Page 87 of Light Locked
“Prey is unwilling and so are the dead,” Ryson breathed, fearing the mindset that would arrest him should his soul ever be released. Now, he could say with confidence that his heart cared for Clea, cared enough to demand that he never see her again. His love for her was indeed true, but Prince’s words resurrected another true reality that he dreaded to his core.
Why are you so quick to belittle them? Alina’s prey do not need to succumb to their terror, but they do. My dear dead, most times, put themselves in conditions that they know might kill them. Their fates are ingrained in their very nature, in their very choices, and we are all happy together in the end, happy in the truest, most honest sense of the term.
Ryson felt sick to his stomach, shutting his eyes against the sun again.
She will heal for you. You will kill for her. The killing will allow the healing and the healing will allow the killing. Beautiful poetry. Neither of you will hate it so much in the end. I dare say, you’ll both find such an arrangement irresistible.
Ryson felt suffering in the words, aching for silence. He hoped The Haunt would at last let him die. Ryson closed his eyes, and released his hand from his neck, wondering why he’d tried to stop the bleeding in the first place.
This is what he wanted, wasn’t it? To die.
He kept his eyes closed, and exhaled, relaxing his body until Prince’s words injected themselves uneasily into the quietness of his mind.
I’ll ask you again when you’re truly awake. I’m sure you’ll see the beauty in the picture I paint, for it is only a picture you’ve painted yourself. Soon, it will be just like it was then when the world was rife with war,Prince whispered, and his voice echoed across the city possessed as a crowd gathered around Ryson.The three of us.The dead villagers of Virday chanted in unison as if in his joy, Prince had lost all restraint on the control of his voice,Together again.
Chapter 24
The Altar
THE FINAL JOURNEY to Loda was a lesson in agony. During the night, the medallion often reached out to call the woods, and with her soul, Clea wrestled it back. Being awake was sometimes less exhausting, but now the battle was familiar. The Deadlock Medallion, in all its cravings, was no longer a stranger. She did not fear the fight, but as familiar as it had become, the rest of the world was now an alien, splitting her into two versions of herself.
Standing upon the hilltop, haggard and filthy, her first glimpses of Loda on the horizon invigorated her with hope. The vast glow of those white walls against the sunrise reminded her of a former life, and then only intensified the divide inside her.
An entirely new world had been opened up to Clea like a chasm. The dark world of Venennin existed, and it was full of all kinds of horrors. They weren’t horrors she could dismiss or leave behind. They had sewn themselves through the fabric of who she was.
Light and dark no longer made sense, mixed with their sharp contrasts like a bowl of broken glass that she had to sift through. Every exploration of the events cut her fingers, and the worst part of it all was that she couldn’t stop doing it.
As she made her way down the hill and to the walls, her mind replayed the scenes in the castle for what felt like thehundredth time, overcasting the anticipation of her arrival home.
She remembered standing at the base of the staircase before the throne room, she’d known her direction. She had been prepared to face death with nothing but the light in her hands. Her power had returned to her, and she’d known her convictions. She’d felt like a single, united force.
Fear had not deterred her. She’d climbed each stair, heart racing, prepared to fight the medallion. Opening those doors, she would battle evil to the death, and then there he was.
Seeing Ryson on the throne had paralyzed her in ways she had not understood in the moment. The clarity of good and evil had dissolved. He’d slaughtered the slavers mercilessly—and King Kartheen, who’d no doubt committed all kinds of terrible acts. He was bloodstained royalty in a world her people hated. She would have fought the king’s men with light. Some may have died, but as a result of too much darkness being expelled. Ryson slew flesh and energies alike with little distinction.
She made her way through the final stretch of forest, the massive walls now visible through the treetops. Her memories repeated in a loop along with the determined churn of her steps.
In the shadow of the castle, she’d been humiliated as an object of light, then embraced the tenderness of a kiss in a room painted with bloodshed. The strange surrender to his touch on her marbled skin had given her life back, and at the very peak of her power, she’d risked that life and her mission for an enemy of her people.
How had she let it all happen?
She could not deny her own agency, and yet every interaction had been a dizzying dance. She’d touched his face, hoping to cause some pain, to neutralize the threat. And yet, unable to commit to such violence, her touch had been gentle and tender. This he had not denied, sensing her intentions but still embracing what had become of them. He’d given her the medallion and exchanged it with a kiss.
Clea ducked under a branch and dodged past another, boots crunching over the brush as she bent and threw branches out of the way. She was nearly running at this pace, seeing little ahead but the base of the walls. She almost dared a forest beast to find her now.
A horn sounded aloud from the castle walls, scouts announcing her presence to surrounding guards. Her mind remained fixed on a point of the wall, as if touching it might expel all of the conflicting feelings inside her. She ran harder.
In her nightmares over the last few days, the maids tied her down as they dressed her, and the dress, made of light, covered much less than it had in reality. Ryson’s savagery was more violent, his words more threatening, his touch like a toxin that traveled much farther and deeper than her hands, lips and core until her body dissolved into ashes. She did nothing to stop it. Instead, the scene repeated on a loop. Each time she stood before the bloodied gold of the throne room doors, she knew what waited for her inside, and she couldn’t resist the pull to open them. She did it over and over again, relinquishing herself to that hateful feeling of being so hungry in his arms. She’d become an animal, rescued only by the mercy of his restraint.
Never again.
The dreams often ended with her right after the collapse of the castle, waiting at the crossroads between death and the life that Ryson’s more devious self had proposed. He asked the question and then waited in silence as she suffered her wounds. She never answered, feeling that as false as the dream itself was, her answer would be real if she gave it, and that would be the end of her.
This was why Veilin kept their distance, why they had their rules, why they avoided some knowledge. The forest was always trying to change, and shape and morph things into its likeness. Ryson, or whatever version of him had been there, had even offered her the life of a Venennin.
What if she’d said yes?
More trumpets sounded overhead, the last of the trees freed her from the forest. Her breath ripped harshly through her lungs.
