Page 2 of In the Ravenous Dark
Rovan’s heart stuttered in her chest. Silvean Ballacra was her father.
Her mother’s eyes darted to the house and away. “There’s no one by that name here.”
The bloodmage ignored her again. “There are ten more of us out back, so don’t try to sneak off. If you don’t come out now, we will set fire to the place.”
Rovan glanced at her father, her breath held.
His eyes were squeezed tightly closed. “She’s telling the truth,” he said. When his eyes snapped open, they were golden again. “Quick, hide like we taught you. And if they search the house and find you, do like we practiced.”
“But—”
“Do it, love, for me. Remember what you promised me.”
She tried to grab his chiton as he stood, but it tore from her grasp. And then he was outside, standing tall in the sunlight, hisfeet bare, the crimson marks of his bloodline blazing on his skin for all to see, revealing himself to be an unwarded bloodmage, at the very least. And maybe something else. The brown of his hair lifted away, leaving only deep blue. His shoulders were squared. He wasn’t hiding anymore.
She had wanted this, hadn’t she? But it felt all wrong.
“There you are, our long-lost Skyllean,” the lead bloodmage said. “Some were beginning to doubt you even existed.” She raised an eyebrow, her sharp gaze tracing Rovan’s father from head to foot. “That’s a long bloodline you have there. Longer even than rumor had it. Certainly longer than mine.” She shrugged her marking-covered shoulder. “But there are far more of us.”
Her father was one man against four warded bloodmages. But he didn’t look afraid.
Cold dread rose in Rovan’s chest. Her breath came too fast, making her dizzy.
“I’ll leave quietly as long as all of you leave with me,” her father said.
The lead bloodmage’s sharp eyes found Rovan’s mother. “Who is she, that you would want to protect her?”
“No one of consequence. I paid her, if that’s what you mean. For my bed and hers, on occasion.”
The lead bloodmage frowned. “She’s still a woman who sheltered a foreign spy and unregistered bloodline without reporting him.”
“She didn’t know I was Skyllean.” He gestured at his hair. “I was disguising myself. And she didn’t know I was unregistered. I wouldn’t want to get her killed in a fight simply for her ignorance.” He raised his hands, as if in surrender. “I’d say that’s a fair trade. You get me, and nobody dies.Youdon’t die.”
The lead bloodmage stared at him for a few seconds. Then she turned to a man standing nearby in a threadbare chiton—Dolon’s father, a shopkeeper a few doors down. “Who else lives here?”
“There’s a child,” Dolon’s father said hesitantly. “She plays with my boy.”
Rovan’s fear spiked in her stomach like she’d swallowed a dagger.
Outside, the ward’s eyes lit up, and Rovan’s mother turned on the shopkeeper, staring at him with a hatred Rovan had never seen.
“Search the hou—” the lead bloodmage started, but then suddenly her neck erupted in a spray of red.
It took Rovan a second to realize that the liquid hadn’t come from anywhere outside the woman. It was coming frominsideher. It was her blood, a fountain of it. And it took Rovan another second to realize her father had done it.
His fingers were splayed. The woman’s blood spiraled toward him like a snake in water. He threw his hand out, casting her gathered life force in an arcing spray, and then there was fire.
So much fire. A wall of it, shooting up in a half circle in front of their house and tearing through the four wards and the shopkeeper. Horses screamed and reared. Their neighbor shrieked, his hair and clothes alight. He tried to run toward Rovan’s mother, but she hefted a wooden pole, usually used to display draped cloth, and smashed him in the face. He went down in a burning, thrashing heap.
Other figures, cloaked in the warded bloodmages’ red and black chlamyses and helmed in their same silver skulls and flowers, emerged from the alleys all around. Balls of fire and vicious-looking wooden stakes were suddenly flying for her father. He batted them away like a cloud of flies. The stakes went spinning, the balls of flame guttering. Onlyhisfire continued to burn, even expanding to the other wards with a red sweep of his hand. But her father wasn’t just waving about. His fingers were twitching,writing. Spelling out destruction. Though the sigils he wrote were invisible, their effects weren’t. Rovan had never seen him do anything like this, and it was both awful and amazing.
He even turned the warded bloodmages’ own weapons against them. The wooden stakes rose as if by their own accord and launched for the necks and eyes of their wards. Another chorus of screams rose.
For a second, it looked like her father might win. Rovan felt like she was choking on terror and hope all at once.
But in the chaos, she had forgotten the guardians. Those shadows came awake—alivewasn’t the right word—and she saw them as they truly were.
One guardian especially: a man with curly dark hair and flat black eyes—cold, cold eyes—who seemed to draw the light from around him as he materialized. The lead bloodmage, whose throat her father had opened, now lying on the ground half-pinned under her charred horse, suddenly arched her back and let loose a gurgling cry at the exact moment the guardian solidified. It was as if his appearance had caused her more pain.
