Page 84 of Light Locked
“I wanted you to suffer,” she said, staring as she thumped her nails against the stone. “You owed me suffering.”
Ryson laughed, “Owed you?”
Her hands clawed into the stone before she thrust one hand out toward him with several fingers missing, “You cut off my fingers!” she shrieked, “they can’t grow back no matter what host I take! They fall off every time! I can’t inhabit any bodies properly and I certainly can’t walk around in the form of my soul with missing fingers!”
“You don’t expose your soul to the world because you’re vain! And I took your fingers decades ago!” Ryson shouted back, gesturing out around him. “That’s what all this is about?”
She hissed at him from behind a column and then darted to the other side of it, still holding the column with a wild rage in her eyes, “And with all the potential to rule, you went to sleep! You were the Warlord of Shambelin for cien’s sake!”
I dare say, I think she’s angrier about her fingers.
“Be quiet, Prince!” Alina snapped at the dead onlookers who followed their fight in a dazed stupor.
“You’re helping to facilitate a war because of a few missing fingers?” Ryson taunted, “Really, Alina? Even for you, that’s insane.”
She’s also the one that sealed your soul. That’s why you woke up with her on your mind. That’s why you wanted to kill her.
“You’ve been waiting to share that with him from the start, haven’t you?” Alina shouted at the audience, hand poised on her hip. “Prince has been so jealous that you came after me first,” Alina continued, gesturing to Ryson now. “It’s the first thing he asked me when he got here.”
“You,” Ryson lowered his weapons slightly. “You’re the one who did this to me?”
Alina rolled her eyes. “Of course I did. Who else knew where your tomb was? Had the power to perform a curse like that? Your end was so anticlimactic, I suppose I was hoping you’d put up more of a fight if I spurred you on a bit. You take my fingers, I take your soul.”
Ryson swept an arm out angrily, clawing through the air. The locks on the surrounding cages blew open, releasing the captives. When some hesitated out of fear, Ryson roared back at them, “Go! Now!”
Alina hissed, launched off the column and dove for him as a horned, slithering beast, bursting from the person’s skin and slamming into him. They rolled through the sand, Ryson holding the monster back as it snapped at his face.
He bucked it forward, lunging a blade through its throat and tossing the corpse off of him as he leapt up with his blade drawn again.
“This was about your fingers!” Ryson hissed, wiping blood from his face. “One big game! Even to me, this feels petty!”
The important thing is that we’re all here now. Shambelin is at the brink. The warlords at the borders are building their forcesto invade. We could be at war again soon. Shouldn’t we discuss that? Alina, don’t you want to return Ryson’s soul? Ryson, isn’t there a way to return Alina’s fingers?
“Be quiet, Prince!” Alina and Ryson both shouted simultaneously, Ryson now alerted to Alina’s new host that prowled around the corner. It was an old woman now with a ghastly brown smile.
“Besides,” Alina said, “His soul is out of reach.”
“And so are her fingers, along with her senses,” Ryson whispered back as they circled each other. Prince added the most recent fatality to his audience, the other corpses dusting it off and adjusting its clothes and hair.
“And even if I had it in my hand right now, there would be no use in releasing it,” Alina said, her host’s body cracking and twisting. “Not when the curse on his heart would just return and he’d eventually go back to sleep like a corpse. I like him much more like this. I love the passion!”
The last words came with a roar as she leapt into a beast and Ryson cut her down hard and fast. Prince withdrew the body again.
“I love that his heart is free of its curse!” A voice shouted from a street away, another host captured in Alina’s vices. “He aches to kill me, Prince! I miss it. I do miss it so much! You know, when he cut off my fingers, he didn’t even seem to care. If he’d done it out of spite, I wouldn’t have minded so much, but he didn’t even seem to enjoy it! It was a cruel act. It was heartless! You see now, how he hates me? See how I disgust him?”
Ryson edged along a wall as Alina fell silent, waiting for her to appear as Prince’s crowd followed him.
I do see.Prince said in agreement.
“You’re both ridiculous,” Ryson muttered under his breath as his mind wound through a solution to the battle. His cursed daggers wouldn’t do him any good if she kept switching hosts as soon as he dealt a killing blow.
Alina’s vice was terror, just as Prince’s was death. He could use that.
What if the curse on his heart could not return? What if we put his heart somewhere else first? Somewhere safe? Somewhere out of reach? And then we released his soul?
Another host walked out, a young man who stretched and yawned in the sun. “Ugh, Prince. Your speculation bores me. And how do you suppose we move a heart without sealing it, hmm? Just let the man die today. It’s clearly what he wants, and I want to tear him to pieces. All is right with the world. I’ll give you his corpse.”
The young man leaned against a column, picking at his nails before scraping them along his scalp.
