Page 42 of Light Locked
She rested a tender hand on his, and he said nothing as she guided his hand from his throat. Her eyes settled on the scar, and she leaned toward him as she pulled the bandages down around his collarbone.
“Who did this to you?” she whispered in disbelief. With a scar like that, he should’ve been dead. If a slit throat could not kill him, then what could?
He held his breath as her fingers grazed the mark and she leaned forward to inspect it. That large scar wasn’t the only one. Even his neck seemed to be covered in layers of them. She wasn’t sure why she felt like touching it might hurt him. The skin had clearly seen worse, but perhaps it wasn’t thephysical wound she was reaching for. There were questions in her touch. Ryson seemed to sense that.
“I have a question for you,” he said, seeming to answer the curiosity in her fingers with his own query. Watching her eyes, he said, “Why do you wear clothes as if you’re afraid of your own body?”
Clea nearly jolted back, stunned by the question and he straightened slightly, seeming to note her reaction.
“What do you mean?” she asked and simply in asking, she felt like he’d tried to strip them off. “I like to be modest. Not everything has to be shown. Can’t I have preferences?”
“I know the difference between someone who desires modesty and someone who hides behind it,” he said. “It’s not how much your clothes cover. It’s how you wear them. Veilin aren’t the only ones adept at sensing vulnerability. You and I might approach it differently, use it differently, but our sense of it is the same.”
Clea stood up. “I don’t see your point.”
“My point is that we’re both wearing bandages, but you have to talk about your scars in order for anyone to see them.”
“I don’t have any scars.” She returned to her place on the other side of the fire. She watched him as he tightened the bandages around his neck. He had no way of telling how they looked, and yet he cinched them carefully, like he had an intentional sense of their placement.
Ryson glanced over at her thoughtfully but allowed her response to linger and didn’t inquire further.
Clea pulled the folder out of her bag again, struggling with a deep sense of discomfort from their interaction and hoping to bury herself in it. The talisman Althala had given her rolled out. The rags around it came undone, and she snatched it up as the light of the fire caught it. She made a note not to look at Ryson as she returned it to her bag.
“What is that?” he asked, with a suspicious lilt in his tone.
“Something Althala gave me before I left.”
“Let me see it,” he said.
Gripping it like gold, Clea glanced up at him. She hadn’t wanted to discuss it tonight. They’d talked enough.
Clea unwrapped the talisman and showed it to him. She watched his eyes as they locked on to it. She could tell he recognized it.
“Do you know what that is?” he murmured, his tone hard.
“An Insednian talisman,” Clea confessed. “I thought that perhaps you might recognize it.”
“You’re accusing me of being an Insednian?” he asked in a way that made her question if Althala’s assumptions had been wrong.
“I was going to ask you.”
Ryson studied her, and then offered his hand.
“Let me see,” he said, and Clea tossed it to him. He didn’t even glance at it before he stood up and hurled it into the forest.
Clea followed the path of the talisman as it whistled up into the sky and the darkness beyond.
“Why would you do that?” She scrambled to her feet as he took a seat again.
“Never speak about them again,” Ryson snapped, and his sudden vigor surprised her. “Forget whatever that woman told you about them. I respect knowledge, Clea, but even knowledge of them is poison, especially to someone like you. The Insednians have ways of knowing who speaks of them.”
“But she gave that to me! The least you could have done was warn me in advance!” Clea cried, unable to wrestle down the emotion in her voice. Everything else came up with it, Clea’s temper surging with an explosive wave of feeling.
“It’s done, Princess. Leave it alone. It was for your own good,” he said, staring at the fire.
“For my own good,” she growled. “You’re being especially awful tonight.”
Ryson’s eyes followed her as she stormed toward the edge of the clearing.
