Page 111 of In the Ravenous Dark
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,” hesays, 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. Youburn. 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, thispolis, 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’vealready 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 wouldhave 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.
