Page 45 of In the Ravenous Dark
“I can’t say.”
Of coursethat’s his reply. “Because you know I won’t like it when you tell me?” I guess.
His silence is answer enough. I collapse back in the chair.
The shade suddenly appears right next to me, crouching on my side of the desk, his eyes level with mine. His dark gaze swallows me.
“I’ll continue to help you however I can,” he says, his voice low. “Especially withhim.” He glances off to the side, eyes narrowing, as if he can see Kineas through the many walls of the palace.
It nearly makes me smile, despite myself. “But you won’t let me kill him?”
He sighs. “No, I won’t.”
Fine. “Then I hope you like standing over top of Kineas, because you’ll be doing a lot more of it if you don’t want me to try killing him. It’s not theabsoluteworst arrangement in the world,” I add, leaning my head back. “At least you have nice eyes.”
Ivrilos’s smile—brief, barely there, but wholly genuine—is rather nice, too.
Then he frowns. “Unfortunately, now that you’re up and about, you’re expected at your lesson. That was what I came here to tell you.”
I sit up in a rush. “Dear goddess, more lessons inwhat?”
“Sigils.”
I nearly burst out laughing—I actually need to know more about sigils at this exact moment.
“Do please make a more subtle entrance than this.” He casts a wry glance at the door I blasted open.
It surprises me to realize he can be funny… for a dead man. That doesn’t mean I want him out of my life any less.
“And please don’t try to kill your tutor,” he adds. “I’m asking nicely.”
“Who’s my tutor?”
But the shade has vanished, leaving me to discover that on my own.
Bastard.
15
“You must always strive to improve, push your boundaries, and hopefully reach beyond the knowledge of your bloodline so that you may add to it when you pass it on. Being able to read and write sigils is thebareminimum.” With this, Captain Marklos looks at me.
I stand in a sunny courtyard lined in marble colonnades and troughs of water, a lush garden at the far end and a patio with a massive table coated in sand for practicing sigil-writing, and all at once I determine that magic lessons are the worst of the lot. It’s not the subject so much as the instructor. Still, I need these lessons.
But it’s no wonder Ivrilos warned me against killing my tutor. I don’t hate the captain merely because he didn’t like my father, or even because he treats me with a bloviating condescension that makes me want to stab him in the eye. It’s because he was the one to expose me as a bloodmage. He hit me, cut me, set my blood alight like pitch in the Hall of the Wards, and he felt self-righteous about it.
He’s self-righteous about everything, turns out.
Marklos is the rare bloodline within the palace who isn’t female, due to the fact that he’s a commoner. And yet, because of the captain’s skill—according to him—he teaches all the new royal bloodmages, which now include me as Kineas’s betrothed, along with Japha, Lydea, and two younger girls, cousins who have yet to inherit their bloodlines but who need a solid base in sigil work before then. A base that I’m sorely lacking, Marklos is happyto point out. Already this first lesson, he’s gleefully reminded me several times of what I already know: Despite my incredibly long bloodline, I don’t understand how to use the half of it—mostof it, more like—and what I’ve managed to tap into has been through instinct alone.
I smile at him. “I’d say the bare minimum is being able to tell your ass from your face and to teach a class without constantly passing wind. Because that’s all I hear from you.”
Lydea chokes on laughter, half-heartedly concealing it with a slender hand. Japha raises an eyebrow, but keeps their expression otherwise neutral. I haven’t really seen them since the night of the ball. They never came to visit me, unlike Lydea, and their last words to me,I didn’t know, still echo in my ears. Maybe they think I blame them. I’m not entirely sure Idon’t, even though I know that’s foolish.
I’m the most to blame.
The two young cousins, girls with sandy blond hair, stare at me aghast after my insult.
To be fair, Markloshastaught me a few things. I’ve learned the sigils most commonly used for opening magically sealed doors, and gleaned that a few of the sigils in the strange string my father left me have something to do with channeling life energy and shielding. Others the captain didn’t recognize, and warned me that writing out mysterious sigils whose meaning I don’t yet know could result in my early death and the loss of a nigh-legendary bloodline.
