Page 78 of In the Ravenous Dark
He kisses him on the cheek, as if in farewell. Damios does indeed turn to smoke, a final look of horror blurring with his face. Instead of disappearing or dispersing, that darknessflowsinto Ivrilos, vanishing into his mouth like an inhalation.
Not only is my guardian on his feet, he seems a lot stronger now—as dark, beautiful, and deadly as ever. I expect him to be angry, but he only stares at me across the hall. Japha is still sprawled on the stones between us. I feel a distant relief when their body stirs and they give a feeble cough.
Japha isfree, I realize, no longer bound by their guardian. But I don’t have time to celebrate on their behalf.
“Rovan,” Ivrilos says quietly. “Stop this.Please.You don’t have to do this.”
Even though I’m resolved in my plan, I still don’t want him to see me like this. I’m not sure how I look, but it can’t be good. I lift my cowl back over my head, but even that loosens more of my hair. “Don’t try to stop me. You can’t. It’s too late anyway,” I say, picking away the strands and dropping them with a strangled laugh.
“Maybe,” he says, the very picture of calm. “But you can still give back what’s killing you. You don’t need to steal it from me, because I’ll help you. Together, we’ll do this. I’ll stand with you.” He holds a pale hand out to me.
His offer is more than tempting. Even when I had only a limited amount of his essence inside me, I still knew how to fight like him. With this much, I’m not sure what I’ve gained other than too many memories and too much death magic.
I stare at his hand, and he lifts it higher. “Come on,” he says, oh so reasonable. “I promise I’m only here to help.”
Carefully, fully aware that my barrier is still intact, I raise my own hand. He lunges for me.
I repel him, even seem to hurt him. He yanks his hand back, hissing, like I’m a fire that has burned him.
“You’re going to stand with me, huh?” I snarl, backing away from him. “You’re such a liar. You were trying to knock me out.”
“I promised I was here to help,” Ivrilos says, shaking his hand. “I don’t know how you’ve shielded against me, but I’mstilltrying to help. That wasn’t a lie.”
“Your definition of help is very different from mine.” I keep backing away. “You also said you didn’t see my father. Downthere.”
Ivrilos follows slowly, like he doesn’t want to scare me into fleeing. “I said he wasn’t in the underworld, which was true by the time you asked.”
“I forgot you like to mislead and pretend it’s not lying out of some stupid sense of honor. But try to get out ofthisone,” I spit. “What you just now did to Damios… You did that to my father, didn’t you?”
Ivrilos freezes. Closes his eyes. “It would have been worse for him, down there, if I hadn’t.”
“Maybe.” I don’t stop moving. “That still makes you my enemy.”
Ivrilos opens his eyes. The look in them is agonized. He doesn’t try to deny it, but then he says, “I might be your enemy. But you’re not mine. Rovan, I… Icareabout you. I might even—”
“Shut up!” I shout. It’s hard enough to think I might love him, but to imagine he might feel the same… I can’t, not when I’m on this path.
As if in response, Ivrilos’s memory of my father surges back into my mind, stronger than ever. But this time, he’s still alive, standing over me, my body once again laid out on something too much like a funeral slab. Marklos—thatbastard—is the one to slit his wrists. My father’s blood pours out, but it doesn’t fall. My father uses it to sketch sigils—so many sigils—in the air above me. Ivrilos must be standing at my head, watching it all happen. No,he’s keeping me under, trying to deaden my pain, even if I feel it in my dreams. I shift and moan in my sleep. Eventually, my father’s blood looks like a complex web ready to settle over me.
And then, my father, sounding dazed, drunk, his eyes nearly rolling, says, “Goodbye,” to no one in particular. And then to Ivrilos, he says, “Take care of her.”
“See you soon,” Ivrilos says. And then my father collapses, just as the bloody net drops down on me.
Before long, they’re both standing in that dark world. It’s much like the glimpse Ivrilos gave me of my father before, but now there’s more. I realize my father no longer has his bloodline.
“Don’t tell Rovan about her mother,” he says. “I don’t want her to do what I did, throw herself madly at her own death. If the thought of protecting her mother can keep her safe—as safe as she can be in that den of snakes—then I want her to hold on to it.”
“As you wish. I, too, think that’s for the best,” Ivrilos says.
My father seizes Ivrilos’s shoulders—he can now, like he never could in life. “I’m begging you, as a father, as the one who has given my life to you, and soon my second life, if you can help her, if she can help you… please, consider it.”
Ivrilos clasps his shoulder in turn with a firm hand. “I will.”
The fire goes out of my father, but not without a final spark. “If you don’t,” he says with a weak bark of laughter, “then I hope she ends you. For good.”
“She’s welcome to, once I’ve done what I need to do.”
My father sighs. “There’s nothing else for it. You’ve told me what happens to wandering shades down here, and I’d rather you do it. I’m ready.” But then he asks, his voice heartbreakingly small, “Do you know what comes after this?”
