Where Light Meets Shadow (23 page)

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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