Page 47 of Light Locked
“She’s nothing but a girl!” hissed the Kalex who held her, yanking her head back again and causing her to strain against his grip.
“Good. Maybe youth means she’ll last longer. Let her go,” the one with red eyes replied in a low, demanding voice. She was released all at once, falling forward on her hands and knees before scrambling away from both of them and taking in a life-giving gulp of air.
They stood in a triangle now, Clea edging back with her hands out, as she glanced between the two men. The yellow-eyed one was lanky and thin with a light complexion that made himblend with the snow. He had a nervous, restless energy, and just across from him stood his counterpart. With dark eyes, and a poised, relaxed figure, he wore black that carved his broad shoulders against the backdrop of winter.
In the strange alignment of their features and bodies, they looked like crafted dolls. Like Ryson and Alina, they bore the faces of the forest.
“Does she belong to the Insednian?” Yellow Eyes asked, and then as if he didn’t care about the answer, he looked eagerly to what appeared to be his leader and added, “Can I hunt with the others?”
“Go,” Red Eyes replied, and in a surprising flash, the other man was gone.
Now it was just Clea and this dark figure, standing with several feet of snowy ground between them. It was a fickle barrier if this opponent could move like the other.
She’d never seen Kalex move like that.
“My name is Myken,” he said, to her surprise. His hands, previously folded behind his back, fell down by his sides. Clea remained poised for a fight, hands out and knees bent, but she couldn’t help but notice his fingers.
Just like his companion’s fingers, the ends looked like they’d been dipped in black paint to the first knuckle.
As if noticing her surprise, Myken extended a hand out for observation, the back and then the front. He seemed to be studying her reaction as she took in the sight of his fingers. Upon closer inspection, she saw that forked arrows extendedfrom the first knuckle to the second of each finger, like tribal markings.
“Something called to us. It doesn’t make sense that we would find you in its place. What are you doing in the forest?” he asked.
Clea’s eyes settled back on his face as his hand fell by his side.
When she didn’t answer, his brows furrowed and with the slightest tilt of his head, he whispered, “Why? Why can I not sense your ansra?” He stepped toward her.
She tried to step back to maintain the distance between them, but he lifted his fingers to her and in a subtle gesture, pulled them back against his palm.
The snow became hard around her feet. She was locked in place.
Myken closed the distance between them, but stayed out of reach as Clea tried to remove her boots from where they’d been locked.
“You appear to be a Veilin,” he continued, and she focused back on him again. “Your skin possesses that certain glow, as faint as it is.”
Myken’s hand lifted in front of his chin pensively. “It’s like you’ve been tainted by something. What has the Insednian done to you?”
Clea dropped down into the snow, blessing the ground under her feet and sending an array of glowing white lines blasting from her hands. The blessing loosened the snow at her feet, freeing her as it raced toward Myken.
Myken dropped to his knees, and in the intensity of the light, Clea thought she’d managed to trap him. But as the brilliance faded, she found herself locked in a dark reflection.
Myken had only mirrored her posture, his hands flattened against the snow in the same way, but from his palms raced dark, jagged lines that looked like tree limbs against the night sky. They met her blessing with equal intensity, and both her blessing and the black lines faded.
Her stomach jolted. She’d never seen anything counter a blessing.
Clea rose back up, and he mirrored her. She tried with all her might to sense his cien but failed. “What are you?” she asked.
“I could ask you the same question,” he replied. “Why don’t you recognize me?”
“Recognize you?” she repeated the question, unsure of what he meant.
Snow began to fall, Myken and Clea eyeing one another through the thickening veil of white. She had no answer and so she gave none, trying to decipher the puzzle that remained unspoken between them.
“Ralth,” Myken said in the same volume, like he were speaking to her.
Clea jolted as Ralth, the being with yellow eyes, flashed into their line of sight, a stripe of blood drawn down his sleeve. It dripped from one of his fingers.
Myken didn’t remove his eyes from her as he spoke to hiscompanion. “How are things?”
