Page 100 of In the Ravenous Dark
“How… I thought you were dead! That’s what they told me.” I take a breath to respond, but too quickly she follows up with, “Did you kill my brother?”
I hesitate. I didn’t kill him, but I didn’t exactlynot.
When she flinches, I say, “No, I—”
She shakes her head, but before she can speak, Graecus, Lydea’s guardian, appears over her shoulder. He sees me—and sees meseeinghim, and his eyes widen. But then his gaze whips up to Ivrilos, who appears right in front of him.
“Graecus,” Ivrilos says. “I’ll give you one chance to—”
But the shade draws his sword and lets out a shout.
The outer doors to Lydea’s chambers burst open, and Marklos comes striding through. “I know I felt something, and Klytios just said… What’s this?” And then he sees me, and the words die on his lips.
I can’t help it; I wave at him from the ground.
He throws his hand out, sketching, and Lydea’s rug blows apart to twine around me like ropes. But I simply pick apart his sigils, like plucking at a thread in a tapestry and unraveling it all. The pieces of rug fall limply to the floor.
I whip my legs in the air and catapult to my feet, something I was never able to do while alive.
Lydea stares back and forth between us. Graecus and Marklos—and, invisible to her, Klytios and Ivrilos—ready themselves.
Three against three.IfLydea sides with us.Ifshe doesn’t hate me most of all.
“Graecus first,” I say to Ivrilos. If only so Lydea’s guardian can never hurt her again. So she’ll be free after this, with any luck. I taught her the sigils to shield against him, but she doesn’t have anyone here to help add that pinch of death to her blood magic.
I do it now, sketching out the shield for her.
“Choke on that,” I say with a smirk for Graecus. And then, to Lydea, “Us against them?”
She only has a split second to make a decision, and thank the goddess she makes the right one. With the force of her sigils, a small table, shaped and stained like a red poppy blossom, lifts off the ground and smashes into Marklos, just as Graecus and Klytios charge Ivrilos.
The shades can’t easily fight me until they materialize. I’ve made it impossible for Graecus to do so by shielding him from his source of energy, and Klytios knows that if he does so he’s dooming Marklos, who is the only one capable of fighting me and Lydea otherwise.
But Marklos is definitely capable. He hasn’t made a career of training royals for nothing.
He deflects the table with more sigils, sending it right into my face as the shades become a blur of clashing darkness around us. I split the table in half while Marklos redirects the shredded rug to twine around Lydea. At least he has a handicap: He can’t truly hurt Lydea, whom he’s sworn to protect. While he takes that small but critical amount of time to be careful with his sigils, I open up the stones under him, sinking his feet into the floor.
His eyes widen at my death magic. “You—” To his credit, hedoesn’t give himself much time to wonder before he snuffs all the fire in the room, plunging us into darkness.
He doesn’t know I can see in the dark. And yet that’s nearly not enough to save me as he sends a splintered leg of the table flying into my chest.
Thank the goddess I see it coming and twist just enough that he misses my heart. As it is, I feel a horrible dull pressure in my shoulder. It could be worse, never mind that there’s a giant spike of wood sticking out of me.
Lydea, having fought free of her bonds, waves the lights back on. Her ragged cry at the sight of my injury hurts me more than anything Marklos has done. She raises her hand with a scream. Another jagged piece of wood rips free from the couch—and flies right into Marklos’s chest.
I don’t hesitate. Gritting my teeth, I rip the wooden table leg out of my shoulder. I can already feel the wound closing up, but I need blood, fast. Marklos’s is gushing down the front of his chiton. Dizzily, I stumble toward him, falling to my knees where he’s sunk in the stone floor.
“I watched your father bleed to death,” he burbles, blood at his lips. “By my own hand.”
I already knew that, but it reminds me not to feel the slightest bit bad about what’s coming.
“I’ll be glad to do the same to you,” he wheezes. Hilariously, he still thinks he has the upper hand.
“No,” I say, feeling the pressure against my gums. “After you.”
My fingers find the stake in his chest and jerk it out. Marklos gives a strangled cough as I press my mouth to his wound. Vaguely, somewhere, I hear Lydea gasp. Maybe gag.
I also hear a fading cry. Someone dying a final death, though I’m not sure who. I guess it’s Graecus, Lydea’s guardian.
