Page 4 of Light Locked
“Why would she have left Virday in the first place?” Alina huffed, clearly frustrated by his reluctance to conspire with her. “You said she was alone. Why would Veilin royalty be alone in the forest runningawayfrom safety? Something is wrong. That’s why you couldn’t help but save her, right? You want to know.” Alina searched his face for a glint of emotion that might support her claim.
He couldn’t tell if she’d succeeded; he remained locked in place, unwilling to reveal any sign that she was right.
She looked back at the ground, curling her bare toes in the dirt playfully. “Don’t even try and stifle that desire now and tell me you did it out ofcompassion.” She grimaced as if the word tasted sour.
“And what if I did?” Ryson attempted to deter her attention from the princess.
Alina gazed up at him with dark-brown eyes that always saw more than he wanted. Even though his were bandaged, he felt inclined to look away. His cloak and coverings couldn’t hide him from her, though they made him a faceless shadow to everyone else. It had been months since he’d even seen his own reflection, but in Alina’s eyes he was painfully aware that he had one.
Her expression softened like she’d found what she’d been looking for. Her face rounded with a smile. “It’s in your darknature to be curious. The more you know, the more control you have, and control feels sodivine.” She clenched her fists and shivered in excitement. “Oh, Ryson.” She reached out and stroked his sleeve. “You’ll never have to hide that part of yourself from me.”
She was rubbing salt in his wounds.
“I brought the girl here so that she could rest and then leave. I don’t want anyone to know we had anything to do with her,” Ryson said, now trying to distract Alina’s focus from himself. It seemed his plan to bring the Veilin here was already backfiring. Alina had welcomed him with open arms, but now she was ceaselessly spinning webs.
“Ugh! What pleasure is there in that?” she whined, dragging her hands down over her face before crossing her arms in defiance.
The switch was sudden, like she had forgotten to discuss him at all. He thanked the darkness for her unstable mind.
“You can’t take this opportunity away from me! These past years in hiding have been much too boring. I need a mystery to solve, a game to play, a story to tell!” She threw her hands up as she exclaimed, “Oh, I need something! Life is simply too dull here—terribly dull! I don’t even have to use all my fingers to count the things I do every day”—she pointed to the severed appendages on her left hand—“and I only have seven!” She mentioned her missing fingers casually, as if he hadn’t been the one to cut them off.
“Things have changed, and we must adapt like everything else,” Ryson replied, urging Alina into some kind of sensibilitydespite how he felt her unraveling. He could tell that her human container was tearing at the seams, and from it dripped something unnatural and distorted. He was assessing her, reading her, gauging what lingering power remained in that tiny, deceptive frame.
“We were never meant to adapt; you and I are different,” she said, gripping the neckline of her dress. When he didn’t reply, she pressed her back to the wall and folded her arms again. “I refuse to rot from existence!”
“The world is rotting from existence, Alina, and it’s about time. People have plenty of other things to be afraid of these days. Being something frightening hardly makes you an object of worship.” Ryson felt exhausted. He hid a sigh on a controlled breath as he looked out at the woods beyond the walls. He wondered how long it would be before the entire world looked like those woods. The trees crowded around the city like they were begging to come in.
“Oh, don’t mock me! You treat me as if I don’t even know why you’re here. You think I’m a fool?” She laughed, nudging him with her elbow. “There’s only one way for either of us to really adapt, and it isn’t living quietly in some pitiful human city.” Launching her body off the wall, she danced into the street, her fingers pinching the end of her dress. She swirled around, her eyes closed, face lifted to the sky like she was enjoying the sun. “Oh, Ryson, we’ve known each other too long.”
Ryson didn’t respond, and the silence grew thick between them. The bustle of rattling carts and beckoning salesmen seemed to fall still in the distance.The intense light crashed down over her body and Ryson winced as a memory surfaced from the mire of his muddled mind.
The blinding light was no longer the hot, white sun of Virday but a sunrise from numberless years ago, spilling a red curtain over the silhouettes of a fresh battlefield. Alina’s true body twisted like an uncoiling snake as she arched her back into the sunrise that ignited the curvature of her form. She laughed against the silence of the carnage, wringing the blood from her silver hair as it made rivers down her bare shoulders and arms.
Witnessing her pleasure had intensified the sensations of blood on his own skin; the sins on his own hands. Sitting against the bodies in the wake of their victory, he’d known that one day he would have to kill her.
In contrast to the memory, her voice continued on in the present. It was a small, childish voice. It was a joke.
“You’re running out of power and you want to use what’s left to kill me,” Alina said, opening her eyes and releasing her dress. “You want to put me out of my misery—free mefrom my insanity.” She returned to the shadows, each step dainty, and practiced as if she were dancing. She whirled around and pressed her back against the cottage so that she faced the city. “Every day, you grow weaker. I can already tell you what you’re trying to figure out right now. You don’t have the strength to finish me off, trust me.”
He felt like a statue under the sun, and somehow, her words unraveled something in him. Looking out at the city, struggling on, his sense of age extended far beyond the reach of his memories, and he felt as old as the world itself. “I’m tired,Alina. This entire world is tired. Do you really want to keep living?”
“You’re lucky.” She allowed her words to hang on the tension between them. “Life has become a bore. I’ll die with you, but now that I have you, I might as well make good use of you. It would be a shame for me to not get a final laugh out of this dreary life before I kiss it goodbye.” She watched him with a glint in her eyes. “How about I make you a deal?”
†††
Clea sat on the edge of the straw bed, staring down at her bare feet in the dirt. She combed her fingertips through her hair, pressing them against her scalp to restrain her wild flurry of thoughts. She didn’t know where she was in the city, but it didn’t matter. The familiar stench of rot and smoke filled her nostrils. The blinding sunlight depressed her, flickering into the room as hot breezes waved the tattered rags nailed over the clay windows.
She’d been saved miraculously, but she wasn’t happy to be back in Virday. This place had become as much a prison as it had once been a home. In the wake of last night’s terrors, every sign of the city was only a reminder that today she’d have to try to escape all over again.
She winced as she turned on the bed, her back facing the door as she tested the mobility of her bandaged arm. The claw marks would only be scars by the afternoon, and soon those would be gone too. Rapid healing was a benefit of the energy in her blood, or ansra, as Veilin called it. It was a miraculous thing, but a bit less miraculous now. Her blunted energy had dramatically slowed her rate of healing.
Her hand felt for the silver chain around her neck, tracing it under the hem of her collared shirt until she clasped the cold medallion against her chest. Tendrils of darkness pulsed from it, eager to slip through her fingers. Glancing back at the door, she pulled it out onto her palm, tracing the intricate silver designs of vines that framed a deep, black jewel.
It was the Deadlock Medallion, a scourge from centuries past. With mysterious origins but a deadly legacy, it was one of the few cien objects still in existence.
Cien was the perversion of the benevolent ansra energy that gave a Veilin’s skin its luminance and fueled their life force. The two energies had manifested when forest beasts first appeared, and continued to fuel humanity’s struggle today. Cien was what infected the forest. It accumulated around tragedy and suffering, whispered dark deeds to hurting people, and inspired violence and hatred.
Clea created a cage with her fingers, channeling ansra through her palms. A flickering orb of light manifested around it. The medallion levitated in her palm, repelled on all sides by the ansra she channeled to repair the seal on its influence.
