Page 67 of Light Locked
“What is it like to be made into an object of light?” he asked, and there was no condescension in the question, only wonder.
“I’m not an object,” she said, her voice firm, and yet she found herself moving at his suggestion.
“People will see you how they want to see you, Clea.” He guided her back against him with his hand still over her wrist in front of them.
This wasn’t an enemy she understood. Was he an enemy at all?
Standing there with Ryson at her back, she looked out at the rest of the room that was a grim reminder of what he was capable of. Worse yet, Clea was surprised at how little it scared her. Every individual in this castle had felt like a threat since her arrival. Now those threats were gone.
Disturbed by the direction of her thoughts, she tried to focus on the medallion, closing her eyes now that she was facing away from Ryson. Instead, it only heightened her awareness of his body behind her and his arms around her. This was not the cradle of warmth from the carriage, but patient, testing jaws.
“I’m an object of their fears. You’re an object of their desires,” Ryson chided as if experimenting with the ideas. “You don’t see the real power of being an object, do you? No,” he purred in her ear, “because you’re distracted, still starving for something else.”
There was an aching sense of discovery in his voice, like he’dgiven her something and wanted to watch her unwrap it. Clea remembered when they’d first met and how he’d crafted conversations to stir a specific truth out of her.
In the silence that followed, she wanted to ask him to elaborate, but knew he’d baited that silence for her. She couldn’t help but feel that she was being drawn into something, reminded that just a few minutes ago she’d been standing at the door, determined not to show her back, and yet here she was, lured into a strange and irrational sense of safety.
Was he an enemy?
She turned in his arms, reciprocating his slow and tender movement with her own. Ryson had almost impulsively turned their interactions into sparring matches and games. This was no different, only with higher stakes.
“The medallion,” she reminded him. In their proximity, she tried to trace the concentration of the cien, but it was so close and amplified that everything seemed covered in it. She pushed him back with her fingers, and he moved without resistance, a one-sided smile tugging his lips at her gesture. Clea held his eyes as a sense of the medallion flickered through her. It was on the right side of his person. But where?
“Or what?” he asked, a playfulness in his expression as he continued to hold her loosely. She was confident that if she stepped back, he would let her go, but now she could only hope to use their proximity to her advantage.
“You will disappear,” she replied firmly, stifling her unease with a determined proclamation. She could do this. This wasstill Ryson, some version of Ryson.
“I can’t remember why I’ve tried to keep you alive.” He seemed to return her firmness with a jab of his own. It turned the direction of the conversation into dangerous waters Clea wasn’t sure she wanted to swim. “I remember other things though, many of which involved hunting Veilin across the expanse of Shambelin. So, why would I keep you alive? What would this entire experience have to offer me?”
As she crafted her answer, she measured the ground she walked on.
“Something different,” she replied at last, with that same boldness that still concealed how his latest reply bothered her.
“Different?” He narrowed his eyes and smiled again as he neared her face in a challenging way. “You, playing savior in your sheltered life, having lived the equivalent of minutes on a stage with a handpicked audience.” His grip around her tightened slightly, nudging her closer. “You, growing up in a sterile chamber of isolation, believing whatever lies were fed to you. There have been single years of my existence that capture more variety than your entire lifetime, and you say that’s what you have to offer?”
He backed off and turned away from her dismissively as he started back up the stairs of the throne. “The Venennin here for the auction will be breaking into these hallways shortly. They can sense the cien of the medallion, and it’s drawing them in. If you don’t want to die now, I suggest you run. I might have the pleasure of hunting you later.”
“You’re wrong,” Clea said, stopping him. She wasn’t ready to move on from their discussion, determined to not let his insults shock or silence her like they had in the past. She wouldn’t back down from confronting him this time.
“I may have lived life on a stage like you say,” she began. “People have wanted me to play savior, used me for that, but I’ve never forgotten how to be in the audience.”
He looked over his shoulder somewhat impatiently, as if waiting for her to get to her point. The words themselves felt like fighting, and she pushed forward.
“Through my short life, I learned to do something you didn’t. You may know how to break people down, manipulate or hurt them. You might understand power and weakness, but you don’t see how they’re linked. You never learned how to heal, and that healing doesn’t make you a savior or a saint; it makes you a student. You’re right. I haven’t experienced a lot perhaps, compared to you, but I’ve witnessed a lot, and everything I’ve seen, I’ve tried my best to learn from. Your pride and your arrogance and what you think is your power have hidden the most valuable things from you about how life was always meant to be lived. You’re right that you’ve seen a lot. You’ve seen too much.”
His expression shifted into a more focused glare, and she fought forward, the messages like blows to this dark and angry expression of his being.
“The Ryson that I met had just enough humility to notice that maybe there was something life could still teach him, but you—” She began to question the direction of her words or how it might get her any closer to getting the medallion, butthe truth felt necessary, more valuable than anything else. “You think you see everything, and that makes you blind.”
Blind.
The word resounded louder than the rest, and despite the great uncertainty that followed her proclamation, she stood her ground.
In this way, all their interactions repeated themselves in an instant. Clea saw the constant bickering about light and darkness manifested and amplified in the discussion now.
She stood in an ornate gold and white gown. Jeweled and painted, she was radiant, flushed in her frustrations, fueled by fears that made her more determined to fight back. Steps away was her blood-soaked counterpart, faded clothes ripped with beatings, with a fearless gaze as even and heavy as death. This castle, these people, this system had done this to them, and the blood of that system filled the cracks of the stones at their feet.
He eased down from the first few steps and started toward her, Clea walking back with only half the speed before he caught her in a few wide strides. He cinched his fingers through the front lace of her corset and pulled her against the nearest column. The motion tightened it around her ribs and jolted a breath from her lungs. Her hands latched onto his chest and curled into his clothes with the challenge.
