Page 50 of In the Ravenous Dark
I hated the sight of my own breasts covered in sigils, but Lydea’s are beautiful. Perfect, not marred. I can’t help kissing them, and she groans.
I should be nervous. I am, a little. I’ve done this a few times, but never with a princess. But it’s her gasp that lets me know: She doesn’t care that she’s a princess and I’m not. She only cares that the two of us are here, right now. And we want each other.
Wedotrust each other, despite all odds. At least enough for whispered secrets, clandestine kisses… and the freedom to share such things with other people.
“Rovan,” she murmurs, an ache in her voice that undoes me. Her armor hasn’t cracked, but she’s peeling some of it away voluntarily. I want to melt into those gaps. Soon, I’m clawing her peplos higher up her thighs. Finding the waiting, wonderful warmth between them. She gasps.
I lose myself in the moment for a long time.
It’s sometime later, in the middle of blissful oblivion, that Lydea surfaces to whisper in my ear in the lowest possible voice: “Both Japha and I are in. Don’t worry about cost. We can get a ship, or find some other way, but you have to take us with you. And first we have to get free ofthem.We hoped you might have some ideas.”
I have no doubt whom she means—and I dearly hope my guardian isn’t paying attention.
17
After leaving Lydea’s quarters later that night—much later, the palace long asleep—I take a different path than usual back to my rooms, weaving drunkenly down torch-lit, empty marble corridors. At least, I want my guardian to think I’m drunk. I quietly sing a bawdy ditty to help with that, and perhaps to scare him away. Two birds with one off-key stone.
And then I slip into seemingly contented silence and find what I’m looking for: halfway down a long hallway of swirling blue and purple mosaics of grapes, illuminated only with scattered pools of flickering light, a pair of bleary-looking guards stand before an impressive, heavy set of double doors—exactly where Japha said they’d be during our conversation on Lydea’s couch. Beyond the guarded doorway, the hallway turns a corner that’s covered in enough vines and flowers to be the entrance to a forest glen. Wherever it goes, maybe to some private garden reserved only for the king, I don’t need to know.
I duck out of sight behind a column, pretending to stifle giggles. “They can’t see me,” I whisper, seemingly to the air around me. “They’ll know I’m drunk!”
“I think that’s already obvious,” my guardian says, appearing next to me, having finally lost patience with whatever silliness he imagines I’m up to. “Your rooms arethisway.” He points in the opposite direction.
“Ivrilos.” His name is like magic—saying it gets his full attention. I keep a grin on my face, and he looks charmed in return. Ihope it’ll last. “I’m going to have a little fun, and nobody is going to get hurt. Trust me.Please.”
His marble-smooth forehead immediately creases. “What—?”
I follow the path of sigils in my mind, my fingers moving, and the vines at the end of the hall come alive like writhing tentacles. The guards at the double doors exclaim in surprise, but their cries are quickly gagged. I can’t see them, but I don’t need to. Armor and swords barely clatter, muffled, as both guards are yanked off their feet and dragged as quietly as possible down the hallway, out of sight around the corner, by suddenly monstrous plant life.
I probably could have knocked them out by restricting the blood to their brain or something, but I don’t trust myself enough to not accidentally kill them. They just need to beoccupied.
“Rovan,” Ivrilos says, alarmed. “What are you doing? Stop this, now!”
He’s clearlynotgoing to trust me long enough for me to get where I need to go. I’m amazed he’s let me make it this far, frankly. I grope frantically for something to use against him. It’s still too early to try the special set of sigils my father left me in his office.
But then I have it—Ivrilos’s awkwardness, his prudish sense of propriety.
I let my eyes grow heavy lidded, my lips parting, and I make my voice as sultry as possible. “This… feeling… was too powerful to resist. I just had to be alone with you.”
The words come up like cheap, too-sweet wine, but they seem to have the desired effect. Ivrilos’s eyes widen in alarm.
“Why would you need to be…?”
He trails off as my hands drift up past my collarbones. My strophion is already loose around my waist from when Lydea unwound it, so all I have to do is unfasten the gold pins at my shoulders and the whole top of my gown will fall away, just as it did for the princess. My fingers brush the clasps.
Ivrilos not only averts his eyes; he spins violently away as if the sight of me might catch him on fire.
Before he has any clue what I’m doing, I’m off, sprinting down the hall toward the double doors. I keep expecting to feel the cool touch of his hand, to grow dizzy, to fall before I make it. But I only hear Ivrilos’s breathless and rather foul curse behind me, followed by his frantic muttering, and then my feet reach the low marble steps in front of the now-unguarded doors. I throw every sigil for opening at them that I know, and they fly open.
In seconds, I’m inside and the doors are closed behind me, seemingly undisturbed. I release the vines down the hall, and with them, the guards. With any luck, they’ll have no idea I’ve dashed in here and will spend their time trying to find their trickster outside. Everything is suddenly quiet, aside from my rapid breathing.
I’vedoneit. I’m in the royal gallery.
Which is almost pitch black. I lift my hand, and a small flame appears above my open palm—plentyof light to illuminate Ivrilos’s absolutely livid face, looming right in front of me.
I nearly jump out of my skin. At least I manage to swallow a shriek.
“You insufferable, foolish creature,” he hisses, leaning closer with every word.
