Page 3 of In the Ravenous Dark
The shadow-man didn’t even glance at the dying woman. He only had eyes—dead eyes—for Rovan’s father. Raising a gleaming sword, he charged. The guardian moved like smoke, impossibly twisting and weaving around the streaks of fire her father launched at him. And yet her father ducked the blade as quickly as the guardian moved, and he blocked whatever he couldn’t avoid with fiery, sparking shapes he pulled from nowhere. At the same time, an inferno flared right under the guardian’s black boots, and all the flying wooden stakes spun in the air and spitted him like a pincushion. He went up as if made of straw, leaving nothing behind but wisps of shadow and stakes that clattered to the ground.
“Die again, dead man,” her father snarled.
If only that guardian had been the only one. Three more appeared around Rovan’s father. Three swords glinted in the sunlight.
It was her father’s turn to cry out in agony as one took him inthe shoulder, one in the back, and one in the thigh. It didn’t matter that the guardians and their swords vanished immediately after. The damage was done. All her father’s magic evaporated in swirls of smoke, and he collapsed in a flood of his own blood.
Rovan couldn’t help it—she screamed. Her mother did, too, when Rovan came charging outside, her hiding forgotten. Rovan didn’t know what to do, only that she had to dosomething.
She didn’t get far. Two wards caught her arms in invisible sigils, ignoring her thrashing and kicking, and hauled her forward as if she were a puppet on strings. The sight of her father made her sob. He was trying to gather his own blood before him to launch another attack, though he looked ready to faint, his face paler than pale. He stopped when he saw his daughter. The blood hovering before him spattered to the paving stones like rain, and he slumped over.
A ward marched up to Rovan, his cloak singed. The woman who’d been in command was now staring sightlessly at the sky.
“Who are you?” he barked.
Rovan was weeping too hard to answer. She was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to tell the truth, anyway.
“That’s my daughter!” her mother cried. “She’s only seven. Please spare her, I’ll do anything!”
“Silence, woman,” the ward snapped. He turned on Rovan’s father. “Silvean, is she yours?”
Her father shook his head drunkenly. Blood dribbled from his mouth.
“Why all this, then?” The ward threw his arm out to encompass the destruction, the death. His eyes were wide, nearly wild. “Why attack bloodmages like yourself?”
Her father spat red at the ward, though it didn’t reach him. “I’m nothing like you, you death-tainted fools. I’m free.”
The man shook his head. “You’re mad. You freaks always have been.”
“It’s far madder to make compacts with the dead,” her father said. His voice had gone weak, and his eyes slid to the side as he slumped lower.
“His kind isn’t warded!” someone shouted in the crowd. “They’re trying to take over our polis, just like the blight wants to! They have no one to stop them!”
“Get rid of all Skylleans, I say!” cried another.
“Fool, don’t you know the crown prince is supposedly married to a Skyllean witch?” someone hissed.
“Mad,” was all the ward said, still staring at Rovan’s father, and then he turned back to Rovan. “Bring her here.” He tore off his gloves, fumbled at his belt pouch, and withdrew a gleaming silver pin as long as her hand. It had an ornate silver skull at the top.
Rovan knew what was coming. Her mother always had a needle stuck into her sleeve for this exact purpose. Her mother would prick her own finger, draw blood that had no magic in it, and then Rovan would be able to do her trick. Fool them all, swapping her mother’s blood for her own. She’d done it before, but never with this much of an audience.
Rovan glanced around, but neighbors who’d patted her head or given her treats with indulgent smiles now looked on with hard eyes as the ward seized her wrist. There was hatred in their expressions, she realized. For her blue-haired father, and what he was—which wasnotone of them. And maybe hatred for her, if she proved to be like him.
Why they didn’t hate the guardians in their midst was beyond her. She had seen their true faces now, with their dead eyes and their wicked swords, and knew beyond a doubt that her father was right. They were evil.Wrong.
Rovan was relieved when the ward pricked her finger carefully with the frightful needle. Blood blossomed around the tip—just not Rovan’s. It was a simple matter to keep her own hidden deepunder her skin, and move her mother’s to that spot instead. The ward swiped away the drop with his own finger, held it up, and examined it with a frown.
“I told you,” her father slurred, blood bubbling from his mouth. “Just an ignorant slut and her brat.”
The ward spun away from Rovan, losing interest in her as quickly as that. “To do all this for nothing…”
Slut. Brat. Nothing.The words hit Rovan like stones, winding her, leaving pain in their wake.
“I wouldn’t saynothing,” her father said. “I took some of you down with me.” He slumped entirely to the ground, his head thumping the cobbles, without another look at his daughter or her mother.
A scream was building in Rovan, one that felt too big for her small body. Her mother only looked on in glazed shock.
One of the wards stepped carefully up to her father, knelt, and put fingers to his neck. “He’s dead.”
