Page 13 of Angel in Absentia
“No, neither,” Catagard said, and then Clea knew the answer.
Insednian, she thought, and then shortly after arose that single name to which that word would always be tied:Ryson.
CHAPTER 5
THE INSEDNIAN
T HAD TO be Ryson. There was no other possibility. Only Ryson knew her.
She thought back on her conversation with Iris. Had Iris spoken with him? Who else had? Who else knew? What had he said?
The Insednian in the dungeon.
“That rumor is true?” Clea said, remembering Dae’s words from the night of their arrival. She began to panic. None of this made any sense, but she could feel the secrets of her journey surging back to the surface.
Catagard grimaced at the mention of the rumor, the grimace looking a bit more like a flinch before dissolving into the often calm mask of his face. “The servants and their mousy noses and less mousy mouths. You can see why I preferred to speak with you out here.”
“And the prisoner has been completely secured?” she asked, trying to remember what questions she might ask if she felt threatened instead of eager.
Ryson? Could it really be Ryson?Beneath it all, she couldn’t resist feeling thrilled. As afraid as she was for the scrutiny of her city, she had missed him dearly and had often considered his well-being. She had sometimes questioned if Prince shouldhave been trusted after all to ferry him off in his last moments of apparent madness.
“Yes,” Catagard said, his footfalls softening as they moved from the ashen forest to a beaten-down path near the wall. “In the Lodain fashion. He can do you no harm. Can you think of anything that might have prompted this?”
“No,” Clea said, and she meant it. She really didn’t know why Ryson might have returned as a prisoner of all things, if it was him, after all.
“And you are sure he’s…” She hesitated and then nodded to Catagard.
“Partially,” Catagard said. “Mostly silver eyes, but there is some red.”
Clea remembered when she’d seen spots of dull red in Ryson’s eyes, when he’d depleted his power so thoroughly that it nearly killed him. It had been over a year, and it wasn’t like he’d had the medallion to help feed him cien any longer. Had he come for help of some kind?
As Catagard explained the ways in which they had tried to torture the Insednian for information, her concerns only swelled until her heart ached. The journey back to the castle felt longer than it had ever been, and to get to the deep dungeons, they had to travel corridors that even the servants did not explore, hidden back passages that filled the elaborate interior of the castle. Clea took paths she hadn’t taken since sneaking into her mother’s carriage years ago.
Catagard at last led her to a single bolted cell, dressed in gold trinkets that reflected the light of freshly lit torches. Venennindidn’t need food or water, so these deep cells had been used, on the rarest occasions, to imprison only them. These cells were meant to be forgotten.
“Are you sure?” Catagard asked, reaffirming if she wanted to enter the cell alone. They both watched the bolted cell, and she ached, thinking of the weeks Ryson had possibly been abandoned in this darkness alone.
Clea nodded to the door before pulling the hood of a blessed Lodain robe over her head that had been prepared on a hook near the wall. Catagard put gold trinkets on her wrist and blessed them with seals that could ward off cien. It was more ceremony than anything else, but ceremony soothed the superstitious soul of the Lodain people, and right now Clea was being prepared in all ways to resist the dangerous and little-understood black power of the Insednians. They were a different kind of Venennin after all, and few understood those differences. Many of the stories about them were still steeped in myth: that they sacrificed Veilin on full moons, that in larger numbers they leveled mountains, that they worshipped death, or carried the bloodline of the Warlord of Shambelin. It wasn’t like anyone had ever sat down and conversed with one—well, not until Clea, but she’d done so by accident and apparently skipped all of the important questions.
Clea’s heart pounded as she approached the cell and Catagard prepared to unlock it. She swallowed hard as the door was opened with a screech. She stepped into the holding cell and gestured for Catagard to close it behind her. The thick iron would at least give them some privacy, something she had insisted on strongly for the sake of ushering out the Venennin’s true intentions.
The holding cell was dark and paved with blessed earth and thin chains of gold. There was no evidence that the earth had any restrictive effect, nor the gold, but in the absence of concrete evidence of protection, sometimes these sufficed.
Clea entered the dark cell covered from head to toe in the blue and white garb, with the small gold chains around her ankles and wrists. On the opposite cell was the body of a tormented Venennin, cut in small, scant places. Tormenting them never required drastic measures as the cien in their system did most of the work, preserving their pain long after the wound healed. If Clea was right, then the cutting had no effect, because if Ryson was low on cien, he would heal normally, and if his cien had been restored, then he was sifted and incapable of feeling more pain anyway.
His head hung, his wrists captured in gold-plated shackles that bound him like a bird in flight to the back wall.
Ryson.Clea wanted to say his name out loud, but it felt trapped in her throat. The sheer possibility of being able to talk to him again, to be able to look into the eyes of someone who knew her story, knew who she was, and be seen again, made her heart lift in anticipation. Already, she wondered how she could set him free.
“Another come to torment me?” the voice rasped.
Surprised by it, Clea remained completely silent against the door. She questioned if she’d heard wrong, for as the voice echoed harshly through the cell, she found that she recognized the voice, but it wasn’t Ryson’s.
Her mind flew through the voices of her past. It wasn’t Ryson, and yet as the Insednian’s dark head of hair hung in front of her, she could think of no one else.
She stepped across the earth and rows of gold chains. The man lifted his head from where he hung.
She stopped when she saw the silver glow on a face she’d known hadn’t once possessed it.
