Page 22 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)

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 like wrestling 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, fell kingdoms. 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’t quite 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.

“It’s time to claim the prize of the Belgears,” Ryson whispered, suddenly restless again. He hoped from the ledge. “Let’s go.”

???

Ryson walked through the dark hallways beneath the kingdom, Prince’s mask hovering over his shoulder.

He gestured with a wrist, and the large doors in front of him cracked and opened, a towering wave of cien flooding his senses and washing around him as he entered the chamber. Prince’s mask wavered and hovered back as Ryson continued to walk forward, stopping in Lord Belgear’s large coat.

Crossing his arms, Ryson inspected the swirling gem, encased in old, tarnished silver. It filled the chamber with pulsing power, shocks of black lightning darting out in every direction, dancing over dusted skeletons and other thieves who had tried to take it before.

“Oliver was quite the craftsman, wasn’t he?” Ryson said, a flash of lightning breaking through and searing across Ryson’s chest. He continued to simply watch, the skin healing as another strike of darkness sailed past his shoulder.

You claim boredom, but you could always challenge the Ashana. They are in many ways your equal in force. Perhaps the last equal.

“You mean, besides yourself?” Ryson asked.

Free my body.

“We’ve been over this,” Ryson said. “But that’s not what you really want? All along. You just want to be human. I remember it all now. Every detail, the heart of your existence and mine.”

Prince fell silent and didn’t respond.

Another stroke of powerful darkness flashed across his face, searing his jawbone.

Ryson walked forward, the strokes of energy growing more powerful and more aggressive the closer he came.

The winds howled; the room shook. His skin tore back and healed over and over as the gem flashed and transformed.

Ryson laughed once in delight as the gem was shrouded in waves of blackened energy, organs, and bones coiling together from otherworldly planes, cloaked in skin until a forest beast towered over him, horns grazing the vaulted ceilings that stretched up thirty feet.

Ryson snapped a hand up with a grin, moving as if cutting his fingers through the beast and shattering the gem in a savage and blinding release of cien. The monster roared as it vanished into dust.

The silence that remained was peculiar and empty. Ryson turned his hand over and allowed the dust that remained from the medallion to fall empty onto the floor. He inspected the disfigured metal with Oliver Padren’s forged signet marked across the back.

He frowned.

You’re exceptionally well rested. I’m sure on another day, it would have been more of a challenge.

Ryson wiped the dust slowly and dreadfully on the lord’s coat.

Prince continued on as if he could sense Ryson’s disappointment and found it completely intolerable.

I’m sure there are other, vaster kingdoms out in the Wraithlands. Horrible, terrible places that are formidable.

Ryson wiped his hand again and then inspected his palm.

“Alkerrai,” Alina sang from the hall where they’d come. “There are vast rows of prisoners just beneath us, all starved, all close to death. There is no food for miles.”

Ryson looked over at Prince’s mask skeptically, raising a brow.

She’s right , Prince said.

“Fine,” Ryson responded, wiping his hands together and clearing the last of the dust off of them. “Kill them,” he replied and then looked over his shoulder. “But Alina,” he sang back, mirroring her tone, “torture any of them and I’ll gladly dismember you.”

He saw the light fade from her eyes, even from beneath the hood, her expression clear. He cracked a vicious smile and then looked back at the remains of the medallion and all of its reminders before his smile faded.

In thinking of the past with all of its weight, he could only think too of the future.

“The Deadlock Medallion, destroyed at last,” he said, defeatedly.

Ryson’s senses expanded in the moment. His eyes narrowed, a slight smile crossing his mouth as he said, “You.” The world seemed completely empty beyond his silver eyes that watched with great clarity, turning into the darkness above him.

He reached forward tenderly, pulling Clea toward him from where her presence hovered.

???

Ryson held her hand, but Clea could not see it, only feel its pull as he guided her forward.

She realized then very little about what was happening, only that she had been observing this strange sequence passively, reaching for it, following the trail of her own heart to this distant land.

Ryson seemed to see her when none others could, and when he saw her, she became more aware of her own existence, drowning in an ocean of vacancy and desperately waiting for someone to pull her out of the mire.

“Something’s happened,” he whispered, looking her over though it seemed there was nothing really to see.

Her thoughts floated loosely; Clea felt like she was underwater in a world where everyone spoke another language that she knew but for some reason could not digest and understand.

She could only observe passively, following this fine thread to her heart, which rested in his chest, the rest of her broken across planes.

“You’ve gotten yourself into a bit of trouble, haven’t you, Princess?” he asked tenderly, reaching out a hand, and though she did not feel his touch, she knew, somehow, he was touching her.

“Rest,” he whispered, and like the command itself was a curse, she felt a wave of ease calm some lingering panic inside her chest. It felt as though she’d been wandering for weeks, and though she wasn’t completely sure what was happening, she at last knew she would be okay.

Ryson turned back toward the exit, walking forward in long, brisk strides as a split formed in the air ahead of him.

Air tore through the room, whisking his hair back as his clothes whipped and morphed.

Intricate black garments inlaid with silver thread crossed his body.

Vines of silver grew down his hands, encasing his fingers in engraved silver claws with delicate designs and fine chains.

Before he crossed through the dark portal, he was a different version of himself, an apparition of dark prestige.

Prince and Alina both watched him carefully, as if attempting to decipher his movements.

“I’m off,” he said and walked back into the portal that dissolved without a trace.