Page 11 of In the Ravenous Dark
Marklos’s face splits with a grin. “Silvean, do you know this woman? Or perhaps herdaughter? Don’t you think she might look a little like you?”
My father’s gaze shoots to me, and it feels like an arrow piercing my chest. He didn’t recognize me at first, but now he can’t look away. His golden eyes pore over my face like it’s the lines of a book he desperately needs to read.
Look away, I beg silently.
He manages, but I feel a tearing sensation as he does.
He turns back to Marklos, sounding only slightly shaken. “Let’s not dance around each other. I’ve never seen this woman or this girl in my life.”
“She’sseenyou,” Marklos says, gesturing at my mother. “She knows your name, and yet you haven’t left the confines of the palace in… what… thirteen years?”
Twelve and a half. It’s been twelve and a half years since my mother and I watched my father get hauled away, seemingly dead. Notthatdead, apparently. Bloodmages make for miraculous healers, and the king would have the best serving at the palace, then and now, so my father must have been revived after his captors brought him to the brink of death.
Twelve and a half years doesn’t explain how worn he looks, but there are more pressing things to worry about.
“You see,” Marklos says, “I was there thirteen years ago, when we found you, the infamous Silvean Ballacra, rogue bloodmage of Skyllea. I was guarding the back of your house, so I didn’t get a good look at the woman or the child you were hiding with. Perhaps that was for the best, since I survived while many of my fellows did not.”
I certainly didn’t recognize the captain, but that’s no surprise. I was so young when I would have last seen him, and there was such chaos.
My father shrugs, more ease coming back into his shoulders and his voice. “If this is her, I honestly don’t remember. That woman meant nothing to me, and her child wasn’t mine. It was proven.”
“Then you won’t mind if we test this woman and her daughter for blood magic right here before the council?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not,” Marklos echoes. “After all, you’re sohappilymarried to Princess Penelope and ensconced in the palace, though still no luck on a child yet, am I right? Ten years you’ve tried now? Youhavebeen trying?”
A pit opens up inside me. I feel like I’m falling. My father is married to a…
“Princess?” my mother says faintly. She’s trying to bear all of this quietly, but I can see the strain is nearly too much for her. It breaks my heart.
I would give anything to get my mother out of here. Funny, since we both, just a day ago, would have given anything to see my father again. That was before discovering that he’d joined the royal family.
We couldn’t have known. Outside of the palace, the affairs of the king’s children or his children’s children are kept private, at times down to their betrothals—kept especially private, apparently, in the case of a once-fugitive bloodmage from an enemy kingdom marrying into the family. That, and I’ve avoided hearing about royals my entire life because I hate them. But Marklos obviously knows the details.
My father’s stony expression cracks once again, and heat escapes in his words. “That’s none of your fucking business, Marklos, and I’d thank you to keep your mouth closed before I shut it for you.”
“Still fire in there, eh? I figured you were just pretending to be asleep,” the captain says, seeming to enjoy himself. “Which is all the more reason your bloodline should be preserved. It would be a shame for the polis to lose it simply for lack of a blood heir.”
Without further delay, he seizes my mother’s hand, withdrawing one of the long silver needles topped with a skull that I remember from all those years ago. He probably wants to discount my mother as a source of magic first.
Which is fine by me. My mother won’t even have to discreetly prick her own finger this way with the hidden needle she’s no doubt carrying. I feel eyes on me, and not just those of the other council members. I glance up and catch a flash of my father’s golden gaze before he looks away.
It was only for a second, but his expression brings back memories with a fierce potency. He’s telling me to do as he taught me.
I’m already planning on it. I’ve gone this long without his guidance, haven’t I? I don’t need it now.
My mother’s test is over in a heartbeat. “No magic,” Marklos declares. “The girl didn’t get it from her mother.”
“You’re assuming a lot,” I snap, turning to expose my bound arms. At a nod from the captain, a warded man nearby cuts my ropes with a swipe of his fingers. I want to rub my wrists, but I hold out my hands before Marklos can try to take them. I want him touching me as little as possible. Luckily there’s no more blood on my burned palms, just tight, raw-looking skin.
The captain moves slowly, holding my eyes and then studying my hands as he lowers the needle toward one of my fingers, making sure I’m not sketching any sigils. He likely thinks I can’t because of the drug, but he’s being thorough.
He doesn’t know I can sketch this one—if only this one—without twitching a finger, picture it as clearly in my mind as if drawn in blood, or call it forward even in my sleep.
Move.
Blood wells on my fingertip around the needle’s point. Marklos carefully dabs it up and examines it. The entire hall is silent.
