Page 72 of Angel in Absentia
She assured herself that her councilmen were wise and skeptical, her soldiers and guards prudent, her people loyal. Ryson wanted to be healed of sifting. She could do that, and then in that moment, strike. She would kill him because she had to. The version of him she had known was gone.
The Ryson she had known was not the Warlord of Shambelin.
“And if our queen consents,” Ryson said, jolting Clea from her thoughts, “I’ll demonstrate.”
Clea looked over at him as he offered a silver hand, palm open. She looked around the room, lost on what Ryson had only just suggested. Her eyes flickered to his suspiciously.
“The piece beyond you, if you would, my queen,” he said with a knowing smile.
Clea looked to her other side, reaching with her painted fingers for a wooden piece of the dragon representing the Ashanas to the south. She placed it carefully in Ryson’s hand. His silver fingers folded over her painted ones as he held her eyes and said, “Let’s begin.”
When he addressed the room, his tone changed, and she settled in her seat, unable to shake the sensation that those words had been just for her.
Chapter 22
Illusion of Love
HREE WEEKS PASSED. The Ashanas were nowhere to be seen, and the city settled into the strangest sense of monotony. It astounded Clea how quickly a city adjusted to a new normal as long as the momentum of their lives did not change. There were brief altercations and whispers of groups intent on revolt, but rumors dissolved, and the more Insednians instilled some return to security, the more the desire to question revolt dissolved with it. Fed, given water, and protected both in their walls and their customs, Clea heard little true discontent.
The longer time went on without any real interference from the Insednians, other rumors began to circulate. There were rumors that an Insednian had prevented a robbery, another that one had helped carry an injured woman from the woods back to safety, and another still that no forest beasts had been spotted anywhere in the last several weeks.
Of course, to Clea’s dismay, the rumors were not as false as she would have liked.
The truth was, the Insednians had indeed come to their aid, had indeed helped restore the city to working order, and had allowed its queen and new council members to run things as they wished, while offering protection, support, and asking only for healing in return.
Clea had to hide her shock when one morning she noticed a Veilin man, freely healing a small cut of an Insednian woman onthe healing temple’s steps. They had been talking to each other too. She swore she even saw one smile. Others noticed, but the moment came and went, and before long, it no longer seemed so strange.
On a day like today, Clea was reminded of how the streets of Loda no longer cried. She’d finished a council meeting and in the late evening was planning on staying with Iris in her cottage near the wall. She’d been sleeping there as of late, a part of her own strategy of avoidance and as a public show that there was still some separation between herself and Loda’s new ruler. She couldn’t imagine the rumors if she’d continued to maintain her status as queen and remained in the castle with Ryson.
“Can I join you?”
She nearly jolted when Ryson greeted her from a nearby street as she left the castle courtyard.
She watched him carefully, feeling that she should decline but not seeing an obvious reason to. She would be walking through the city to Iris, all in public, and her people had seen them together already before. If anything, it seemed to give her people a sense of peace that she and Ryson were being civil.
He smiled at her obvious deliberations as he approached.
“I suppose,” she said firmly and walked on. He kept pace with her and for a moment said nothing. They made their way through the streets, catching eyes as they crossed along the cobblestones. Castle guards followed tentatively behind them.
Clea had walked the streets so many times, past shuttered doors and broken stalls, through markets left hollow and stoops once filled with mourning. Now, they were open. Lit. Quiet in away that wasn’t tense or grieving. There was little trace of the Insednians other than the one that now paced silently beside her. The people walked freely. Even children passed them by, so engaged in play that they didn’t notice when they rushed by the knee of the Warlord of Shambelin.
The contrast was jarring. She saw a peace she hadn’t dared to hope for, and he was at the center of it, a lion in a den of lambs, tender and careful. And her heart, a traitorous thing, softened.
She didn’t trust him. But part of her wanted to. She wanted the peace she felt tonight to stretch on and on, uninterrupted, permanent.
Their steps were quiet. He didn’t push or rush or tease; he acted like he’d only wanted to walk with her. The innocence of it inspired an angry torrent of words that wanted her to stop him now and demand that he reveal his true intentions.
She knew what else lived inside him. The thoughts had persisted with painful weight as the weeks passed with no word from Dae or Catagard, or even Ruedom for that matter.
“You’re doing all of this for my people,” Clea said after a while. “I need to know why. You promised once not to lie to me.”
“Yes, a hefty promise I made at the end of my life,” he said smoothly. “Remind me to renegotiate that later. I can’t guarantee I can keep it with all of the time we have now.”
He glanced down at her with an even, truthful expression. She scanned him for malintent, but he was saturated with cien. He was malintent. He wasn’t like a Veilin or even humans or Kalex who accumulated cien when planning awful things. He was already infected by it, and unlike Myken, the darkness of hissoul filled all the space inside him. There was nothing but that darkness. She couldn’t read him.
“Stop that,” he said, and flicked her nose.
She jolted back, holding her face in shock. He looked equally offended.
