Page 54 of In the Ravenous Dark
Ivrilos steps up to one, and then the other, inclining his head as if in greeting. I can’t quite see what it is he does—it almost looks like he kisses their cheeks. Before I can even think to cry out to warn them, they’re both disintegrating like so much ash. But instead of floating up and away like everything else, their remains are drawn into my guardian, like smoke he’s inhaling.And then it’s only him standing there, looking darker than ever, with me somehow peering down on him from above.
I still can’t feel much of anything, even though I distantly know I should be screaming.
Ivrilos tips his face back. For a moment, he looks sated, almost blissful, a slight smile playing at the corners of his perfect lips as he gazes at the charcoal sky. Everything around us keeps twisting up and away like swarms of insects as far as the eye can see. And after a moment, I begin to rise with it all…
My guardian’s dark eyes snap to mine, wherever I am. “Not you,” he commands.
And then I’m back in my body, my spine arching against the marble floor of the royal gallery as a great gasp tears through me. Ivrilos crouches above, his beautiful face no longer filled with that strange peace but stricken.
“You’re dying,” he says. “I used too much of you.”
I can’t quite talk. My face is numb. I’m cold all over, so cold. The edges of the room are already fading again.
“You can’t die,” he insists.
I smile somewhat drunkenly up at him. My tongue is heavy, clumsy. “Just try to stop me.”
Ivrilos lets loose a string of curses. “Ihadto use you, Rovan, but…” He turns away, as if searching for help, but then looks back down at me, wild-eyed. “I can’t—”
“I know,” I breathe, the words rasping in my throat. “You can’t carry me. Or catch me.” My eyelids begin to flutter shut. It feels so peaceful, like drifting off to sleep. My voice hitches. “I’m falling.”
My eyes close. Maybe I’ll wake up again in that strange place, I think dreamily. Maybe…
Darkness swallows me.
18
Deep within the darkness that blankets me, muffling all else, I feel the oddest thing: pressure on my mouth.Lipspressing against mine. At first they seem to draw more than a kiss from me, as if trying to pull me out of my body faster than I’m leaving it. But then, suddenly, they give something back.
Sensation floods me. It’s wine refilling my broken barrel. And yet it’s sharp, colorless, and cold, so different from what spilled out of me. This is more like ice water than wine. I’m already freezing, butthisseeps into spaces within me that I didn’t even know I had.
It’s also like a crisp breath of air in my lungs after nearly drowning. Somewhere, I feel my first inhalation—through my nose, because my mouth is, well,occupied.
During all of this, an image floats out of the darkness, consuming my vision: a stark white temple, in front of which looms a man wearing a black hood and wielding an ax. The man shoves something like my head—but notmyhead—down onto a block of stone, already red and warm with gore. A voice—not my voice, but seeming to come from me—masculine and terrified andfamiliar, cries out and pleads to be let go.
It’s Ivrilos’s voice. This time, I’m more than just looking over his shoulder. I’m looking out ofhim. Is this a memory?
The ax comes down, and we next open our eyes on that strange, dark, dissolving world I just saw. But now there’s another man, far more frightening than the executioner, with hair like Ivrilos’s anda flat stare that burns with a sickly blue fire. He stands before a structure that looks like the sprawling fortress, except it’s nowhere near so big as what I saw before. While it’s still completely black, it’s unfinished, ending in jagged points that pierce the half light, but only at the height of a few men standing atop one another. Those points seem to drip upward, running like melted candle wax, the drops falling up into the sky like reverse rain. There’s no door, so I peer inside to the throne, also black, and angular and liquid at once. It, at least, is finished.
Ivrilos and I are on the steps leading up to the structure. The man stands at the top with two other women. Both are crying, even harder now that they see Ivrilos.
“There you are. Welcome,” the terrifying man says, addressing my guardian. “Glad to see you come when I call.” He wears a crown of gold laurels, just as kings in the living world do.
“Father.” Ivrilos’s voice again, seeming to come from the both of us. Begging.
So the man is Athanatos. And I know for sure, now, who rules the underworld. I’m not entirely surprised. It makes a sick kind of sense that the first king isstillking, down below.
The two women with Athanatos, one older, one younger, are mother and daughter, I somehow understand.
“I could use you,” the first king continues. “These two, however… they’ll make a prime example of what will happen to you if you disobey me.”
He seizes the women, both wild-eyed with terror, and presses their faces against the wall of the tower.
They scream. Ivrilos shouts, lunging forward up the steps.
Nothing keeps their skin from darkening, collapsing, until their whole bodies vanish into the structure as if submerged in liquid. It’s as if they’vemeltedinto it, becoming part of it. Only smooth wallremains where they once were. But the jagged top of the tower rises, stabbing farther into the cold, heartless sky, sharp points dripping up and away like daggers drenched in blood.
Itry to shout now. Instead, I open my eyes. My own, this time. The dark world—the memory of it—is gone.
