Page 109 of In the Ravenous Dark
“No,” I say. “No.” I can’t believe what I’m seeing, what I’m feeling. Pain tears through me, starting in my chest and dropping, leaving me with no sense of the bottom as it turns me inside out. I fold forward, clutching my useless, empty stomach as a cry rips out of me.
Behind me, my back turned on him, the king says calmly, “Attack.”
“No,” Ivrilos breathes.
Because the king isn’t speaking to the bloodmages anymore. He’s speaking to their guardians. I spin just in time to see every bloodmage collapse in their saddles, some sliding to the ground, backs arching, eyes and mouths wide in anguish, as an army of darkness steps out of the shadows.
An army of the dead facing an army of the living.
Behind them, the king wheels his horse around and rides away from the field of battle, out of the courtyard and toward the palace.
The guardian shades flood forward. I flex my fingers and say the word, and the shield I used against the king expands, encasing a dozen or so bloodmages. They cough, stirring feebly, suddenly blocked from what was drawing the life from them. A few of their shades are likely vanishing from sight, no longer able to fight the living.
But not enough of them.
“Rovan,” Ivrilos says. “Save your strength. We have to—”
“I know. We have to follow the king.” I look around frantically. The general is still down on his knees next to Japha, along with Crisea and Bethea. Penelope stands above them, gripping Tumarq’s shoulder hard. I can’t tell if she’s comforting him or urging him to get up. The lines of soldiers look terrified even as they raise their steel. Flesh meets shadow in a flickering clash of swords, and already there are screams among the living. Our group knots together, Ivrilos whirling around us, fighting off other shades, as I maintain my shield over the few bloodmages I can cover. “But how can we leave everyone like this?”
“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 thenexpands. 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 toSkylleans?”
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 motionaround 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.”
