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“You still owe me that bleeding heart of yours, Princess,” he whispered against her lips, “but I’ll settle for knowing I’ve made you feel at least a fraction of the way I do. It’s a shame we don’t have more time.” He pulled away from her before he walked around the altar, making his way to the throne.
A profound coldness poured into the room. Still not deterred by his condition, Ryson waved one hand over the doors and they slammed shut, hissing as heat soldered the metal doors closed. With his other hand, he tensed his fingers like fitting them between the stones to her left. With a sharp pull of his fist, a hole broke loose in the wall, exposing another hallwaywhere he’d once gestured at the door.
“They’re almost here,” he said, “Venennin from the auction.” He reminded her.
Of course. This moment was always destined to be interrupted.
Clea glanced down at the medallion cinched around her neck. The cien-filled version of him continued to be unpredictable. The Ryson she knew might not return for several hours, maybe days.
“You aren’t coming,” she concluded as she struggled to catch her breath.
He didn’t respond.
Whatever agreements he’d proposed had always meant to be short lived.
“Ryson,” she pushed, stepping forward.
He sat down on the top step. “Ryson is as his name suggests. A shell. Empty. He doesn’t actually exist. You have two choices: escape with the medallion and your life, or stay and lose them both. You’ll have a chance in the coming chaos to make it out of the castle without them finding you. You’ll then have a head start on any who might try and follow you. It seems, Princess, you need quite a lot of killing after all.”
Clea felt unable to move, and Ryson watched her from the throne with a posture that continued to betray the urgency of his situation. He surveyed her again where she stood. So much of him remained unspoken.
Leaving him in this room felt like stepping out into the world completely alone. Loda was no longer a beacon of community and hope but a bundle of lies to untangle, and making her journey there was fraught with just as many risks as the veryroom she stood in.
“You said earlier that you knew what I was starving for,” Clea said, knowing he’d wanted her to ask and obliging him now. “What is it?”
“What I once wanted,” he replied, eyes now watching the door. “To exist.”
Clea remained standing there in the wake of his proclamation. Knowing that if she did not run now, she’d be trapped here.
“You’re at an impasse between two worlds, Princess,” he added, leaning forward. “Either one of us will die, or it will be both of us and the medallion will fall into their hands. You claim to be so dedicated to your mission. These are the rules.”
Holding the medallion tightly, she remembered similar words he’d spoken outside of Althala’s village. He shared that he’d known sacrifice if not anything else, shouted it from some place deep inside himself when now he cited the facts coldly.
An outpouring of cien drew her attention back to the door, and she knew the Venennin would soon break through it. She looked back at Ryson, rejecting the idea of leaving him behind and yet unable to argue with his words.
Steeling herself, she turned away from him as she approached the hole in the wall.
“Goodbye, Princess,” he said, with no inflection.
She couldn’t muster a reply as she walked forward, feelingsplit down the center of her chest as she disappeared into the darkness of her escape.
Chapter 20
A Path Once Tread
FROM THE DEPTHS of the castle halls, Clea heard the door of the throne room break open with the snap of soldered metal. She’d thought that every passing stairway and hallway would make her decision easier as she left the castle. It was the opposite. There was a thread sown through her ribs, tightening with every step she took to leave. The feeling worsened with time, splitting her body in half as some deep and pressing question expanded inside her.
The medallion was sore and cold against her skin. This felt different than leaving her mother behind. When her mother had sacrificed herself in the woods, Clea had been panicked and frantic. She’d spoken often of her own death, telling Clea that death was a path to sainthood. Until this moment, Clea hadn’t understood how in the wake of a lifetime of resenting such teachings, she’d come to see her mother’s death as a fate she had somehow wanted.
All her life, it had almost seemed like her mother wanted to die in battle.
Clea wanted to exist.
The desire to die whole had never been about the cause of her death.
She just didn’t want to die before knowing who she was.
She didn’t want to die a fractured symbol, known to the world, but never known to herself.
