Page 12 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)

Clea was so startled by the declaration that she couldn’t help but laugh.

“Negotiate a deal with our slavers?” Her eyes narrowed, hands landing now on her hips.

“Why not partner with any of the other Venennin and use the Deadlock Medallion like you say? Aren’t there others?

The Virads? The Ashanas?” she prodded, though she knew both kingdoms had been long silent.

The silence settled again, deepening this time. The flickering torchlight suddenly seemed ominous against Myken’s face where he kneeled in the earth. The red line in his eyes, the last evidence of his original identity, seemed to struggle forth in his gaze like the message he kept trying to share.

“You don’t know what happened in the old war, do you? What the Warlord of Shambelin did to them?” he asked.

Clea waited, certain that if she waited long enough, he would share. His expression was focused, dark, honest. She expected the coming tale to match in every way.

“The Virads and the Ashanas were kingdoms of immense power whose altercations wrecked the very land they aimed to claim,” Myken began.

“Shambelin, the last country with surviving Veilin, and its vast human cities, was the final resource to be won. As the Warlord drove them back, they reached an impasse. The Virads and Ashanas locked into a rare alliance that would have been a decisive end to the Insednians.” Myken’s voice maintained a cool cadence as if he were in a trance.

The room felt darker and colder around them.

“The Virad Lord was a Venennin of illness, the Ashanas Lord a Venennin of hunger. They were wielders and slaves of those powers.”

Clea had heard vague references to the Warlord’s battle with the other Warlords before the three, or supposedly, four, heroes were introduced. This retelling was not Loda’s history, but she had heard a version of it before. She had never heard the Venennin version of things.

“The Warlord of Shambelin captured the largest city, the city of Salanes. He then withdrew from the war, publicly surrendering Salanes to the Virads under the guise of a secret alliance. This enraged the Ashanas Lord, who marched on Salanes directly, so blinded by his own hunger, he could not imagine that the Virad Lord would do anything but claim the country in its entirety. He expected warfare. He came for that, not realizing that the Warlord of Shambelin had betrayed the Virad Lord, trapping her infected body in the city.”

Clea flipped through her knowledge of the fourth city of Salanes, the City of the Soul, as many called it.

“When the Ashanas Lord realized the trick, it was too late. He had been lured too deeply into his vice. He’d become a monster, eating and consuming everything in his path, tearing through Salanes and devouring the entire city, along with the Virad Lord, her illness, and her followers.

The Virad Kingdom fell, and the Ashanas Lord withdrew to the Wraithlands where the infection he had consumed then spread inside him, creating a kingdom of Venennin trapped by ceaseless hunger and illness.

There, he wasted away, his followers now hosts of contagious hunger and illness, kept from Shambelin by the illusion of the forest, which marks off the Warlord’s territory.

That is, until the Warlord disappeared.”

Clea waited in the silence of the dark tale. If what Myken said was true, the Warlord of Shambelin had used the city of Salanes as bait, tempting the Ashanas Lord to consume it, only to ingest the poison within.

“So, you see,” Myken said, “the Belgears and the Iscads were less ambitious kingdoms that simply wanted to survive, but the ancient ones…” He paused.

Clea imagined the war board upstairs, sitting alone in the council room with its small symbols representing kingdoms with centuries of history.

“The ancient kingdoms are not like us. The Virads are gone, having never recovered from the Warlord’s final blows.

The Insednians care little for human life except to use it as a pawn.

The Ashanas…they are cursed with hunger and illness.

They eat and infect, two potent forces now blended into something horrific that has grown in the darkness of the Wraithlands.

They hunger for Shambelin. The illness that infected your family is only the faintest hint of their power.

Now, suggest again, who do we have to turn to for help? ”

Clea didn’t respond and she didn’t look away. They watched each other carefully in the silence. Myken was indeed a persuasive trader because in a matter of minutes, he had made her feel like her city was running out of options and an alliance with the Belgearians was the only solution.

She felt the pressure and she pushed back on it, whispering, “You are an adept tradesman, Myken. That I grant you. The Ashanas have been dormant for ages. Not a single word or evidence of their existence. Those lands are covered in curses so dark, they’re unlivable, even to Venennin.

It’s a wasteland of ice, they—” She stopped.

Her arms lowered by her sides.

She was back in King Kartheen’s castle again, standing there the moment that Ryson had destroyed her illness and opened up a chasm to another world of darkness and ice. It had been frigid and dead, eyes watching ominously through a veil Ryson had torn in breaking her free from her curse.

“The Decline,” she whispered to herself, resting a knuckle over her mouth thoughtfully.

“You understand?” Myken said, a lilt of eagerness in his voice, body straining forward from the chains as if he could see the revelation breaking through the wall of her defenses.

“The Ashanas cast the illness upon your family, and many more strewn across the continent of Shambelin. They are the quiet cause of The Decline. Until you managed to break free from your illness, until the collapse of King Kartheen’s castle, until you broke whatever that object was you had with you.

I don’t know what it all means, but I’m not the only one who has noticed the pattern.

The entire continent is stirring. The Decline is over; the stalemate is over.

The second and final half of the war has begun. ”

Every new detail was more and more daunting, making Clea feel progressively more overwhelmed. She needed to step out and think. She’d been looking for answers, but these were so difficult to digest that her thoughts spun with them.

Not enough. The feeling was intolerable. She couldn’t listen anymore. As if he could feel her withdraw, he spoke faster. She moved to the door.

“You have your history, you have the four cities and the four heroes, but your history only speaks of what they set out to do! It is our history that reveals what they ultimately became!” he declared, and she stopped, looking over her shoulder.

“Open Helena Hart’s grave,” he pleaded. “You will find it empty. Don’t ignore my warnings,” he said, his eyes glowing ominously. “An alliance with the Belgears is your last hope. You don’t know what’s coming.”

She left the dungeon and closed the door to find Catagard standing outside.

Her heart pounded.

“What happened?” Catagard asked in an eager whisper.

Clea shed her cloak, fingers trembling with that same strange sensation that had been building in her body since her return to Loda. “He was sent to us on purpose, as a messenger from the Belgears.”

She looked over at Catagard, still struggling to process it all. “They’re…” She paused, considering the absurdity of the words she was about to share. “They’re asking for our help.”

Catagard studied her critically.

She crossed her arms and took a breath, walking a tight circle in the small space of the corridor, torch burning faintly down the tunnel beyond them. A faint echoing sound clipped through the tunnel, and there was silence again.

“I say we engage them,” she said, glancing back over at Catagard as she stopped walking.

“Don’t believe them, but consider releasing him back to deliver a message.

He isn’t an Insednian,” she explained and then provided Catagard with the details of her conversation, her mind actively trying to retrace it all.

“Then we engage,” Catagard said evenly. “I’ll speak with the council.”

He paused, watching her gather herself as she continued to pace thoughtfully.

“You have your mother’s heart and your father’s head. Sometimes, watching you, I feel like I see them arguing,” he observed coolly.

Clea laughed, her chest feeling tight, and then she sighed.

“Thank you,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure it was a compliment, and wasn’t even sure she was really thanking him.

Catagard had been a long-term friend of their family, losing his only son in battle and training up her brothers with the dedication of that grief.

“Catagard,” Clea said, stopping again before crossing her arms.

“Yes?” he replied.

“Helina Hart’s grave. Is it possible to check it?”

“Check it?”

“Yes, to see if it’s empty.”

“Strange request,” he said, obviously puzzled by it, and possibly a bit disturbed. “Normal for you, though, I suppose.”

Clea tried to take that last comment as a compliment as well.

“No, the grave is sealed and buried. Why?” he finished.

Clea scratched her head, taking in another uneasy breath and dispelling it. She felt like her skin was crawling restlessly. There was no chance of checking Oliver Padren’s grave in Virday, but maybe Prince Idan could look into Vanida’s grave in Ruedom.

She stopped herself before considering it for much longer, resolving to mention it to Idan later only if her uneasiness still lingered.

“Nothing,” Clea said at last. “I just—I think the Venennin was trying to get inside my head. Toy with me. Completely expected. Think nothing of it.”

Catagard nodded once, and they turned back into the corridor, Clea glancing back once at the iron cell.

Journeys to Virday, battles at King Kartheen’s castle, mention of the Deadlock Medallion, and now the appearance of Myken. It was all strange, the past repeating itself in a bizarre rewrite.

She played with the pin on her necklace, and though it apparently kept Insednians away, she toyed with the idea of Ryson making another appearance.

He was, perhaps, the last missing character.

Virday liberated, she a rising queen, Myken the prisoner, Kartheen’s castle a bundle of stones and vines.

If she saw him again, she wondered, what new form would he take?