Page 1 of In the Ravenous Dark
BEFORE
There wasn’t much warning the day they came for Rovan’s father.
Rovan was playing the hiding game with her straw doll in the front room of their house, which lay on one of the main avenues leading to the agora. There were stacks of cloth to tuck herself behind, since her mother didn’t put all her weaving outside on display in the morning. The bolts surrounding Rovan revealed glimpses of leaves and flowers twining in intricate patterns, with butterflies and skulls so cleverly layered you couldn’t tell where an eye socket ended and a wing began.
Rovan could see her mother outside through the wooden slats of the shutters, shaking out fabrics in myriad bright colors and ornate patterns, letting the warm breeze catch them and draw the eyes of early shoppers. At the echoing clatter of many hooves, Rovan drew closer to the window. A feeling of sick anticipation twisted in her stomach.
The bloodmages came riding down the stone-paved street. Cloaking their left shoulders were deep red chlamyses with a woven black shield in the center, leaving their right arms free. Familiar crimson marks streaked their skin down their single bare arms and what Rovan could see of their calves. Maybe the symbols twined everywhere, like her father’s, which even came up to his neck.
The bloodmages were so vivid, their intricate silver helms glinting in the morning air, and yet they were accompanied by dark shadows lurking in the air behind them—silent smudges against thebrightness of the day. Except these shadows weren’t cast by the sun. They seemed to sap the light and liveliness, even the joy, from their surroundings.Guardians, they were called.
Rovan didn’t know how the bright riders could pay so little attention to their so-called guardians. Those eerie, unnatural shadows were nearly all she could look at, as if they were windows into another, darker world.
Theunderworld.
Rovan couldn’t make out any features in the darkness, even though she felt she should’ve been able to. The guardians were people, after all.
Deadpeople, watching over the bloodmages.
The bloodmages, two men and two women of varying heights and builds and skin tones, drew in their horses a few buildings away from her mother’s shop. Wards, her father called them—different from him even though he was also a bloodmage with the same red markings, because they had their shadowy guardians watching over them. Rovan was never to draw their attention.
Which meant she probably wasn’t supposed to be staring at them, but she couldn’t help it. Lurking guardians or not, these warded bloodmages rode beautiful horses, wore well-woven and dyed clothes, and more importantly, never had to hide. They sat tall, proud.
Sometimes Rovan wondered why her father was hiding from them—why he hadn’tbeggedto become one of them. She sometimes fantasized that he had, and he would carry her and her mother away from their house on a prancing horse in broad daylight, his blue hair streaming like water in the sun, and she would have a new dress billowing out behind her. She wished her father could ignore a strange, shadowy guardian for that. But he hated them.
A hand dropped on her shoulder, nearly making her yelp. She turned to find her father standing behind her, his eyes—usuallygold at home but magicked now to look brown—fixed on the figures on horseback. His blue hair and metallic irises were familiar to her, but uncommon anywhere else in the polis.
“Bastards,” he muttered under his breath. “Stay quiet, love.”
At seven years old, she already knew to keep her voice down. “Dolon says he wants to be a guardian when he grows up.”
Her father’s eyebrows shot up. “Who is Dolon?” He wouldn’t have known, because he rarely went outside during the day. While the color of his hair and eyes could be altered, hidden, the marks on his skin couldn’t. They proved he was a powerful bloodmage and made up what he called hisbloodline—long strings of red symbols known as sigils weaving over his skin.
“He’s the boy who lives down the street,” Rovan said.
Her father cursed under his breath. “This death-obsessed city. What an abomination to let children think… Look, love, I know what they say: that anyone, if they train hard in life and do great things, can become a hero in the afterlife. Maybe even a guardian to a living ward. But it’s not that simple or nice.”
“Why are the guardians so bad?” she asked, even though she could sense that they were.Feelit in her gut. And yet she couldn’t stop staring. The guardians were like dark flames. Fascinating. Dangerous. Begging to be touched, even at her own peril.
Her father frowned at the approaching riders. “Because they don’t belong in our world.”
Being one of theirwardsdidn’t look all that bad, at least. Rovan said as much.
Her father sighed. “Itisbad, love. It can only be bad.”
“Why?”
“Because dealing with the dead comes at a price, and the cost to the living is higher than we—”
With a sharp squeeze on her shoulder, he cut off.
Because the bloodmages did what they’d never done before:They stopped in front of the shop instead of passing by on some important business. Her mother grew still outside, and her father ducked behind a stack of cloth, dragging Rovan down with him. For a second, she was terrified the riders had seen them, but that was impossible with the shutters mostly closed. Still, the bloodmages spread their horses out in front of the house, sun glinting off their silver helms, coming close enough now for Rovan to see that the intricate metalwork included skulls and blooming flowers.
“Good morning, my lords and ladies,” her mother managed with relative calm. “Can I interest you in some weaving?”
The riders didn’t even acknowledge her. A warded bloodmage rode to the forefront. She spoke in a level tone, and yet her voice came out amplified, as if she were shouting. Louder than shouting. Rovan could feel it vibrating in her bones.
“Silvean Ballacra, we know you are in there. Come out, and we can resolve this without blood.”
