Page 91 of Angel in Absentia
Ryson had once told her that Venennin only slept when in need of extra recovery. In the peaceful state where Ryson now lay, it was hard to believe he’d been a beast that had torn open throats and ripped lesser monsters into pieces.
Clea looked down at her body. Many of her bruises were now gone. She remembered her own struggle, and felt a chill as she recalled her encounter with the Eating Ocean. That’s what it was. That’s what it had to be. She’d absorbed that knowledge as if the previous healer had left it behind. She’d followed his footsteps over those waters and to that door.
You mustn't give one your soul!Prince demanded with a voice that almost roared with terror.
Prince? Terrified? What had the previous healer done that was so egregious?
Clea watched Ryson carefully. Ryson, who’d once told her that Ryson was not actually his name. He wasn’t Oliver Padren. There was only one option left if he too was one of the original heroes, but he had yet to make that claim. Prince Eras was said to be the hero of Salanes. Would Ryson answer by that name?
Images of yesterday’s battle rushed back into her mind, a fearsome silver beast with rows of wings, tearing through foes like straw. He was anything but a heroic Veilin prince. The world was now rid of so many evils, but if Ryson alone decided to turn his teeth against Loda, they would not survive it. It was too much power for one being, and if Alina was right, his restraint hung by a thread. If the thread was Clea, then she found herself much too vulnerable for such a role.
She was perhaps the only being capable of killing him.
Unable to tolerate the thought, Clea eased from bed and released a long breath. Thirsty, she walked tiredly into the darkness of the bathroom. She filled a glass with water and drank, sinking down against the bath tiles which were a welcome relief against her skin. She took a breath in the silence.
All of their enemies were gone. The final city remained. She absorbed the reality of her losses. Catagard and Idan were unlikely to be among the refugees, but Dae had been spared. Maybe in the coming days, they would still find survivors in the woods.
Her people were alive. The war was essentially over. She was silently grateful for the choices she’d questioned so heavily over the last year. She was glad to have advocated for Virday, glad to have told the High Council the truth about her life, glad to have left Ruedom when she did, and glad to have called on Prince in her time of need.
She was glad she had not relinquished her burdens and fled. The forest had called at every point and she had refused it. She chuckled now at the version of her seduced by the thought of bearing the Insednian curse, of becoming a slave to it. She had carried the harder choices and ultimately found liberty in that. It was only at that moment that she realized that escaping into the forest, escaping from her responsibilities, would have been her ultimate downfall.
She took another sip of water and smiled. Ryson had suggested that everyone was trapped in their own best intentions, that his vice was little more than an exaggeration of the human condition. Maybe he was right.
“Princess,” she heard him call in a hoarse whisper. Her entire being responded in an instant, tugged by the sound of his voice. She walked back into the room, offering him the water on impulse and then surprised when he drank.
He finished it and put it down before urging her forward and around until she was wrapped in his arms. He took a deep, tired breath behind her.
“Having me this close will slow your healing,” she whispered into the air, feeling his breath wash across her neck. She was reminded of being in the carriage on the way to King Katheen’s castle when they’d both been prisoners. She’d held close to him for warmth and found a unique comfort there. He’d been a shelter.
There was a peculiar silence in the castle around them, the highest floor full of nothing but empty rooms.
“I’m healed,” he breathed. “The worst of it is never the wounds. It’s finding a way back from the beast that borrows my body. After my last battle with Oliver, my heart was unable to recover, and I slept.”
The beast that borrows my body.Clea repeated the phrase to herself, knowing he spoke of his own soul. The monster she’d witnessed last night was always slumbering in the deepest recesses of what he was, contorted by cien beyond all recognition.
“Your battle with Oliver,” she repeated back in a whisper, realizing now that Helena Hart could never have slain the Warlord of Shambelin or even committed him to slumber.
“Yes,” Ryson confirmed tiredly. She imagined his eyes were closed. Something in his voice sounded empty when last night, even with his wounds, he’d had humor. “Oliver Padren was the original lord of the Ashanas Kingdom.”
Clea sat with the revelation for a moment, but before she could ask questions, he continued.
“I kept my heart so that I would never forget our purpose. Oliver and Helena fell into madness. The four heroes drank from the heart of cien–the darkest waters. The power was profound, but so were the hungers. My clash with Oliver cost me every thread of my humanity, but one. I fell into slumber to preserve it. You tugged on that thread, Princess, and now, I hold fast to it.”
Alina had been right after all.
Clea curled her arms around his, feeling his vulnerability and her own weakness. “I saw what you became,” she whispered, swallowing as her eyes pricked with tears, “it’s too much power for anyone to have.”
“It can be contained,” he whispered back.
“I meant me,” she said back, and he shifted behind her. She turned in his arms, both of them face to face. His eyes were black in the morning light, hair disheveled. She wanted to reach her hand to his face, touch his skin, the barrier between them painful. “What if I fail?” she whispered. “What if something happens to me and you lose control? There has to be another way.”
“Princess–”
“You can’t guarantee my actions,” she whispered. “You lost sight of the light. What if I do? I need to be allowed to make mistakes. I will. One day.”
They carried each other’s eyes in the silence.
“If there is any chance of this succeeding,” she whispered, “I will have to stay in Loda, stay grounded in the light with other Veilin. If I keep your heart, I cannot be in the forest and risk it falling into darkness. I’m not sure I can even be around you or be around Insednians.”
