too-pale expanse of the inner curve of my breast underneath my bloodline. It’s as if a healer is working on me with blood magic. But it’s only my body. It simply heals on its own. Because it’s powered by magic and not life.
I am a horror now. A monster.
Distantly, I hear how strained my voice is. “Ivrilos, this is bad. Wrong. I’m wrong.”
He tries to smile. “You know I’m the last person to judge you for being dead, right?”
“What am I?” I nearly shriek. “What is this?”
“Shh,” Ivrilos says. And he puts a hand on my shoulder.
He puts a hand on my shoulder.
He deals with the shock of it incredibly well. Surprise only flits over his face, there and gone. And then he leans into me. It’s a weighted, wonderful feeling. So different from the still, horrible presence of my own body. He pushes me back onto the bed, sitting next to me in the same motion. He pauses
for just a moment, makes a decision, and tosses his legs onto the edge of the bed. He slides down next to me, facing me on his side.
For a moment I can’t think of anything except his body, lining the entirety of mine. We’re in bed together. Sunlight plays softly over us, gilding our limbs. Making us look alive.
I’ve been in bed with a few people. But never Ivrilos. It’s hard to focus on anything else, even though he’s trying to show me something. His arm propped beneath him, he keeps a hand on my shoulder, his fingers playing casually along the bare skin over my collarbone as if this is the most natural thing in the world. As if we’ve always done this. The other hand, he raises above me, palm up.
“Remember how I said your body was like a raft, and I was weighing it down, because of our bond?”
“Yes,” I whisper, even though I’m struggling to remember anything at all.
“Now it’s like we’ve completely rebuilt it to hold the two of us. I’m not dragging you down anymore. You’re alive … but not. Only now, the problem is that we’re too much.” His hand, glowing warm with sunlight, dips toward my chest. I want it to keep dropping, despite what it symbolizes. “We’re imbalanced, like the blight. The river—the living world—doesn’t really want us anymore. It’s trying to shove us out. We’re running aground rather than sinking.”
“So … I need a stronger life force to paddle. To stay in the current.” My eyes widen. “Someone else’s life force.”
Blood. That was why the thought of it made me ravenous. Still does.
“It’s a temporary solution to the problem, and one only an undead bloodmage—a revenant, I believe you’re called—can fully utilize.” His voice is so gentle. As if trying to soften the name, something with so many edges and so much violence.
“Utilize? You mean digest,” I say, disgust rolling through me. “Magically speaking?”
I feel him nod.
I turn into him, bury my face in his shoulder. Goddess, he feels so good. He even smells good. Cool and clean, if ever-so-slightly musty. Like the stone of a cave. It’s almost enough to take my mind off what he’s saying:
I’m a revenant. I drink blood.
My body is separate from the living world now, a dead end, tethered only by blood. I can feel it in the stillness of my limbs and belly: I’ll never get sick again. I’ll need no food. I’ll never need a chamber pot again. I’ll never have children.
It’s a small consolation that I won’t have my monthly bleeding anymore. Not that this is a fair trade.
Ivrilos reaches up to smooth my hair. “At least this way, your body can contain my essence safely. You’re more than my anchor here now—you’ve become my vessel. I imagine that’s why we can touch. You can’t rot anymore, because you’re not alive. You’re … preserved?”
Again, his tone is so gentle. I like him touching me. I like not rotting. But everything else makes my gorge rise.
“Ugh,” I say, burrowing deeper into his neck, wishing I could block out everything but the feel of him. “So what is the permanent solution?” My voice is muffled.
His words are all too clear, unfortunately. “There isn’t one. You maintain a steady diet of blood until … well, you’re already dead, so until your body either starves or gets damaged enough that it can’t sustain us, and then your shade and mine finally pass to the underworld. My own feeding might help with your hunger, though I’m not entirely sure. I fed … a lot recently, down there, and I think that’s what gave you the strength to wake up and heal.”
I go still. He wraps an arm around me. I can’t believe we’re lying in bed together, but I can believe other things even less. It’s all so awful, what he’s saying. The hunger I’m feeling. The silence of my heart.
“I’m afraid I consumed Kineas,” he adds after a long pause. “I hope you don’t mind.”
That’s enough to jar me out of my frozen reverie. I can’t help my bark of laughter. It’s sick, but Kineas’s demise is the least of my concerns.
“I can’t believe I’m dead,” I say. Maybe if I say it enough I’ll get used to it.
What will Lydea think? Maybe that’s the one bright side to losing her trust. If I already disgust her, being dead won’t make much of a difference.
“You still have flesh and a life force,” Ivrilos says hopefully. “You’re just…”
“Living dead. Right.” It brings back all the stories of ghouls and other creatures of the night I heard as a child. “That makes me want to vomit.”
“Don’t do that,” Ivrilos says, leaning forward to kiss my temple. Into my hair, he adds, “You need to drink.”
I jerk my head upright to stare at him, his face only inches from mine. “You want me to?”
He holds my gaze levelly, a flat lake of an expression. “If you do,” he says calmly, his dark eyes beginning to trace my face, “I believe you’ll become one of the most powerful forces in Thanopolis, Skyllea, or the entire blight-ridden land. I believe the king—kings—have tried very hard to keep someone like you from coming into existence. Someone like themselves.”
“I’m … he’s … you mean…” It all comes flooding back. How the king swatted aside my sigils like they were flies. How my shield against death magic briefly lifted his long-held disguise. How he pulled a dagger out of his heart without bleeding or flinching, and then stabbed it into my own.
How he’s Ivrilos’s brother, Kadreus, still alive after four hundred years. Well, not exactly alive. But he’s here. Affecting the world of the living as if he were alive—too alive. Far too powerful. Imbalanced.
And now I’m the same.
“The king, my brother, is a revenant,” Ivrilos says, “by some combination of the magic in his blood and his bond with my father’s shade. My father, king in the underworld, is his guardian. He has been, this entire time. They must have discovered what could happen from mixing blood and death magic ages ago, and so they forbade it. The insanity, the rot, when a living bloodmage is exposed to too much death magic is bad enough. But for them, the worst possibility must have been the creation of other revenants—someone to rival their power.”
“That’s why only royal women receive bloodlines and can never inherit the throne,” I murmur, my mind starting to piece it together. “Not only because the … kings … hate women. It’s so a male heir could never risk becoming a revenent—first as a bloodmage with a guardian—and then challenge their rule. It’s so your brother could steal their faces and only pretend to give up the throne, generation after generation.”
“Even so.”
I pull back enough to glance up at him. “Why pretend, though? Why doesn’t Kadreus just show his true face to the people? With your father, he has all the power … in this world and the next.”
Ivrilos shrugs one shoulder, his fingers tracing my collarbone again. “Do you think people would follow him? Bloodmages are frightening enough. Binding them to shades allows the polis to accept blood magic in their midst. A revenant is far more frightening. If people found out, it could cause mass panic. Revolt.”
I look away, toward the ceiling. Like the walls, it too is covered in roses: a mask for cold stone, the smell of rot. “And now I’m just as monstrous as they are.”
“Two of the same force can balance each other, if they’re on opposing sides. You can restore balance.” We’re lying so close together on the bed, I can’t help but notice the gleam of excitement in his eyes.
It stirs an answering response in my belly. One tinged with hunger, yes, but also eagerness. I want to hunt. I try to ignore it.
“You’re not upset with me?” I murmur. “I ruined your plans.”
He sighs, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingertips brush over my cheek. “It’s honestly a relief. I’m not alone for the first time in centuries. Someone knows my secrets. I have a partner in treason, even if she upended all my carefully laid plans.” He pauses. “That is, if she’ll have me. I’d rather start over with the planning, if it’s with you. Do you want to bring down
a kingdom with me, Rovan?”
It’s his goal. It’s my goal. It’s revenge, and yet it’s a solution to right so many wrongs.
It’s also quite possibly the sexiest thing anyone has ever suggested to me. I’d be breathless even if I weren’t dead. I nod into his hand.
“I hope this is okay,” he whispers, fingers running down my jaw. “Touching you, I mean. Tell me if it’s not.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper back. It’s more than okay. My eyes grow heavy lidded as his fingers skim over my lips.
His long, dark lashes shadow his gaze as he studies my mouth. “It’s just that I haven’t touched anyone except to hurt or to hunt in a very long time. This is—” He pauses. Has to swallow. “To touch someone just because, or even better, out of desire … Rovan, I…” Now it’s his turn to be lost for words.
“Keep going.”
His fingers find my chin, turning my head gently as he continues his careful inspection. His voice is low. “I didn’t think I would see you again, and I wasn’t sure how I could bear it. I couldn’t, actually. I was going to throw myself at my father, just like you threw yourself at my brother. So I can’t be upset with you.”
I don’t interrupt, mostly because I want him to keep touching me.
His eyes flash back up to mine. He shakes his head as his fingers trail down the other side of my jaw. “I’m sorry. I know what I’ve done to you. I know the situation is awful. I’m so sorry about your mother, your father. I understand if you hate me. And if you hate what you’ve become.”
I can’t think about my mother at all right now—my thoughts recoil when I even try—and I think about my own … situation … far less when he’s touching me. His hand drops, but I catch it. Before long, his thumb runs over my knuckles, caressing my fingers. He can’t seem to help it. I crave the feeling as much as he seems to.
Maybe I should feel guilty, enjoying this after everything he’s done, but right now I can’t find it in me. It’s not that I don’t care about his actions, but dying maybe put it all in perspective.
In the Ravenous Dark Page 28