Page 66 of Light Locked
He folded his hands over his stomach in the silence, the crown propped up on his head as he stared up at the ceiling. He looked at the gold just as King Kartheen had. Every color was brighter, every sound and word brimming with flavor.
The world was pulsing, lovely, and wicked. Ryson lifted his hand up to the ceiling as he observed the black marks that covered them and extended down his knuckles.
“What is your name?” he whispered with the vaguest sense that at any moment he might remember it, and with it, somehow grasp the wholeness of his soul again. He inhaled as he closed his eyes and sank into the silence of the room.
The entire castle bloomed with a dark quiet. It extended endlessly and peacefully like windless waters.
There was only one exception and it invited the subtlest smile.
He could sense the fear in her. It wasn’t pure like King Kartheen’s. There were rich, elaborate, determined feelings, interlaced with fear in a symphony of flavors. He tapped his fingers in a series, imagined playing each note of emotion, running his hands through them, tasting what he longed to feel.
From ecstasy to terror, and other twin feelings much the same, he imagined watching every note play out, giving her everything and taking it all away, over and over again.
She approached, her presence like a burning light, a vice, an idle campfire in the forest.
†††
Each step Clea took over the blood-gorged carpet forced the liquid into thick pools around her boots. It painted the bottom of her dress. Corpses lined the walls of the throne room door with an unnerving symmetry. It seemed that each man had suffered his death at the hand of his own weapon. There was a dark irony in the nature of their end, and the corpses became silent guides, escorting her to her fate.
She took shallow breaths, suffocated by the mingled scents of incense and blood. They intensified as she stopped before the throne room entrance.
The gold-laden designs that decorated the metal doors now bled with splattered carnage. She couldn’t ignore the imagery of the golden door which haunted her now more than ever, but she’d already made her choice.
She flattened her hands against the surface. They felt like ice against her sweaty palms.
Cien hovered in the air like thousands of flies, delighting over decay. Whatever was behind the doors invited it like a tide pulling into the ocean.
She pushed against the barrier. It creaked open, revealing the horrors beyond.
Bodies slouched in silent heaps at the entrance of the throne room. Every drenched gem and gold trinket boasted a brilliant red luster as the bloodshed magnified the glow of the torch flames. The king’s body lay out in the corner of the room, buried, face first, in his riches. The doors creaked closed behind her, surrendering her to a tomb-like silence.
Her eyes centered on the throne where Ryson now sat hunched on the steps. His forearms rested against the tops of his knees. He turned the king’s crown in his blackened fingers, carefully touching the edges as if to preserve how it reflected the nature of the room it had come from. It was ornate and beautiful, but dotted in blood just the same.
The cien around him undulated like fire. He had the medallion,though she could not see where.
His fingers stopped on the crown, balancing it as he looked up at her with eyes that burned more fiercely than she’d ever seen. There was a path of questions between them, some of which were answered by the bloodied lashes on his clothes.
“Hello, Princess,” he said, without spite or reservation, confirming that what she witnessed was not an illusion after all. There had always been a begrudging tone to Ryson’s voice, like he hated the act of talking, but here, in such a simple greeting, he took command of the room.
The crown fell as he stood, and it proceeded his path, rolling to Clea’s feet and clattering into a nearby pool of blood. With his hands in his pockets, he stepped down after it, his muscles relaxed on the strength of his frame. He was dressed in rags, but walked with a regal glide in his steps.
“Why did you kill all of these soldiers?” she asked, trying to measure the conscience of this familiar stranger. This presence had no sense of wanting to withdraw from the world like Ryson did. Empty of Ryson’s brutishness, what remained was a type of sophistication capable of sharpening cruelty. His expressions seemed to measure and assess everything, taking it all in without judgment.
“A drop of blood for a life, Princess. It’s Insednian law,” he said. “King Kartheen knew it well.”
He closed the distance between them. Clea refused to back away, chin raised as he stepped into her space and easily walked past her.His arm brushed her shoulder, and Clea turned her body against it to follow the tight circle he made around her.
“Interesting choices.” The renewed vibrancy in his eyes made his gaze easy to follow as he inspected the trappings of her gold and white clothes. Clea was unsure if his eyes were only symbolic in their representation of his people, or if they had their own power. She was convinced of the latter, as his gaze had the permanence and effect of touch. It reminded her that she barely wore pieces of a gown, not armor, and it was harder to maintain her poise under his gaze than it had been with King Kartheen.
There was nothing discernable in his eyes. They were void of that lustful, desperate ache. She’d become so familiar lately with the gaze that saw no crime in wanting or taking. Ryson instead showed her nothing. He seemed in complete control, and completely unreadable.
“Give me the medallion. It will kill you,” she pushed, offering her hand as she stopped walking. In making her demand, she felt like she’d regained some ground between them, despite the vulnerable presentation of her clothes. He followed her gesture, stopping in his path with his hands behind his back.
Ryson had made a sport of rattling her, and in such a way he’d made her bolder, but this was different. He was different.
With the slightest tilt of his head, he asked her in a voice barely above a whisper, “How does it feel to be in the trappings of your old life?”
She glanced down as his fingers closed around her covered wrist. Darkened by the marks of a Venennin, they touched heras if she were fragile, instilling some measure of safety as he lifted her arm and spun her.
