Page 58 of In the Ravenous Dark
“They usepeople, Rovan, to pave the very streets. Pneuma is used like mortar to construct towers, to paint walls.And like everything in the underworld, these structures need constant replenishing, repaving, repainting—an endless parade of shades sacrificed at the feet of my family. I’ve seen these atrocities happenso manytimes after the first, when my father killed my mother and sister right in front of me.” He smiles faintly, sadly. “Though none have been sobad as that. Their memory hasn’t faded, over time. Just as I haven’t. It lives on in me, growing stronger and darker. Like me.” He adds, like an afterthought, “I witnessed their first deaths, too, in the living world. They were beheaded right before I was. I had to watch.”
I can only stare.That’swhat Ivrilos has been waiting four hundred years to do: take revenge. To bring down his father and his underworld kingdom. To help the living who’ve had their essence stolen from them for hundreds of years. Who’ve then had theirsecondlives stolen.Thatseems worth waiting for, to me.
Perhaps even worth the sacrifices he’s made along the way.
“Okay,” I say, throat dry. “So if I’m hearing right, you basically want to burn down the palace as much as I do.” I take a deep breath, and then slap the tops of my thighs. “I’m in. What do we do?”
Ivrilos rolls off his knees and sits back on the floor, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You do nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
He drops his hand to glare at me. “You should forget all that has happened tonight, all that I’ve told you, and everything should go back to normal.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Back to youleechingoff me and swamping my boat while you carry out your own plans without me? Let’snot.”
“There’s no other way.”
“Yes, there is. You just tried it, tonight, when youkissedme.” Finally, I can say it. My rage gives me the gall. “I thought a kiss on the back of the hand was supposed to ‘suffice,’ by the way.”
Ivrilos’s gaze skips away again. He’sembarrassed. “I didn’t think. I just did it. And I can never do it again.”
Somewhere in the complicated tangle of my emotions, I feel a strange twinge—one thread, pulled too tight.
“You don’t understand,” my guardian continues. “Not only is giving you my essence beyond taboo, it’s… not good for you.”
“I’ve always heard that blood and death magic can’t mix. That they would kill you. But I’m alive.”
“I’ve given you a breath in your lungs that you can yet expel.” He shakes his head. “No more.”
“What would happen if youdidgive me more? Would I die?”
“Possibly. Most definitely, given enough. But that’s not the only problem, or else the rules wouldn’t be so strict. After all, we kill the living all the time.” His smile is grim, but then it falls away. “I think some form of madness might take you before death would. And with how powerful you are, the consequences could be… horrific.” I must look unconvinced, because he adds, “Just imagine, Rovan: If your father thought death magic was already too close to you, too close to the city with the guardians and shadow priests that walk its streets, then what would he think about death magic beinginsideyou, right next to your bloodline?”
I felt it filling me, and I can still sense the coldness. It inhabits the shadowy space between the glowing lines of my blood magic—a space I can now feel the shape of.
A breath, filling my lungs. A shadow’s kiss.
“But I feel fine!” I say, throwing out my arms, the blanket dropping farther away. Ivrilos’s gaze seems to flicker over the skin bared by my loose gown, or maybe I’m imagining it. “At least I’m not mad, and this is certainly better than being dead or so exhausted and hopeless and defeated that IwishI were dead.”
“As I said: for now. This is a poison, maybe a slow poison in small doses, but fatal nonetheless.”
“So that’s it, then,” I say. “Just like that. You won’t help me be free of you, and you won’t help me be free of Kineas.”
And you’ll never kiss me again, I think. When I realizethat’ssomething I’m mad about, I curse myself for an idiot.
It’s Ivrilos’s turn to throw out his hands. “Your position is too valuable. I’ve come too far, pretended to be the perfect guardianfor too long. I’m too close to risk anything now, until the perfect moment.”
“How is my position valuable?” I demand.
“You’re betrothed to the crown prince.”
I gape at him. “So let me get this straight. You could have helped my father escape, but because he wasn’tperfectly positionedand you had to maintain your mask, you let him waste away while you grew fat on his essence, extending your existence a few more steps toward forever?”
“I told you—”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s for a good cause, Ivrilos!” I cry, wadding up the blanket and hurling it right through him. He blinks. “It’s shitty! That makes you a shitty person!”
His expression stills. “I never said I wasn’t one.”
