Where Light Meets Shadow
Page 23
Perhaps. But not a slave to the dark, no matter what history would name him.
Curse my name, then, Father. You cannot touch me now. The Light will have the Ravensblood, Mother will be avenged, and I’ll laugh in your face when I see you in hell.
Defiance gave way to a curious lassitude. The pain lessened, and he felt detached from the blood now flowing more sluggishly from his wrists. He had read that bleeding to death was a peaceful means of suicide, at least at the end. Research always paid off.
Another voice spoke in his memory, soft and gentle, praising his studiousness. Ana, it must have been. She was the only of his teachers with a kind word for Bredon Ravenscroft’s son.
Maybe Cassandra would tell her aunt of his sacrifice. Maybe she would think well of him again.
He reached up to the table, brought down the glass and the bottle. The action hurt, yes, but there was enough alcohol in his system already to dull the pain. He filled the glass with the last of the brandy. The bottle was still dusty from his father’s cellars. He wondered, belatedly, what would happen to the remaining bottles once he was dead. Would anyone drink liquor from a dark mage’s cellars? It seemed a shame for it to go to waste.
Cassandra appreciated fine brandy. But she was unlikely to accept anything from him now, unless it gave advantage to the light. Ana might have taken it, had he the foresight to will it to her.
He wondered if Ana drank brandy.
His mind was drifting. He approached, then, the end of his final hour to plague this world. Raven brought the glass to his lips, hands trembling with weakness now, not adrenalin. He sipped at the liquor. It would bring the soft darkness sooner, and he would die with sweet fire on his tongue.
The room spun now, and silence roared in his ears. The part of him that cleaved to life made one last desperate bid for consciousness, and then he sank into the gentle black sea.
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