“Because we will help them,” say the two blighted mages as they appear alongside me. One raises their hands, one whispers, and my shield suddenly lifts from me like a weight—and then expands. More of the fallen bloodmages stir back to life. “We will hold this, but you should open the gates.”
Through the chaos, my eyes find a pair of thick wooden doors studded with iron. They’re mounted in the outer wall of the palace, where the royal barrack could deploy itself into the city quickly if necessary. I’m not the only one who spots them.
Penelope is eyeing both the gates and the blighted mages with horror. “Open them to Skylleans?”
Lydea nods, her face settling into something like calm. “Open the gates.”
“We will not have a foreign queen!” her aunt shouts.
“We won’t. I will be queen,” Lydea says, and somehow the bottom drops even further out of me. “And Alldan my consort. We will ally with Skyllea, not submit to them.” She glances down at Japha’s body and then quickly away again. She meets my eyes. Hers are shining and flat at the same time. Depthless lakes. “You’ve all sacrificed so much. I can, too.”
“As you will it, my queen.” Tumarq stands, tears streaking his face.
Penelope is at his side, drawing her sword with a ferocious expression. She meets my eyes briefly, nods once. “Open the gates!”
It’s Lydea who does it—taking full responsibility, I suppose—throwing out her hands and sigils. The wooden doors fly open, and a small group of Skylleans come streaming in, their rose-hued steel shining. Alldan is in their lead, his stag-horn crown glinting in his forest dark hair. He lets out a strange, high battle cry and launches immediately into the mix of living and dead, hacking right into a shade that was about to skewer one of Thanopolis’s soldiers from behind.
Both Tumarq and Penelope let out their own battle cries and charge forward to join him.
But still, I don’t move. I’m frozen in the storm of motion around me. I know I don’t have time for this, but my eyes keep going back to Japha.
“We need to get to the throne room,” Ivrilos says alongside me. “This was all a distraction—everything since you unveiled Kadreus and he knew he’d lost. He’s stalling us. He’s gone to protect the most precious thing in all of Thanopolis, because he suspects that’s where we might be headed.”
The source of the blight. The anchor point between Thanopolis and the dark city. The greatest source of their underworld power.
“Ivrilos,” I say, spinning on him. As soon as he sees my face, he shakes his head, because he knows what I’m going to ask. “Find Japha. Do everything you can to make sure they’re okay down there.”
“I’m not leaving you right now.”
“I can’t just leave them alone.” My voice breaks. “Please.”
Ivrilos swallows, nods, and then he’s gone, just like that. Still, I can’t move. I can’t look away. Crisea and Bethea drag the body to the edge of the courtyard, Lydea following them with a fierce determination I’ve never seen in her face before.
She turns back only to say, “Go, Rovan. Do what you need to do. I’ll”—she chokes—“I’ll take care of Japha, make sure nothing else hurts them. I promise. Go!”
I know it’s just a body, that Japha is no longer there, but her assurance is the only thing that allows me to tear myself away.
“Don’t follow me,” I say. “It’s too dangerous.”
The ferocious look on her pale face burns into my mind like a torch in the night. “You think you’re the only one who wants to make that monster suffer?”
I can’t fault her for what she’s feeling, but where I’m headed is no place for her.
“You made me a promise,” I say, “and you have to keep it. For me … and for Japha.”
Maybe it’s manipulative, but if it will keep her here … Pain streaks across her face as I turn away.
Thank you, Japha, I think, and then, tears choking me, Japha, Japha.
And then I’m running after the king who took my father, my mother, and now my best friend from me.
I’m going to take everything from him.
33
I raise a shimmering curtain of blood and death magic as fine as any cloth I’ve ever woven to cloak me from the eyes of the living and the dead—something probably like what the king has used all these years to disguise himself. I dodge forces of flesh and shadow, invisible, pausing only to send burning blue fire like spears through the hearts of as many shades as I can reach as I pass.
Still not enough.
I can almost hear Ivrilos hissing at me to save my strength, but I can’t resist. I feel as if I’m on fire.
I quit attacking once I reach the edge of the courtyard, dropping my disguise and breaking into a sprint, bending all my focus on moving as fast as I can. The arcade blurs and the night air rushes around me, my feet slapping the marble tiles at an inhuman pace. The king was on a horse, but if he’s going where I think he’s going, he’ll need to abandon it.
His path up the spiraling curve of the palace’s main hallway is even easier to follow than I imagined. After leaving his mount, he didn’t raise any guards. In fact, quite the opposite. He’s left a trail of their bodies. And their blood. Their life force is splattered along the gold-threaded and blossom-choked marble.
It’s deathly quiet.
I only bump into one living soul. He must have gone to relieve himself, and when he came back … He stares at the body of his companion guard, wide-eyed. The moment he sees me, he throws himself in my way, swinging his sword wildly.
I dodge the blade, locate his neck, and soon he joins his companion on the floor. I’m moving again before I even bother to wipe my hand across my red-stained mouth. I needed the blood, and, besides, I couldn’t leave the danger of a panicked man with a sword for someone else to stumble into. It’s a pity, but better I take care of him than let another shoulder that burden.
I’m already a monster, after all. At least in this moment, I’m fine with that. It takes a monster to hunt a monster. But it does make me wonder if there will be any coming back from this, beyond simply surviving.
I know where the king’s quarters are, his hidden throne room, despite never having been inside. The trail of blood shows me the way. And when I finally see the column-lined, high black doors that reach almost to the ceiling, what has been invisible in the past is all too obvious: the magic wreathing the place, made of intricate sigil work and twisting shadow. It makes my own magical cloak look like child’s play. No wonder Ivrilos has never been able to sneak in on his own. It’s almost like a cage, and I can feel something dark and pulsing within. Maybe Kadreus. Maybe something worse.
Like the king, I can also weave both blood and death magic—and pick them apart. And yet I can see he’s protected himself from the likes of Skyllea’s blighted mages who can do the same. Even if they were to unravel the magic, the final thread of it would stop their hearts.
Good thing my heart is already still.
Despite my readiness, when I approach the entrance, I don’t have to do anything. The magic falls away like a curtain. More alert than ever, I brace myself as one of the black doors cracks open for me.
Maybe the king knew such barriers would be useless against me. Still, I feel a stirring of unease. The voice I hear doesn’t help:
“Do come in, Rovan.”
It’s not the king’s voice as I’ve known it. He’s let his illusion drop away, just like the protective magic on the room.
Part of me is screaming in warning. But a greater part of me is eager to end this. Furious for revenge. Hungry for blood.
I throw both doors entirely open. I see the king all the way through another set of double doors on the other side of an elaborate sitting room. Gold veins lace midnight marble. Gold-plated skeleton hands hold wall sconces. Elaborate mosaic scenes on the ceiling in more black and gold depict skeletons and shadows in flowing shrouds. Death and opulence. Perfect for a royal revenant.
Atop a dais, t
he king is sitting in a high-backed throne carved of the purest obsidian. The only thing interrupting the almost-liquid darkness of the stone is a skull set at the crest, wearing a golden laurel crown. One that perfectly matches the chair’s occupant.
Somehow, I know it’s Athanatos’s skull. Just how I know it’s the source of the blight—the anchor point to the underworld.
Red eyes meet and hold mine. Kadreus could almost be handsome, if it weren’t for the cruel madness simmering right under the surface of his skin. He’s pretty wrapping over a deep, festering wound. Maybe similar to how I’ll look someday.
Don’t think about that, I tell myself. Not right now.
There’s still blood on his lips as he smiles at me slowly. “Always you think you’re getting me exactly where you want me when, in reality, it’s the other way around.”
“Are you well acquainted with reality these days?” I ask.
“More than you, it appears. You seem to think you have a chance of beating me in my inner sanctum, alone. It’s why I let you in. Shall we dance?”
He abruptly stands, his black himation flowing around him like shadow, his muscular arms lined in deep red sigils. He steps forward, and I have to resist stepping backward. A dance, indeed.
“I can’t help but feel as though we’ve done this already,” he says, slowly walking down the dais. “Except you didn’t stay dead. I should have known. I couldn’t see what you were becoming. But I can see you now. You burn. And you can’t be left to exist.”
“Then neither can you,” I say. “Everyone knows what you are now.”
He shrugs. “This is not an insurmountable obstacle. It will only require a little effort and time, and I have plenty of time. Once I destroy you, I’ll send out every guardian still tethered to a bloodline and eliminate all who know my secret. I’m already doing a fair job of that right now.”
“No,” I say, squaring my shoulders and standing tall as he gets closer. Refusing to cower. “You’re losing. The Skylleans brought reinforcements.”
He waves a hand, golden rings flashing. “Only more to sweep up, then. This family, this polis, needed a cleansing, especially of Skylleans. Time to start fresh.”
“Yes. Which is why Lydea will rule, and you will die. For good.”
“Lydea,” he snorts. “She isn’t fit to preside over a dinner party, let alone a kingdom.”
Now he’s standing less that a body’s length from me. Sigil-lined paths open up before me, and deathly whispers drift in my ears. My hands, my breath, are held ready.
“So what was that about my dying for good?” he asks. “Show me how that will work.” Despite what he says, he’s teasing, almost flirtatious, and it makes my skin crawl. “I’ve already practiced on Japha, so you need to play catch-up.”
For a moment, my vision flashes red. I remember Kineas toying with me like this, trying to goad me into making the first move. I tell myself I’m not going to fall for his trick.
But then Kadreus reminds me he is not Kineas. Without warning, he swipes at my face with his hand, which has suddenly grown foot-long iron claws. I duck away, barely, from where they would have made ribbons of my cheek. At the same time his other hand, sketching sigils, sends a ball of fire into the space I step into. I barely deflect that, too, and singe my fingers doing it.
The blisters subside immediately into smooth, unblemished skin.
The king shakes his head and smiles at me as if I’m a willful child—an incongruous sight with his grotesque claws and red-stained lips. “You’re fast and you’re resilient, but you can’t win this alone.”
“She’s not alone,” Ivrilos says, appearing next to me. In the same motion, he seizes my wrist in one hand, drawing from me, and swings at Kadreus’s head with the other, a half-moon blade in his grip.
Kadreus should have fallen like wheat to a scythe. Instead, he throws himself into a standing backflip to avoid the strike, lithe and graceful as a cat in midair. Which simply isn’t fair.
I glance at Ivrilos long enough for him to jerk his head, a weighted look in his dark eyes.
He couldn’t find Japha, or he couldn’t save them. Maybe he had to watch as someone got to them first …
No, don’t think about that. Don’t think at all. Just move.
“Ah, indeed, she’s not alone!” the king announces theatrically, as if he’s the villain in a dramatic play. He grins. “And neither am I.”
A dark shadow coalesces behind him, growing darker and darker while the figure’s eyes glow a bright and icy blue until they burn with cold. If Kadreus is all fire and madness, Athanatos is pitiless darkness. He’s empty, but it’s an emptiness that is vast and terrifying and self-aware.
This is bad. Ivrilos has always said he would need to absorb his brother’s strength before facing his father. But now his father is here.
“My son,” Athanatos says in a voice like death. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Likewise,” Ivrilos says shortly. Neither one seems much for words. Maybe after this long, they’ve said all they needed to say.
But one thought keeps my joints from locking up in fear. Ivrilos isn’t like his father, not one bit, and not after four hundred years of being in a similar state. Maybe I don’t have to turn into a monster like Kadreus. Maybe I can kill the monster without becoming one myself.
My hands tighten on my half-moon blades just as Ivrilos’s do on his. I wanted to see what we could do together, after all. We exchange a glance, and then we’re both moving.
Kadreus and his shade of a father take a split second longer than we do. Perhaps they can afford to take their time. I barely see Ivrilos and Athanatos clash out of the corner of my eye. Not only are they dark shadows, trailing even more darkness, they move at an inhuman speed. Unearthly. Godlike.
Kadreus—I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking of him as the king anymore—doesn’t even draw a weapon. He conjures a blade from the air: obsidian, just like his throne, and dripping with blood. It’s dramatic, but it’s an effective combination of blood and death magic, so I line my half-moon blades with blue fire. Just as dramatic.
I know they probably won’t work on his heart for the final strike, but I have something special for that.
Kadreus bats my weapons aside as if they’re twigs and almost casually sends a blow my way that nearly beheads me. I remind myself that he benefits from Athanatos’s experience as much as I do Ivrilos’s. My only hope is that maybe, in ruling Thanopolis and the underworld, both he and his father neglected to practice throughout the years, overly confident in their power.
But it soon feels like Kadreus has everything I have and more.
His sigils are as precise and efficient as his blade work. He trips me by bucking the stone under my feet and lands three more burns on me that heal over just as rapidly as before. I’m barely able to throw any sigils at him. Flame comes so naturally to me, but when I encase him in a massive sphere of it, he simply snuffs it and steps out from behind a curtain of smoke.
Death magic might come easier, but he keeps me so much on the defensive that all he has to do is purse his lips and blow away my attempts to open the floor under his feet or pin him down with metal spikes.
I’m surprised when he tries to poison me like he did Japha. I still don’t let it reach me, utterly vaporizing the snaking black tendril.
“Pity you didn’t do that for Japha,” Kadreus says conversationally. “Since you’re already dead, it can’t actually hurt you. Physically, at least.” His smile cuts like a razor.
I scream and launch myself at him, flaming blades twirling, but he batters me back. As I dodge, something nags at me. It comes from Ivrilos’s knowledge, no doubt. Kadreus isn’t as efficient, even leaving slight openings whenever I try to move a certain way and he’s forced to stop me.
He’s keeping my focus elsewhere. Keeping me from going deeper into the room, putting himself between me and the throne. Keeping me away from the skull. He doesn’t even know for sure that I want
to reach it, which tells me for certain that I do.
I throw a few more blows at him while I think. He’s the better fighter. For now he’s testing my limits, maybe even toying with me. But if he realizes I’m going for the anchor point, he’ll end me as fast as possible. Whatever I throw at it, he’d probably put himself between me and it, even at risk to himself.
Unless … unless the risk is too great. Maybe it’s time to tip my hand. Just not in the direction he expects. He needs to believe I want to kill him even more than I already do. He needs to score a hit on me, which means I need to leave him an opening. And not a physical hit.
I start crying, even as I swing my blades. It’s not difficult to start. I see red on my cheek out of the corner of my eye, a blood tear. Hard to miss.
“I forgot that’s what happens when we cry,” Kadreus says, locking my blades for a minute to stare. He sounds almost curious. “I haven’t in so long. Nothing to cry over.”
I toss his sword aside. “Because you’re alone.”
The bastard doesn’t even bother to raise his guard again. “I’m never alone.”
“And yet everyone hates you. Your people. Even him.” I nod without looking at the clashing black shadows around us. “Your father. He loves no one, and you know it. You can see it in his eyes.” Something flashes in Kadreus’s eyes to show me I’ve scratched at some long-buried hurt. “Ivrilos’s and my bond is stronger than yours and Athanatos’s could ever be, because we love each other and we have people who love us.”
I realize even as I goad him that it’s true. I do have something Kadreus doesn’t—a caring family. My father and my mother. Ivrilos. And Lydea and …
Japha.
Kadreus must see it in my face, because he says, “So how does it feel to lose someone who loved you? Do you feel stronger now, after watching the light fade from your friend’s eyes?”
My cry of rage is real. I use a quick sigil to slice the dark cloth wrapped around my wrist and reveal the stake: half bone, half wood, twined in a spiral of steel to keep both sides together and the point sharp. It’s a tool designed specifically for putting down creatures like us, courtesy of Skyllea.
In the Ravenous Dark Page 34