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“Admittedly, I thought you might have died,” Ryson confessed as he scratched the back of his head, seeing no way around the truth. He didn't want to admit it, but he'd barely remembered Prince.
“Me? Dead?” Price sounded aghast and fascinated all at once.
“You’ve always had a bit of a fragile disposition.”
“I was the first general. Alina was second.” Prince promptly reminded him again.
“Yes, I know.” Ryson replied, keeping his eyes focused ahead for a moment before sneaking a glance back at Prince. He half expected there to be more of an expression beyond the blankmask.
“Alina is weaker,” Ryson said, “with her real body hidden out in the Wraithlands, there was still a chance I could kill her in her current form.”
There was another long pause. Prince didn’t move.
“My body is sealed somewhere too by...Veilin,” Prince reminded Ryson emptily. “I call to it with my soul every morning. I can sense it responding, but it never comes. It's locked somewhere. Do you not remember? Maybe in the Wraithlands…with Alina’s body.”
Of course it was.
“Yes, but unlike Alina, you’re,” Ryson gestured to Prince, “You’re...thriving. I couldn’t possibly think of fighting you in the state I’m in now. Alina has no control over her impulses, constantly having to feed off of other people. She’s a monster with no...taste,” Ryson paused, and then in the ensuing silence added, “unlike you.”
There was another long pause. They continued to stare at each other, until at last Prince spoke up in an uplifted tone.
“I will defeat Alina in your stead! There are none who can escape the dead,” Prince chanted in triumph. “You know the path that you must take, for there is nothing here at stake.” He finished a second line, and soon he adapted a tune to his words. “Pursue love with valor, even though at the thought you cower.”
Ryson exhaled.
Prince only continued happily as he raised his voice. “My fearless leader whose path is cleft won’t admit he’s scared to death. Because uncertainty leaves him shaken, in fact, he’d rather be mistaken than be lost in hesitation. Yet what he hates most is that he’s been predicted, by a young Veilin he once thought was wicked, and now he quakes in fear, because what all seek is near, and though duty calls him to his past, he knows that his life won’t longer last.”
“Real poets would laugh at you,” Ryson said, looking over his shoulder. But his comment only seemed to spur Prince on.
Prince stood, gesturing to the sky with his hands. “And he curses words that ring so true, because his illusions they’ll subdue, and they’ll show him that he has a chance, to join a rather enchanting dance, and then death, death, romance, and death!”
“I think you lost focus there at the end,” Ryson muttered.
“I will finish your journey for you. Don’t return to Virday.” Prince bowed theatrically.
“No,” Ryson said with a sternness that made the word seem like a command. “Stay out of this.” The familiarity that struck him when he issued the order made him cringe.
“What is it they say about old habits and dying hard?” Prince poked. “Dying habits are hardly dead if they’re old and full of death?”
“Your fixation with death completely butchered the saying,” Ryson shot back, coiling his arms tighter against his chest. The bandages shifted loose, his clothes patched together anddamaged from the events in the castle.
“I think I made it better.”
Ryson would have to be the one to go to Virday.
His journey with Clea was over.
Against his better judgment, that didn’t stop him from imagining tracking her down. Just for a moment, he imagined finding her.
It was a mistake to even picture it.
There wasn’t a scenario in which the forest wouldn’t make a beast of him, because now he’d awakened the same hunger in her that he sought to satisfy in himself. He’d witnessed it.
Part of him tried to imagine her running in horror, commanding that he stay away. Those scenarios had once been realistic deterrents, but now sensations that had once seemed too outlandish to imagine, were spurred on by the reality of the castle. Despite herself, she had not left him behind or denied him. He never would have imagined that she would yield to him with such relish. The sensations of it all were gravely worsened by the days he’d had to repeat the memories over and over in his mind, testing if they were actually real.
Images came unbidden into his mind, vivid pictures of him taking her mouth in his, of wrapping himself in the warmth of her body.
He’d savored every second of her weakness, every aching breath and sound, every reach and pull of her hands. He had saved her life. He’d freed her, but to use that word,healed.
