Page 52 of In the Ravenous Dark
“I can fix that, cover your tracks, but we need togo,” Ivrilos insists, planting himself between me and the way forward.
He really doesn’t want me seeing whatever is in here—which probably means I’m on the right track.
Apprehension stirs uncomfortably in my belly, but I step right through him and raise my flame higher, willing the sigil to burn brighter. Pale marble faces float up from the gloom like drowned bodies surfacing in dark water.
Most wear the faces of men.
“Look here!” I barely manage to keep my voice down as I hurry to the base of a statue. “It says ‘Damios’—the name of Japha’s guardian.”
“I thought you couldn’t read.” Ivrilos sounds stunned, close behind me.
I would be more offended if I weren’t so proud of myself. I turn to give him a grin. “I can read alittle, thank you very much, and I’m good at capturing the shape of things. While I can’t string complicated sentences together, I’ve been practicing certain letters and their matching sounds in my head ever since my first horrid lesson here.Names, in particular.”
“This one is probably a coincidence,” Ivrilos says, his voice weaker than usual. “Damios is a common name.”
“Is it him or isn’t it? You’ve seen him. And, remember, it’svulgarto lie.”
Jaw clenching, my guardian doesn’t say anything. I carry on, rushing down the line of statues, diving deeper into the shadows of the royal gallery.
“Klytios! Captain Windbag’s guardian.” A dozen marble plinths later, I gasp. “Aias.” I hurry on, nearing the end of the line, the dates on the statues going farther and farther back in time, nearing what had to be the era of the first king. “Graecus. They’re all here.”
And then I freeze.
“Rovan.” My guardian’s voice is strangled.
“Ivrilos,” I say. Except this time I’m not addressing him. I’m reading a name.ThisIvrilos stands before me cut from marble, not shadow. He’s just as beautiful, if sadder in his expression thanthe Ivrilos I know. He holds a sword in one hand, a circlet in the other, and gazes at something far away. The sight makes my chest constrict. Even though I’ve been braced to find him here—but still hoping, somehow, I wouldn’t—I’m not prepared forthis. “These dates…” I face my guardian, the true Ivrilos.
His face is as pale and still as marble in the darkness, but the rest of him is cloaked in black. “I know.”
“It says you lived four hundred years ago.”
“I did,” he says.
“That would mean you… and the first king…” I press the heels of my palms into my eyes. “Please read what it says. I can’t—I can’t manage that many words.”
“I don’t need to read it,” Ivrilos says, his voice gentle. “It says that I was King Athanatos’s bastard son, recognized by order of my older brother, who succeeded him, only after my father and I… passed.”
I keep my eyes covered so I don’t have to look at his face—either of his faces. They seem to mirror the dual visions of him in my mind: the guardian I detest and the Ivrilos I’m beginning to…like? Can that be?
“So it’s true,” I say. “You guardians… you’reallroyals, aren’t you, of Athanatos’s line? You’ve been trying to hide it so the polis won’t rise against your living family.” I drop my hands. “It’s brilliant, really. We’re your royal weapons in life and your royal meals in death.” When he opens his mouth, I snap, “Anddon’tlie to me about that. I know it’s not just about controlling us. Youtakesomething from us, too, to sustain you.”
He doesn’t argue.
How many living wards, I wonder with a sick sort of awe, are being used like this? Our numbers are ever increasing because of the first king’s law, requiring those with magic to establish bloodlines and take guardians. Which was intended not only to grow and catalog thecity’s magical army, but to accommodate the growing number of royaldeadsustained by them. How many of Athanatos’s line have died in the meantime, in the four hundred years since he ruled?
It also begs the question: Who, even among royals, makes it to immortality? I gaze out at the spread of statues all around, standing in the darkness like a small army.
An army of men.
“That’s why there aren’t many women in your underworld palace,” I say. “Somehow, they don’t last long after what you do to them. What you do tous.” I laugh. “You sacrifice the women in your family to bear the most powerful bloodlines—and you don’t even give them statues in the royal gallery for their trouble! You just use them and throw them away. Not to mention every commoner, man or woman, whom you foist guardians upon, as if they’re pack mules carrying you to immortality. Who cares aboutthem?” I finally meet his dark eyes. “Andyou. You’re one of the worst of them all.”
“Rovan—”
“Don’t call me that!” I shout. Ivrilos gestures for me to lower my voice, but it echoes throughout the gallery. I can’t help it—the truth is too much to contain quietly. “You said you haven’t been dead as long as some. You mean as long as only one or two of yourancientfamily members? Your father,Athanatos?” I wave about. “This is all of his making, and you’ve supported himfrom the beginning. Forfour hundred years.” Heat boils within me. “And now you’ve killed my father, just like you’re going to kill me.”
I should want to burn something—everything—but all I really want is to be rid, once and for all, of my so-called guardian. Those strange, charged moments between us are like the odd falling stars I’ve managed to spot through the veil: entrancing but fleeting, flashes of brightness here and then gone within a much vaster, lurking darkness. I can’t let myself get blinded by them. Ivrilos is evil. Wrong. I need to remember that.
In my mind, I feel the shape of the special sigils my father left me in his office, unfamiliar but glowing—a new path to trace, calling to me like never before. Maybe now is the time, now that I know Ivrilos will never,everbe on my side.
