Page 30 of Angel in Absentia
“You don’t kill Veilin anymore,” Alina said, arms crossed. “Now you just offer to let them join us.”
True. It’s odd,Prince echoed.
“He’s concerned the princess would be able to sense it through their bond, I’m sure,” Alina continued harshly. “You’re not even around her and you’re still too delicate with her.”
“Delicate? I’m delicate?” he asked with genuine interest. Ryson sauntered back into the room. He approached the body of the Veilin and sank the dagger into the corpse’s chest.
“There,” he said, opening his arms to them both. “Satisfied?”
Alina rolled her eyes.
I actually did find that satisfying,said Prince.
Ryson drew the dagger back, offering Alina a smile as he breathed, “There. You can’t please everyone.” He returned back to the overlook again. “That said, the only thing left is to pay our princess a visit.” He speculated as he returned his gaze to his dagger. It was only a matter of time, and his lack of satisfaction in the killing of this lord only solidified that fact. He’d pursued a distraction at Alina’s pleading and because it might benefit the Lodain Veilin in the end, but in the wake of it, it was agonizingly clear that there was only one rising star he found himself still eager to embrace.
Every day Clea grew stronger, a blade more and more capable of sharpening his own knife, and he longed for that friction.
It really was every day though.
He wondered, as he tossed the knife up again and caught it, why she was so passionate to grow. Almost desperate for power, and in such a vastly different way than he’d been, almost in preparation for something. He’d pursued power to gain freedom. Her pursuit would only further bind her to her people. He could free her.
He tossed the knife up higher and caught it, growing progressively more restless.
He went from being curious to slightly offended, to concerned, to curious again in a matter of seconds. He observed briefly that feelings were rather tumultuous things, and it was often a bit likewrestling a bear. He didn’t mind it at all; it was riveting, in fact, compared to the numbness he’d grown so accustomed to.
He missed the knife, but it didn’t clatter to the floor. He glanced over to see it lodged through his hand and sighed.
He removed it, tensing his hand as the wound healed. He glanced back at Alina and Prince. “Does she know that nothing waits at the end of power but boredom? It’s a tool. Not a destination.”
Alina sighed, eyebrows raised as she placed a hand on her hip beneath her cloak. Her silver eyes glowed under the darkness of her hood.
“Who is he talking about now?” Alina asked.
Still the princess, the Veilin corpse on the table gurgled.The timing must be right. She must embrace you, and you her. Then, I think the princess would ultimately convince you both to find my body.
“We’re not freeing your body, Prince,” Alina and Ryson both said in firm unison. It was one of the few things they agreed on.
Ryson’s eyes flickered through the room. In the boring devastation of the Belgear Kingdom, he remembered a similarly devastated room in which Clea had claimed that he had healed her.
Healed.What a ridiculous and magnificent claim.
“Healed,” he whispered to himself thoughtfully.
“Not this again.” Alina groaned. “Your name is Alkerrai. The Warlord of Shambelin. You seek to destroy, create chaos, fellkingdoms. You’re the killer of kings. We were destined for destruction.”
Ryson clasped the knife close against his forearm as he folded his arms across his chest. Suddenly solemn, he looked out into the night, coal-black hair brushing his shoulders, still in disarray from his most recent imprisonment. “It’s not what we were originally destined for, Alina. Now, I am the one who remembers, when you do not. The reason I kept my heart. We once had a purpose. We fail every day we don’t pursue it.”
And yet, he found himself still unable to carry out that purpose, that purpose that hung lazily like a corpse, rotting in place, perhaps truly unsalvageable now after so many years. And yet, Clea reminded him of it.
In thinking of her memory, he was reminded of that feeling in Virday when he’d contemplated taking the Deadlock Medallion from the throne, knowing that doing so would cement some path that he’d found strangely seductive at the time. He hadn’t fully connected how the pieces played together, but was glad at last they had. He was glad to be fully awake, and yet strangely, he yearned to be called by a different name than his own.
Alkerrai al Shambelin, his title, rang empty, while he wished to be called Ryson again, the name that had once meant only “shell.” He wished again that Clea would stand before him and call him that name, call him empty, because her voice filled the word like a chalice and he’d drink heartily from it, be poured out only to be filled again at the whim of her will.
Nothing else seemed to be enough.
He chuckled with dark humor. Finding Clea again would commence some end game, an end for him or for her, he didn’tquite know. All he understood, in fact, was that he was simply waiting for that invitation, stayed by the simple reluctance of her call.
It had been almost two years. She’d done magnificent things in two years. He couldn’t imagine what she would accomplish in ten, and yet he knew even he couldn’t wait that long. Two years, much less ten, he had to remind himself, was a very long time for Veilin who died as quickly as flies and flowers.
