Page 41 of In the Ravenous Dark
I’ve wanted my father to act, but never something likethis.
The dead man seems to agree. “I thought you knew better,” he tells his ward, sounding disappointed.
My father can barely respond. “Couldn’t… help it. And if there was even a chance…” His golden eyes speak of pain and murder as they wander over the shade’s shoulder to find the king—but then they roll back in his head, and his knees buckle. The dead man lets him fall to the ground in a tinkle of glass.
I can only stare in horror at my father’s unmoving form, lying on a bed of rose petals and gleaming shards. Kineas belatedly draws his sword, the steel ringing awkwardly loud.
King Tyros turns slowly to face the Skylleans, grouped in a protective huddle on the dais. “We hope that Skyllea had nothing to do with this assassination attempt, or else we may need to revisit our negotiations for peace.”
A woman with purple hair and what looks like a pair of white doves nesting on her head straightens and steps forward. “You haveour word that we played no part in this. We wished to visit with Silvean Ballacra as we’ve had no contact with him for two decades, but we’d yet to arrange it. We’ll take this opportunity to formally disavow him. His fate is yours to decide.”
“Good,” the king says, and then nods at my father. “Get this man out of my sight.” Armed guards rush forward. “The next time I see any trace of him, I want it to be onherskin.” He stabs his chin at me.
“My apologies once again, Rovan,” the dead man says. His anger would be preferable to this… sympathy?
Before I can tell him not to call me that—neverto call me that—or to throw whatever I can at him or to flee from him, he reaches out and brushes my cheek with a fingertip. Shockingly, I feel his skin against mine, like his pinch, but lingering, cool, and light.
And then I can’t remember anything else from that evening. But Icanremember after.
13
I dream I’m burning alive, and it’s a dream I can’t seem to wake from.
When I finally do, cracking tear-crusted eyelids, my throat is hoarse like I’ve been screaming. I remember fire pouring over me, coating my skin like burning oil. Or was it somehow blood? Wherever it is I’m lying now—my surroundings are too dark to see—I feel tight and tender, as if sunburned. Maybe Ihaveactually burned, and someone has healed me…
Then I remember the ball. The windowed walls writhing. Glass falling like rain. My father collapsing to the ground. The king’s sneer. The dead man touching my cheek.
I fling myself out of bed and crash violently into something—a chair—and find my way to a crack of light. It’s peeping through window curtains, and I throw them wide. Light spills over me.
My arms are traced in unfamiliar red sigils, from my palms to my shoulders. So are my feet and legs. I tear off my shift. They line my belly and breasts and even my ass, when I twist to look, so likely my back as well. There’s a mirror—I’m in my room in the palace, I now realize. I stumble over to my rose desk and the mirror entwined in thorns above it… and freeze. My entire body is covered, the sigils climbing like a high red collar all the way to my jawline. Not even myfaceis entirely free. One red sigil streaks my cheek below my left eye—a half circle like a bowl, with three lines of varying lengths dropping from it like red tears.
I don’t know what else to do. I scream.
“It’s all right.”
Spinning around, I find the dead man standing near the window. He’s less solid than usual, washed out by a beam of sunlight.
“It’s not all right!” I screech at him. “Look at me!”
“I… see you,” he says, nearly sounding awkward, and I secrete his discomfort away like a dagger up my sleeve. “You have a bloodline now, a very long one. It’s normal to feel disoriented by the changes.”
“To hell with disorientation. To hell with these changes. And to hell withyou. I didn’t want this!” I pause, chest heaving. “Where is my father?”
I know before he speaks, from the too-still expression on his face.
“I’m sorry, Rovan, he’s—”
I scream again, and the sound splits open a pathway in my mind. This path jumps sigil to sigil, like stepping stones across a raging river. As I follow them, sketching them out with my fingers, the chair behind me breaks apart, splintering into daggerlike shards that rise up and fly like arrows at the dead man.
All they do is pass right through him, bouncing and clattering off the marble wall behind him.
He holds up a hand. “I don’t want to put you to sleep again, so please don’t make me. You’re very powerful now. You have access to magic you couldn’t dream of before. Calm down—”
“To hell withcalming down!” I sense it, along the stepping-stone path in my mind: the fire all around me, burning in candles, lanterns, chandeliers. And I can seize every bit of it, hurl it at him, at the wall behind him, at theentirepalace, watch it all burn… I raise my hand to trace the path with my fingers, to bring it all into being.
I feel a gentle ghost of a touch at the nape of my neck. The dead man’s sigh—behindme now—is the last thing I hear.
When I next awake, everything is fuzzy. A candle flickers in the gloom nearby. I’m in my bed with its treelike posts and leafy living canopy. Blankets are cool against my skin and lightly scented with a soothing mix of herbs. I’m wearing a new night shift, and the chair has been replaced. The dead man is sitting in it.
