Page 35 of Light Locked
You can only try and fool yourself,his cien echoed.Turn from the girl. Find your soul. It’s your fate.
“My fate,” he whispered as he leaned back against a dead pine and watched the moon through the haze of his fleeting winter breaths. He took note of its waning fullness and marveled at the beautiful regality with which it governed such ugly, dark nights.
It’s your ruler too. Let it rule you. Your fate.His cien’s voice echoed as its image faded away.
Ryson stared at the moon, and like a stream of light in the night, he sensed a glimpse of Clea’s presence in the distance. He closed his eyes and imagined her heartbeat among the sea of sounds. The sound was so fragile and gentle, a reflection oflife. She was naive and she was innocent. One of those things he couldn’t stand, but the other he’d come to cherish for what it did for the rest of the world.
Or what it does for you?his cien purred with an insinuating edge, making every matter a thing of lust, fear or wanting. He couldn’t deny it, especially not after today.
As she healed others, she became a different person. She wasn’t careful about her clothes, her hair or her things. Adults with dirtied, bloodied hands and wounds gripped at her. Small children clung to her, one toddler pulling strands of hair loose from her braid as she held the little girl on her hip. She didn’t notice or care when the meticulous braid came loose, didn’t notice or care when the child stained her clothes, when the little girl’s hand moved and groped tirelessly, exploring the warmth of the skin beneath the hem of Clea’s collar and shirt. Clea didn’t control them, but simply by enjoying them, she had a way with the crowds around her. It was hypnotic, glowing life, and she’d grabbed his hand as if he were simply a part of it. She’d laughed at them, laughter rich with joy and pleasure. In stark contrast to Alina, Clea too had laughed, bloodstained in the sunset, replacing such a horrid memory with something unique and ill fitting in the landscape of his mind.
In her innocence, or perhaps her naivety, Clea saw something trustworthy in him. The irony is that if she’d distrusted him, he’d be harmless, but having her trust was seductive in ways he could hardly explain. In her eyes, he saw more than just the ways he could ruin her.
It was hard not to imagine tracing the path that the asking hands of her patients had taken today, to imagine pulling herlong hair free from that constant, toiling braid. No doubt she believed in the power of touch, but he sensed she didn’t know half of it, not like he did. She wouldn’t laugh for him, but he could tailor her voice to a myriad of other sounds as rich and full of life as laughter.
His true nature lurked in the dark, eager to play out this performance. In the end, it would burn into ash like every other fantasy, consuming the stage with all its players. He would love the play. He would love the fire even more.
She has no idea who she is. She’s foolish. She’s weak.His cien hurled another insult, perhaps sensing the direction of his thoughts.
“Neither do I. So am I,” Ryson replied simply.
In a second of clarity, Ryson arrested his own intentions vividly, and knew that at least in that one moment, all he genuinely wanted was to see another glimpse of the world through her eyes.
“Cursed fate,” he whispered, repeating the phrase he’d uttered the night he’d found her, feeling then that it had cursed him, and cursing it now in return.
He would make his own choices.
His cien was silent for the rest of the night.
Chapter 12
Sacrifice
CLEA AWOKE WITH a start and struggled from her bed as Althala burst in, a torch in her hand. Breathing heavily, she rushed around the tent. “We have to get out!”
Althala was wild with fear, and Clea noticed the blood on her hands as screaming erupted outside. She rushed from the tent. Grim reminders of her mother’s death awaited her outside.
Kalex were running and screaming. They carried burning torches that illuminated the blood-splattered snow and disfigured bodies that scattered the campground. A hoard of reaping shades tore through the campsite. They leapt from tent to tent, rummaging and killing.
These camps were supposed to be safe.
Clea raced toward the closest foe, bare feet reddened by the snow.
The first reaper she encountered had its head shoved into a nearby tent, fumbling as shrieks sounded from inside.
Her body was hot with the potent mix of adrenaline and the ansra it stirred. Clea slammed her hands into the first reaper and split its essence into a scattered rain of ashes.
Another charged for her. Clea ducked under its claws and pulled herself into its chest with another blessing. It died with a shriek. She’d managed to kill eighteen of them when she’d first escaped from Virday. Her mother had felled over a hundred.
The greatest documented hordes had as many as three hundred shades. That was why Veilin so often traveled in teams.
She rolled up her sleeves as three more charged for her.
She would go much higher than eighteen tonight.
The first dove and she struck, diving under the cloud of ash to meet the second with equal ferocity. The blasts of light would draw the rest in, and in the wake of the screams of the Kalex, ones she’d healed the day before, her fear was cloaked by rage.
Clea whipped around for another kill, only to find it already gone. Ryson was standing in its place, scythe drawn.
