Page 84 of In the Ravenous Dark
“Cylla.” The king’s lips twist around her name. He seems to ignore everything else I said. “She deserved worse than she got.”
“Father,” Kineas chokes, trying to look Tyros in the eye despite my fist in his hair. “You don’t mean that.”
Even in the midst of everything else,thisis the first thing the crown prince mentions? His mother is definitely a sore spot—I remember that from our betrothal ball.
“Youabductedher,” I add to the king, vaguely horrified to be siding with Kineas. “Youforcedher to marry you. She was the mother to your children.”
“Yes, just as you were to be the mother tohis,” Tyros says with a dismissive nod at his son, gold laurels glinting. “Warmth of regard isn’t necessary, as you can see.”
“There’s something wrong with you,” the crown prince gasps against the dagger’s edge, surprising me yet again. “You felt sorry for Mother. You were always giving her gifts, trying to make her comfortable here. Youlovedher, even if she didn’t love us.” I hear the mixture of both yearning and disgust in his voice—how he both admired and pitied his father, how he both adored and despised his mother. Perhaps because Cylla both loved and hated Kineas, especially after he grew up to be more of his father’s child than hers. “You never denied it before. You’redifferent.”
I don’t know how Kineas can presume to judge his father for anything, but I don’t interrupt. I remember Japha, and even Lydea now that I think about it, hinting that Tyros has been acting strange since his coronation. I squint at him over the crown prince’s shoulder.
Ivrilos comes up to stand next to me, studying the king just as avidly. Tyros only stares off into the distance behind his son.
“Perhaps you see more of yourself in me than you ever have before. Pity it’s not enough.” The king seems to shake himself, as if knocking a piece of mosaic tile back into place—completing the picture of a ruler with everything under control. He turns back to me, disregarding Kineas entirely. “Love or cruelty doesn’t enter into it. I did what I did because that’s what I wastoldto do. Like Kineas would have if he’d had the chance to do his duty. But neither he nor Ivrilos appear to be up to the task of managing you. Perhaps Skyllean bloodmages are too much of a challenge. Perhaps we should rid the world of them entirely.” He sighs. “We’re certainly finished withyou. Kineas needs someone more biddable. I thoughtyour bloodline would be too great a shame to lose, but it’s not worth the trouble.”
I shake my head, marveling at him. “Why do you hate bloodmages so?”
“I don’t hate you. You’re tools,” he says bluntly. “Meant to be used and discarded when no longer useful.”
And almost all these so-called tools in the palace are women. They’re doomed to short lives and even shorter afterlives, while royal men go on to become immortal guardians.
“Why do you hate women, then?” I ask.
“I don’t, as long as they do as they are told.” His eye twitches, giving away the lie. “As must we all.”
“You’re the king,” I say incredulously. “Who doyouanswer to?”
“Certainly not you,” he says, some sharpness entering his tone. “Now, where does all of this pointless talk leave us? What do you want from me that I could possibly wish to give?” He raises his eyebrows, shifting that marble face. Exposing the cracks again. “What do you want—your freedom? An apology? I’m afraid I can’t bring your mother and father back to life, but is theresomethingI can do to make amends?”
The falsely honeyed tone of his voice, his disdainful sarcasm, his sheer arrogance, is enough to make my hand tighten on the dagger and my vision leap into strange, unearthly focus. He’s right about one thing: This conversation is pointless. He’s not going to give me the answers I crave, and he can’t bring back what I’ve lost. But he can dosomethingfor me. It’s the real reason we’re all here.
“Yes,” I hiss. “You candie.”
With the hand hidden in Kineas’s hair, I hurl sigils too quickly for the king to dodge. A column of fire as thick as my leg shoots from my sketching fingertips and blasts toward Tyros’s face. I’ve unleashed the heat of a forge. It will burn everything in its path—shadow, flesh, even stone.
But the flames don’t touch him. The burning columnpartsaround him like water, dissipating in the air behind him. His arm is raised as if it were a blade that cut my fire in half. In the dying glare I see his hand fall still.
His fingers weremoving. Sketching sigils. Maybe someone like Kineas won’t have noticed, but I have. So has Ivrilos, next to me. His eyes are wide. Before I blink, the invisible hold I have on the crown prince is ripped away by more sigils, rendered as ineffective as my fire.
The king is a bloodmage.
I don’t have much time to consider it, because he charges for me, where I stand with the blade at Kineas’s throat. I don’t know why he doesn’t use sigils now—maybe to hide his power. But Idoknow that he can’t affect metal with his magic. A blade should be able to pierce him like anything else. He’s not wearing any armor, just his thickly embroidered tunic.
And I have a hidden power, too.
I whip the dagger away from Kineas’s neck. With the same motion I used against Damios and borrowed from Ivrilos, I hurl it at the king. The ruby flickers as it flies end over end.
The blade slams right into Tyros’s heart, burying itself up to the hilt. He jerks back midcharge, teetering to a halt. And like Damios, he looks down in surprise at the jeweled pommel protruding from his chest.
But he doesn’t fall. Hefrownsat it. “This is inconvenient,” he says.
My mouth drops open. Kineas is too shocked to even pull away, let alone attack me. We both just stare as the king reaches up to take the hilt and slowly draw the dagger from his chest, as if he’s in no particular rush.
No blood comes pouring down the gold embroidery of his tunic. There’s none even on the blade. Tyros doesn’t seem relievedby this, or disturbed. He merely looks from the dagger in his hand up to us.
“Father?” Kineas says. He doesn’t say it like he’s asking if he’s all right. He says it like he’s asking if it’shim.
