Page 25 of Light Locked
“The weapon drains cien from that which it cuts. It’s deadly to forest beasts. The cien is stored in that orb.” He stretched one leg out toward the fire and rested his forearm on his other knee. “Just in case you were wondering,” he added, as if ignorant to the accusation in her eyes.
She glanced down at it. His explanation sounded reasonable. “I’ve never heard of weapons like that.”
“They’re rare.”
She glanced back up at him, but he was watching the fire.
“It’s not good to keep cien anywhere near you. It will destroy you,” she replied, unwilling to yield.
“It’s none of your concern.”
“Desperation is the concern of every Veilin,” she said.
“How am I desperate?” His eyes flew back to her as if the fire had lost its allure. The intensity of his gaze was the only evidence that he’d taken offense to her claim.
“Cien finds desperate men and women. It feeds off them and convinces them to do evil things,” she explained.
“It’s trapped in that orb.”
“It’s never really trapped. It’s an infection of the life blood. It sinks in and then it spreads.” She put the weapon at her feet and exhaled when he said nothing back to her. She stared at the scythe.
“I wanted to get to know you. It seems I know more than I thought.” She looked up at him, pressing him, indulging the desire she’d long had to challenge his complacency. The spark in his eyes only fueled her. “You claim that this world is hopeless. You don’t believe that.” Gravity swallowed the atmosphere as her words settled in the air. She knew she was making personal, sensitive accusations, but she was done prodding him. “But you would rather be wrong than hopeful. Like anyone with the mark of cien in their lives, you are desperate for hope but afraid of it.”
She knew she was crossing a line, but Ryson was completely engaged with her now, his eyes intent, posture forward as if he were straining to listen.
“What makes you think I haven’t accepted that this world is hopeless?” Ryson asked, his tone so controlled that it burned with anger.
She’d hit a nerve. Despite her better judgment, she continued onward. She feared the extent of his involvement with cien, but something compelled her to provoke it.
“You saved my life.” Clea struggled to ignore the feeling of alarm that was beginning to nag at her. She squeezed her laced fingers.
“I could have had ulterior motives. What else?” he challenged her.
“Motive is hope, no matter how ulterior. You’re still alive. That’s hope.” She had to understand him better. She didn’t sense any cien and yet her ansra buzzed with heat, sending a fighting rush through her skin. “Being alive and completely hopeless is a blaring contradiction. The only question left is: why are you, more so than anyone else I’ve ever met, afraid of hope?”
“Go on,” he said, but it sounded less like an invitation and more like a dare.
She wasn’t completely sure where her words came from. Healing people had given her an intuitive sense of pain through the years, but she felt so sure about her words, it were as if she couldn’t help but say them.
“Your hatred is like a rampant, hateful intent. You want it all to disappear; you want the trees, the people, the world, the Veilin all gone, and the want runs so deep that it’s almost like you want the past, present, and future to vanish as well.” As she spoke, she became so impassioned that the fear faded. She was alone with her thoughts now and she proceeded without restraint, glancing up at the sky like the ideas floated aboveher. “You have a hatred that runs so deeply in you that it has driven you to despise the fact that this world ever came to be in the first place. You hate the fact that existence exists. Your eyes have seen more than their fair share of suffering. You’re a Kalex who has fought through poverty in a declining world. Is it such a leap to make?”
She made the mistake of looking at him in her enthusiasm. When she saw Ryson’s face, her vigor vanished. She was reminded in a single look that she was in the presence of a stranger. More than that, she was in the forest, miles away from any support.
She was reminded of the desperation of the Virdain townspeople who had murdered her comrade to strip him of his hair and clothes for good luck. Ryson had turned to cien instead, but did that make him any less threatening? He hadn’t hurt her yet, with ample chances, but did that mean he wouldn’t?
Something ferocious flickered in his silver eyes. Her ansra screamed at her to run, but he held her gaze possessively and she didn’t move.
She felt like she was underwater, not daring to risk a single inhalation. It drew on, and when she thought the tension would choke her, Ryson spoke.
“Do you want to know what I think of you?” he said, the firelight dancing off his eyes. His voice was the gentlest she’d heard it.
He blinked, and the unusual pressure lifted like he’d cast it with magic. She still couldn’t sense the presence of cien, butnow it was clear. Something about him was dangerous.
“You’re a naive, helpless, fool,” Ryson began and she braced herself for his words, sensing the incoming sting.
“You have the pretension of royalty and none of the power. You claim to bring light to the world but you’re fodder to the forest that creeps closer and stronger with every passing year. I’m convinced without your transparently false beliefs, you’d wither and die. Luckily, you’ve been so thoroughly brainwashed by your own people that you’re completely unaware of the fact that even now you slave away under pretenses that aren’t your own, but it nags at you. It nags at you and you’re afraid that if you were to venture deeper into that feeling you might discover that you don’t actually believe the doctrine they raised you on. You are completely alone in the world, a stranger even, to your own people. I’ve never encountered a Veilin so completely incapable of surviving the real world, drawn to the strangeness beyond herself, and incapable of indulging in it. You have no home. Trimmed, controlled, and proper, you are an alien to everything you think you know. It must be terrifying, being divided by the knowledge you have and the sense that all of it is what separates you from the truth.”
The blow felt physical. She staggered inwardly and swallowed it down like bile before looking away. She blinked quickly, refusing the sting of tears as she took a deep, slow breath in the silence. A minute or so passed.
