Page 119 of In the Ravenous Dark
He presses his lips to mine, and I forget everything else. I might as well be drifting away with the rest of our surroundings.
“End?” I murmur, when I can breathe. “Who wants this to end?”
“It must,” he says, leaning his temple against mine and exhaling, long and slow. “Probably sooner rather than later.”
“Let’s not rush toward that.” Never mind that we haven’t left ourselves many alternatives. “Let’s enjoy the moment. Besides, I’m pretty sure we have unfinished business.”
He opens his eyes. Holds mine. “All right.”
And then he kisses me again, for a long, long time.
It’s sometime later, as we’re lying back against the dune, arms wrapped around each other, staring at the dissolving sky, that I feel a strange hollowness in my chest.
I sit upright abruptly, dragging myself out of Ivrilos’s embrace, hand at my breast.
“What is it?” he demands, startled, reaching toward his bare hip where armor and a sword suddenly reappear.
“I think I feel somethi—”
And then I’m gone.
36
When I open my eyes, it’s onto a ceiling lined with skulls. Of all my waking views—from the veil on top of the gazebo with Bethea, to my body on a stone slab when I was bound to Ivrilos, to sunlight spearing my hungover eyes, to a canopy of roses masking the smell of my dead body—it’s probably the least appealing.
Until I turn my head and I see who’s standing nearby, looking down at me with anxious faces. And then it’s the most beautiful view I’ve ever seen.
Lydea and Japha. Even Ivrilos appears next to them.
I fly off the hard surface I’m lying on—another stone slab, as it turns out—and I throw myself at Lydea. I crash into her so solidly I almost bring us both to the ground. That doesn’t stop me from smothering her face in kisses. Neither do her red eyes, nor their tears of blood.
It doesn’t hurt that she starts kissing me back just as fiercely, never mind my own red tears.
Someone clears their throat. And that someone is Japha. I don’t care if I’ll get blood on them; I spin away from Lydea to throw my arms around them.
… And I fall right through them.
“Yeah, that,” says Japha. “I’m dead, if you recall.”
I pull away, staring at them. Unlike any shade I’ve ever seen, they’re wearing a bright orange peplos patterned in blooming white lilies. Japha never did like black. And they’re no longerwearing their bloodline. Good thing—it would have clashed horribly.
“But y-you’re here,” I stammer. “How—?”
They jerk a thumb at Lydea. “I’m bound to her. I’m… her guardian? And she’s… um… you’re not really my ward, are you? My revenant?”
Lydea smiles at me, her eyes almost entirely red now, with the blood. “I guess I’m dead, too, just not as thoroughly. Like you, Rovan.”
Except Iwasthoroughly dead, just a moment ago. I paw at my chest. There’s no wound there. Lydea lifts the stake between two fingers as if it’s disgusting, wood and bone bound in steel.
“How?” I gasp again. I’m having a hard time finding words.
“Well, we pulled the stake out—”
“No, I mean, how are youhere?”
Lydea’s lips twist. “I didn’t exactly have time to tell you before I ended up with a broken neck, but Crisea and Bethea, with the help of one of those creepy Skyllean bloodmages, trapped Japha’s shade before they could wander too far, and then bound them to me. I offered, and Japha didn’t resist, so…”
Japha throws up their hands. “Why would I resist? Have youseenthe underworld? Who wants to stay there?”
