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Clea swallowed before lowering her head, tucking her gaze away from him as she tightened and loosened numb fingers. She rehashed all that Ryson had told her, imprinting every detail on her mind. She’d never imagined that in killing reapers, she’d been destroying the husks of lost lives. The realizations piled on until she felt like in absorbing this new information, she didn’t know anything anymore. She felt blank, and empty, her anger draining away and leaving a vacant pit in her stomach.
“Clea,” he said, drawing her from her thoughts again. Hearing him use her name with such intent felt strange but not unwelcome.
“If I would have known the extent that the truth had been hidden from you,” he said, “I would have told you everything much sooner than this.” There was again, an honest salve in his words. In the pause that followed, it seemed they were no longer so different. Clea realized this before understanding why. Simply in the use of her name and the pointed concern ofhis honesty, he felt familiar, close. Looking across the carriage now, he offered no guardedness. She realized that’s how he’d been from the start, being so frank, in fact, that she hadn’t taken him seriously at all. In recognizing the reality of his honesty, she felt an invitation to be a version of herself she had never considered sharing with the rest of the world.
“All this time–” she said in dismay. “How are you not laughing?”
In asking the question, she couldn’t deny the depth of her own hurt and how exposed she felt. She remembered telling him a week into their journey that she was determined to see the world for what it was, not what she wanted it to be. It was no wonder he had raised an eyebrow. She was surprised he hadn’t doubled over in laughter right there.
“Knowledge has its own power to manipulate, devastate and strengthen people,” he began and his voice was matter-of-fact but there was a rising gentleness to the explanation. “To withhold so much of it from you is to wound you profoundly. It’s the choices you’ve made despite that woundedness that have given me a glimpse into what you might be capable of,” he said, his expression softening in such a way that he almost looked like a different person.
For the first time, to her, he looked truly human. She saw a glimpse of a heart that perceived wounds of knowledge to be much more severe than wounds of the flesh. The words that came next felt human. They felt like they came from the only human part of him left.
“You are ill equipped for the days to come, but you may have the qualities to make it through despite that.” He continued, his words reaching through the space between them, calling her out of rage and dismay, guiding her attention to the impending future without pity, coddling or scolding.
He spoke as if with experience, and she found some deep part of her grasp for the weighty truth of the words.
“If you endure it authentically, you might just encounter the truths in yourself that you’re looking for.”
She was not prepared for the profound nature of his words. Previously so sharp and disgruntled, he sounded now like a Veilin cleric and she reflected back on his previous use of their teachings the night before. Now, he did seem like a completely different person, almost wise, and she found herself resisting the shift in her own perspective.
“You’re saying this just to give me hope,” she said evenly as if he were solely intent on comforting her.
“I can’t lie to you. Not anymore. If you really want to see the truth of the world, like you say, you will have to keep your eyes open, but in order to survive, you very well might have to close them.”
He was a completely different person. She wondered where this thoughtful and apparently wise version of him had been the last several weeks. The familiar silence returned, and there was no tension between them, only the formation of a kind of choice she tried to shape more conclusively in her mind. She struggled to summarize his words in her own language.
“So my choice will be between finding the truth and survival?” she asked, getting the sense that just as Ryson suggested, this moment in time was just as pivotal as it was dreadful.
“It very often is,” he said, and could she deny it?
She knew that people often turned their faces away from what was ugly, and in doing so, they cut out a piece of truth from the world and were never capable of seeing it as a whole. In practicing healing, she’d tried fervently to witness even the worst of things, but realizing she’d barely seen half of it shook her.
In the silence that followed, the carriage bumbled on. Clea bumbled with it, overtaken with shivering, but Ryson didn’t ask her to come over again. She looked away from him, feeling the pull of the comfort of his frame until at last she relented in the cold and made her way over to him. He accepted her back into her place, Clea curling up in his arms as he looped his shackled hands over her and tugged her close against his chest. After several minutes, her shivering ceased and she eased comfortably into him, savoring whatever this moment was before the carriage stopped. She tried to recall the last time she’d been this close to anyone. Had it felt this safe and this warm?
“Which do you think I will choose?” Clea whispered against him, feeling calmer now, despite the gravity of the days ahead. Her eyes were closed and she nestled deeper into his chest, turning into him to gather more heat against her face and hands as he replied.
“I’m not sure any of us ever knows until we’re there,” Ryson breathed back as if her shifting against his chest had takensome of his breath away. She attributed it to her own clumsy movements and reminded herself to be gentler as she moved around again. For such a determined fighter, he seemed awfully fragile in the moment. She knew she’d healed him fully, so maybe it was the cold skin of her hands and face that made him restless. He had invited her over repeatedly to get warmer. She wouldn’t apologize for that, especially since half of the issue was that she’d spent so much of her energy on him.
As the minutes passed, she relaxed progressively against him, until Ryson brought up the topic he’d buried at the start of their conversation, perhaps contemplating all along.
“There is one more thing I have to share with you,” he began, and she resented the coming knowledge despite not knowing what it was. She winced against his chest, hoping it would be short winded.
“You healed an Insednian, and there was an Insednian there to witness it. You committed a great trespass against your own people.”
“Ryson,” she stirred in protest, speaking groggily into his chest. “Haven’t I heard enough? I made my choice. Honestly, I barely had one. I couldn’t have let you die like that, Venennin or not.”
“I can’t spare you this,” he said back. “I can’t reel back. I can’t replicate the wounds of your people by hiding this from you.”
“I didn’t realize the trial of truth or survival started now,” she mumbled.
“Listen,” he said sternly.
“I understand. I made a million mistakes, one after the other. Even a fool deserves a nap before being sold to her demise,” she said grimly. “Can you just wait and tell me if I survive?”
“No,” he said, and the sound was both unrelenting and intense.
She didn’t reply, knowing the words were coming and determined to try and sleep anyway.
