Page 77 of In the Ravenous Dark
Lydea is nowhere to be seen. A small, distant part of me is glad that she’s not around to see this. Japha is still here, though. They’re shouting from behind me, heedless of who might hear. But we’re alone in the underground passage back to the palace. They manage to snag my arm and drag me around to face them in the middle of a pool of torchlight, next to a skull-filled alcove.
So much death around me, and now it’sinsideme.
“Rovan!” Japha cries. Their expression is more horrified than I’ve ever seen, the shadows on their face darker and sharper than my usual eyes would be able to detect. Now I have another kind of sight. Deeper. Keener. “What the hell is happening to you? Look at you! Goddess, you’re…”
I pull away, forcing their grip down to my bare wrist. “I don’t care. I have to go.”
Japha recoils at what must be the coldness of my skin, and wipes their hand briskly on their death shroud, as if whatever is plaguing me might rub off. “Gowhere? You’re falling apart! We need to get help!”
“You can’t help me. Only I can do this.”
“Dowhat?”
Alldan wants the crown prince and the king dead. Ivrilos wants to breach the king’s inner sanctum. I wanted to help them both without sacrificing anything of myself. I even considered offering up the woman I love in my place.
Not anymore, I think. And then,Love?
I do love Lydea, don’t I? I think I might love Ivrilos, too, but luckily I don’t have to worry about that right now.
Or maybe ever.
“Just keep yourself safe and get out of the city,” I say to Japha—forgetful, for once, that someone else might be listening.
“Abomination,” a voice says over Japha’s shoulder. “Did Ivrilos do this to you? If so, he will answer for his crimes.”
I meet Damios’s eyes as he appears in the underground passage. Now I can see Japha’s guardian as clearly as I can see my own.
“No,” I say. “I did it.”
Japha blinks at me, looking back and forth between me and their guardian, realizing we’re speaking to each other.
“Well, then,” Damios says, drawing his sword. “Prepare to die.”
Japha spins on him. “What the fu—”
Damios places his other hand on Japha’s shoulder, and his ward drops like a bag of rocks. Their head cracks on the stone floor. The sound is loud and sharp, echoing deep inside me.
Damios did that. He’s stealing Japha’s life energy to stop me. And for that, I’m going to kill him.Again.
Because I love Japha, too. And I can’t stand to watch them hurt. Not that I haven’t hurt those I love, myself. Sometimes I feel like I love too much and not enough.
Fire appears in my hands with barely a sigil-lined thought, two blades of flame in the shape of bright half moons, and they burn an unhealthy blue. The fire of life tainted by death, perhaps.
Damios lunges to meet me, moving like liquid shadow. But I move like that, too, despite my numb, sickened flesh. Blue flames spark off shadowy steel. And as we clash, I remember I found Damios’s statue among the somewhat recently deceased in Athanatos’s line. Which means the strength and experience I gained from Ivrilos is far greater.
Never mind my bloodline—my father’s life experience.Hislong family line.
I hope both threads of life and death, of blood and breath, are enough to hold me together for as long as I need. As I swing my blades, whirling around Damios and carefully stepping over Japha at the same time, I notice some of my fingernails have fallen off. The distraction nearly costs me my head, but I duck just in time. A clump of my hair, its blue tint gone dull, almost gray, drifts to the floor. It’s more than his blade should have dislodged.
Japha was right. I’m literally falling apart. Ivrilos’s essence is sucking the life out of me, like a blight inside me. I took too much of him. But there’s nothing for it now. And it’s Ivrilos’s instinct that tells me exactly how to end this.
Damios seems to understand I have the upper hand in swordplay—he’s staying away from me, backing down the hall. He must see I don’t have long, and he’s trying to tire me out. But blades aren’t my only weapon. With a few sigils, I create a raging fire on the floor underneath the dead man’s feet, just as I once saw my father do to a different shade. But Damios jumps clear of it.
I hurl one of my half-moon blades, end over end, right at him. He freezes, staring down in shock at where it lodges in his chest. His own sword falls to the ground. Where there should be a clatter of metal against stone, the weapon simply vanishes, because it’s only made of pneuma, like him.
I’m about to bring the fire underneath him again, burn him away like so much smoke. But then an arm comes around Damios’s neck from behind. Ivrilos’s head appears alongside his.
“Goodbye,” Ivrilos says. “For good.”
