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He could picture her face as she said it, her eyes dark and face flushed. She’d been struggling in the tides of her own body, trying to grasp what he saw so clearly.
Looking back, he didn’t know how he’d managed to let her go, grateful to have sensed her hesitations and reeled back without trying to remove them. Maybe she did have some sense of self-preservation after all. A few minutes more and it wouldn’t have mattered that they’d be found in the midst of it all, bodies entangled, her skin flush with his in full audience.
Healed.That word. To impose such meaning on his touch reached to the depth of his own vices.
If he didn’t reimagine the events in the castle, he imagined them when he found her again. He imagined re-awakening the feelings, unlocking her with his lips, until she was as ravenous as he seemed to feel constantly.
It was an awful thing to imagine, because in that version of things, she’d never make it back to Loda. He’d make her forget she ever wanted to. It was a purely self-gratifying fantasy, as fantasy often was.
“Are you going to see her like that?” Prince’s voice asked skeptically.
Ryson was grateful for Prince’s interruption. He’d forgotten for a moment that he was still standing at the impasse, and rubbed his face to try and collect his thoughts. He was starting to feel out of control and his cien wasn’t so easily wrestled back now.
Ryson turned to look at Prince again, raising an eyebrow andforcing his mind to focus back on the present like a rabid dog beaten back into obedience.
Prince titled his head slightly and then gestured at Ryson’s clothes. “You used to look so…regal. Now, well. I know you’re going through a phase, but bless the girl. It’s clear her priority isn’t appearances, but you could do her a few favors.”
Ryson groaned and rubbed his eyes. “It’s not a phase, Prince. It’s death, for cien’s sake.”
“You aren’t dead yet. Though, it’s hard for me to even tell and I’d call myself an expert.”
“Kill me now,” Ryson mumbled.
“I would. I’ve tried. I will, but I’d like to see this unfold first.” Prince responded back honestly.
Still rubbing his face, Ryson sighed and centered his focus back on the decision before him, hopeful that Prince would give him enough silence to think.
There was an odd sensation in his chest. In a world where the pieces of a person were fluid, some bonds extended deeper than agreements of poetry and prose.
He lingered on the questions as he looked in the direction of Loda, he and Clea’s journey feeling bigger than the weeks it had taken, every act they’d done on each other’s behalf to survive feeling now like stitches that had pulled them together. The last events of the castle had threaded deep through him and he resented the exposed nature of his heart, a heart that had once been guilty of leading him down the path of conquest.The most vulnerable part of him was also the most dangerous, and to lose it to her, he likely would have had to make a sacrifice as grand as hers in order to initiate such a bond. For both their good, he had nothing left to give, and offering his life had little weight since his future was already coming to a close.
Every thread of his person, malicious or pure, called him back to Clea, each with a different intention. For that reason he remained fixated there under the canopy. He was another tree in the forest, waiting for a sunset that might reveal which of his intentions were true.
We’ve done something terrible,the thought urged to the forefront of his mind without implication and he shoved it out. Before fully dismissing it from his mind, he grabbed the thought by its sleeve and examined it critically.
We’ve done something terrible,he repeated the pressing phrase in his mind like a cure to his impulses to return to Clea.
It was terrible.
It was all terrible – terrible that this journey had changed him, reminding him of versions of himself that had lived for something. He caught a possible glimpse of Prince’s scheming. He couldn’t help but acknowledge that in growing closer to Clea, he now resembled his former self more than he had in years. Even at the thought of finding her, he was on the edge of himself.
His weapon was a symbol of his past. Perhaps it was fitting that he leave it to her.
The woods beckoned, a mistress in all their transformative mystery. He descended into her silence, wandering like the Warlord’s ghost of legend to die at last in the throws of the past she represented.
The branches churned with whispers, the moon emitting a white glow. Tonight it did not gloat, but hung like a hollow bone. Ryson hoped only to bury it with the rest of them.
Humans did not see the artistry in death.
In the trappings of desire, he saw it now in everything.
He cursed Clea’s kindness.
She would never know it.
In saving his life, she’d killed him.
Free always in the darkness, he 'd become a slave to the light.
