Page 57 of In the Ravenous Dark
“But if they’re already dead, and they don’t have a way to replenish themselves, then that means… you kill them? Again?”
Ivrilos meets my eyes. “I told you, there is a second, more permanent death.”
“You’re avoiding my question.”
“Yes, Rovan,” he enunciates, holding my gaze. “I killed the shades of those guards in the underworld. I consumed them, giving them their second death far quicker than they would have found it by fading. I couldn’t allow them to linger and tell any tales. Their pneuma also gave me the strength todeath-magic everything, as you call it, and to keep you from dying.”
“Why?”
He looks away again. “I need you.”
“Why?” I repeat, throwing the blanket off and jabbing a finger at him. “Answer me. You said it yourself: You hate this place. I seewhy now. Isaw, when you… fed me.” I suppose that’s less awkward to say thankissed me, but not by much, based on how neither of us can meet each other’s eyes all of a sudden. Instead, I recall the terrifying man I sawthroughIvrilos’s eyes, and what he did to those two women. “I mean, I think I sawhim, Athanatos, in a memory of yours. Your father arranged your death, didn’t he? To bring you to him in the underworld? He did that, and…” But I don’t want to bring up the rest, not with how shocked Ivrilos looks, his dark eyebrows climbing. “And yet you’re still following his rules.”
“You saw that?” He sounds horrified.
I’m not going to let him get sidetracked, not even by visions of his own death. “What do you want, Ivrilos?”
He swallows, staring off into the flames for a long moment. I cultivate patience I didn’t know I had, waiting for him to speak.
His voice begins low, monotone. “I have a brother. Kadreus. Not by my mother, but by my father. As I mentioned, I was a bastard. My mother had only a daughter after me, and neither of them had long second lives, thanks to my father. And yet my brother, his son and heir, never ended up in the underworld. My father could have drained Kadreus after death, but… I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
Ivrilos shrugs, another incongruous sight. It’s like he’s thawing, turning more human, less shade, the longer he sits in front of this fire. “My father loved him far more than me, and evenI’mstill around. So I guess you could say I’m looking for my brother. This is the only place he could be—perhaps trapped between life and death somehow. I need to find him, but there are places here I cannot go on my own. Only one, really.” He takes a deep breath. “The king’s quarters, which every king from Athanatos to Tyros has occupied, is surrounded by magic I cannot penetrate. To get inside, I need to get close to the king, closer than I have ever been able to get before.”
I blink. “To Tyros?”
“Any king over the years would have sufficed, but yes, it’s Tyros now.”
I scoff. “You’ve been waiting four hundred years just to get near the king? You’re in the palace now! You can’t just, I don’t know, walk up to him?”
Ivrilos makes a complicated gesture. “You don’t understand. The magic shielding the king is incredibly powerful—it’s both bloodanddeath magic, woven together.”
I gape. “I thought blood and death magic couldn’t mix. Not without killing the wielder.”
“Perhaps a bloodmage and a shadow priest worked in tandem? How it was done, I don’t know, but it makes the barrier around the royal gallery look like a straw fence. It surrounds whoever is the current king, whenever he is where you or I can see him, and it is especially strong around his private quarters where no one is allowed, encircling it. I think my brother is there, perhaps having been bound to each successive king during the ritual they undergo when assuming the crown, somewhat like I am bound to you. The problem is, I need to beletin to discover the truth. If I tried to break in by force, I would either fail or the king would be alerted I was coming and have me stopped.”
“So all you want to do is get in there and look for your brother? What happens then?”
Ivrilos falls silent.
“You have to give me something.” I don’t resort to threats. Instead, I say, “Please.”
He tips his head back to look at the ceiling. His profile is downright statuesque. I try to think of something else while I wait.
The Goddess of Patience, I am.
The words draw out of him slowly, unbelievably, like one of those absurd cloths that street performers pretend to unspool fromtheir mouths. “If my brother is here, I want to do everything in my power to take his essence for my own and end him, quickly, before either he or my father can stop me. And then I’ll be strong enough to go to the underworld and destroy my father and everything he has built.”
My mouth falls open. A laugh burbles out of me before I can choke it down. “And I thought you missed your brother. Maybe even wanted to rescue him.”
Ivrilos’s lips twist into a grimace of pure contempt. I’ve never seen anything like it on his perfect face. “My royal family, my brother and my father especially, are evil, Rovan. You have no idea to what extent.”
“I have… some,” I croak. “What I feel for Kineas and Tyros aside, I saw what Athanatos did. And he didn’t just killyou.” I take a deep breath. “There was a woman and a girl.”
“You saw everything?” Ivrilos’s expression is deadly when he faces me, but I know the sentiment is directed elsewhere. “Then you know the full horror: My family not only devours the essence of bloodlines from the living world, they hunt down the shades who end up in the underworld.Allof them. And not just to glut themselves. Since there’s only pneuma down there, it’s the only material available to consumeorto build with.”
I remember the two women, their faces pressed to the wall. I still don’t quite understand what happened, though I’m beginning to get a sense. “Build?” I whisper, feeling sick.
