Page 20 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)
MOONLIGHT
HE APPARENTLY ESTEEMED and terrifying Alkerrai al Shambelin lay in a fortified and heavily cursed prison.
He rested on his back, plated boots crossed at the ankles against the corroded stone walls.
He watched the moonlight glint faintly off the scuffed metallic toes of the boots, blackened fingers interlaced behind his head.
It was peaceful here, with the grace of a small cut window through which the night air carried the faint bluster of a distant celebration.
The deeper prisons were brimming with other victims, and the Lord of the Belgear Kingdom had seen fit to display The Warlord of Shambelin’s prison high and tall to the rest of the world.
“I hope he’s wearing that coat, the one with the fur around the collar that he so firmly believes is grand and spectacular,” Ryson said to the air, fixated in deep thought.
“The Belgears cultivated such an impressive reputation. Just so impressive. You know, I had a tremendous amount of hope that they’d truly be spectacular. ”
A small spindle of white smoke materialized in the room, churning and then filling the shape of a mask until a complete face with small eyes for the slit and mouth hung against the stone wall.
Alkerrai. He’s had four and a half cups of Veilin blood.
Ryson paused, looking over at the mask.
“What?”
He’s had four and a half cups of Veilin blood.
“What does that have to do with his coat?”
I’ve been gone for an hour.
“Gods, my cien was distracting me again.” Ryson rubbed his hand through his hair, reflecting back on Prince’s original statement. “Four and a half cups. I guess he’s well drunk by now. That was rather quick, wasn’t it? I just got comfortable,” Ryson complained softly.
I believe he was rather put at ease by the undignified display of your torture.
“Did I wail enough?” Ryson asked with a laugh.
The crying was especially convincing. I imagine his dream of true power is void of the indignity you displayed so expertly. By now, he thinks himself entirely above you. A rather spectacular illusion, I must say.
“And thus, my weapon. I suppose it is time to celebrate, isn’t it?” Ryson sighed, whipping his legs from the wall and turning as he peeled the ragged shirt loose from his body.
He flexed his darkened fingers, curses wrapping into spires around his fingertips and protruding like knives before he drew a deep cut along his ribs.
Hot blood poured down his side. He slid his hand beneath his ribs and removed a silver dagger, synched in its scabbard.
It was cursed silver and one of the few weapons capable of killing a powerful Venennin in a single stroke.
The wound healed as he removed the weapon from his skin. He felt the slightest sensation, but little beyond that. His sifting had returned, his entire body so wrought with past wounds that pain was nothing more than a hum in the back of his mind.
He laid the dagger near the bars of the cell before planting a curse over his chest that raced over his body, transforming him into a silver-eyed black cat that promptly slid through the cursed bars and shifted back into a man.
Naked, he leaned through the bars, took the knife, and then stretched for his clothes. Prince watched in the corner as Ryson’s fingers came just short of his clothes and he paused.
Ryson sat with his legs crossed, reaching through a second set of bars as if it might give him an advantage.
Do you want me to—?
“No,” Ryson said before pausing and reaching again, barely hooking a piece of cloth with his fingers before it fell loose again.
You should really just use a curse.
“I don’t need curses for everything,” Ryson replied obstinately, dragging his clothes a couple of inches closer.
I doubt many refuse to use curses on account of mastering them.
“Got it,” he replied, snaking his clothes through the bars before dressing again in the darkness. “Mastering anything completely is quite akin to killing it. I refuse to say I’ve mastered curses. My hobbies are dwindling enough as they are.”
Brandishing his dagger, he stopped at the top of the stairs, looking down in the darkness.
Much like the pain of his sifting, the darkness was a sea of consistency, akin to the silence of death.
He felt that silence through his body, much like he felt it through the darkness of the forest. He had once longed for that, receded into that slumber, hoping to never be disturbed. Things were different now.
He closed his eyes to the night, to the castle, centering his focus beyond the surrounding silence and the quiet of the constant, immovable darkness within.
Prince waited patiently.
Ryson took a deep breath as he lifted his chin, chest swelling with the coolness of the air.
He listened to the light, quiet flutter of a heart that was not his own.
He’d awoken from the depths of his slumber with just that sound and was changed by the melody of it.
A campfire in the forest, it was a beautiful tether back to life again, a single string that connected him to everything.
At last, he’d been inspired to create art again, inspired to move, and live, and exist, feeling the influence of her heart through his body.
The tempo of her heart had become the backdrop of his own life.
He lifted his hands in the darkness as if he could feel time slipping through his fingers, each moment like a string he was preparing to play, and he could hear the thump of that lively, light heart in the background, setting the tempo for the song to come.
He rotated the knife in his hand and moved it through the air. He took a step, the metal of his boots clipping against the stone. He took two more, opening his eyes, as he carved the knife against the stone.
What are you doing?
“Shh,” Ryson said, lifting a hand to the air.
“Listen. The song is starting.” He rolled his hand through the air before slipping toward King Belgear’s vivid celebration.
He eased through the dark and ghosted through the corridor, watching the long table of Venennin in the center of the room before an ornate chair.
They were all drunk with the blood of Veilin tied up on the table.
There was a man and a woman, the woman drained and her corpse lying pale and lifeless.
The man still rolled his head from side to side in murky suffering.
Fires burned in celebration; Venennin played cruel games that creatively wove in suffering and desire, binds and weapons, cuts and caresses interlaced in a sea of roiling bodies.
Everyone was so distracted in the drunken tide that Ryson was simply another figure as he entered the room.
Despite the music they played, he listened to the song building beyond them.
Thump. Thump. Thump. The quiet heartbeat still played in the background of his mind, setting the pace.
Many open arches exposed the room’s festivities to the world beyond, a world carrying out its own celebration.
Naked, bloodied bodies writhed either in pain or pleasure, decorating nearby carpets and couches with coiling movement.
Ryson had long respected that it was often hard to tell the difference between pain and pleasure, and somewhat passively acknowledged how long it had been since he’d had the opportunity to lose himself in either.
He flipped the knife in his hand, easing up behind the main chair of the table where the Venennin Lord of the Belgears cheered and celebrated, a near-empty chalice lifted for another service of Veilin blood.
Ryson was pleased to see that the king in fact was wearing the hideous celebratory coat with the fur around the collar.
Ryson snaked down from behind his head, one hand gently covering the lord’s around the chalice as if prepared to fill his cup.
The lord was in a daze, realizing too late that the hand over his was not one of his servants.
Ryson used his other hand to pull the blade hot and fast across the lord’s throat, anchoring the chalice close enough under his neck as he used the dagger blade to tip the man’s chin up and empty his own blood into the chalice.
It took a moment for the room to recognize what had happened.
One Venennin nearby screamed in gurgling astonishment that parsed itself from the shouts and moans of the room.
When others turned, mid-laughter, and saw the picture, too bizarre to immediately contest, they were struck into silence.
In the midst of revelry, silence spread like a disease.
Ryson circled around the throne, bloodied goblet in his hand, dripping knife in the other.
He tapped the knife lightly against the edge of the chalice, mirroring the music of the heart in his ears and the clip of his steps. The rest of the room that had still been too drunk or distracted to notice the change in events fell into silence as if they could hear the music too.
“A toast,” he said, circling the table as he eyed each and every Venennin, others straightening from a slouch at the table or uncoiling from a mass of entangled bodies.
The lord’s dead body shifted; everyone’s heads looked up at his seat as he lifted from the chair like a puppet.
“Let’s honor the Lord of Belgear!” Ryson lifted the chalice from the opposite side of the table in cheers, and the dead king swept up a chalice from the table, possessed in Prince’s power, and offered a cheer.
“By cien, what a feat!” Ryson continued pacing around the table, walking and speaking in a tempo known only to himself, but faintly recognizable to the world.
“You’ve secured the lands of Shambelin!”
He circled until he was back at the king’s opposite side. “Lord Belgear, what did you say was one of your greatest accomplishments?”