Page 25 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)

REST

LEA GASPED FROM the bed, nearly screaming as Iris jolted up beside her, throwing a tray she’d been holding clean through the air and causing crackers, soup, and a half-eaten apple to crash across the bedroom floor.

Clea struggled through the covers, coiling them close to her as she slammed her back against the headboard, panting heavily.

“She’s awake!” Iris called, crawling onto the bed as footsteps hurried outside but no one entered. One guard peered in and then rushed off, presumably to call for others.

Clea stared forward, her heart pounding painfully in her chest. She rubbed her face, trying to remember what had happened and looking over to Iris, who lifted a hand to her face.

Clea had awoken with the strong sensation that she’d been stranded somewhere. Murky images swam back into her brain like she’d come back from a dream she couldn’t recall.

“Clea,” Iris said. “Clea, thank goodness. How are you feeling?”

“Tired. And sore.” Clea rubbed her face.

She’d experienced similar fatigue from healing before, but this was profoundly different.

All healing involved some level of exposure to obscure risks, but as she tried to retrace what had happened to her, it was far too bizarre to reasonably recount in a way that sounded sane.

Her mind felt like it was still collecting itself from the ends of the earth, and she had a profound headache.

Iris pushed a cup of water into her hands, and Clea drank thirstily as she inspected her bedroom with its blue and white curtains and carpeting. Several candles burned on a stand nearby.

“What do you remember?” Iris said, a bit more intensely than Clea would have expected, and for a moment, Clea was worried that something else had happened to her father.

As her mind filed through the memories, she distinctly remembered being scattered. She wasn’t sure how to describe the feeling, and then beyond that, she simply felt like she’d been wandering in a vast and otherworldly desert. It had been a journey, and she’d at last found…Ryson? In a dream?

But it had been bizarre. Extremely bizarre.

Everything had felt so real as if she’d just been there moments ago.

It had been a bright, full moon, in a distant land, and she had seen Ryson, Prince, and Alina.

Together. Together? No. She tried furiously to decode their words to each other, but they were all garbled now.

She inspected the candlelight in the room and glanced out the window. There, beyond the glass, was a crescent moon.

“Iris,” she said, glancing over at the woman who looked rather exhausted herself. Clea rose from the bed, easing over to the window and glancing out. She felt strangely weak as her fingers touched the cool glass.

It hadn’t been a crescent moon when she’d performed her healing.

“How long have I been asleep?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder.

Iris looked over toward the open door as Yvan strode through it.

“Clea,” she said, her voice naturally gruff as she approached steadily before exchanging glances with Iris. “You’re all right?”

Clea nodded, searching the room again for other clues as to what had happened while she was asleep but finding none. Had Yvan and the others been sleeping on the royal floors all this time?

Yvan looked different beyond the change from a white to a long blue tunic.

The often-open severity in her eyes that Clea was well acquainted with was tinged with a glint of hesitation.

Clea at last realized that Yvan’s hair even looked the slightest bit longer, but maybe that was because she didn’t have it braided back.

“How long was I asleep? My father is okay? The healing stuck?” Clea asked the questions so quickly that they almost fell over each other, trying to suss out the strangeness she sensed in the room.

Iris still sat on the bed.

Yvan nodded, raising her eyebrows as she fell back into a nearby chair. She whistled, running her hands through her hair. “He’s all right, that’s for sure.”

“Yvan,” Iris snapped.

“Eh, eh, she can handle it!” Yvan replied with a wave of her hands, gesturing over at Iris. More footsteps hurried through the hallway, and Dae popped into the room.

“Gods, Clea!” Dae said, marching forward and stopping the customary three feet away from her. On the battlefield, it was more common for Dae and Yvan to approach and touch her. In the castle, they respected more formal customs of space, but that space felt oddly uncomfortable now.

There was something in that space.

“What are you doing here?” Dae said to Yvan, who raised an eyebrow.

“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Clea asked, glancing between them.

“You’ve been out for two months,” Yvan said. “Healed the king, then you took a dive.”

Iris continued the explanation. “Your pulse has been all over the place. You went from fevers to cold sweats, and no one could figure out what was wrong with you. They theorized that in the healing, you overextended yourself, and then some parts of you got stuck somewhere. We didn’t know if they’d ever make it back.

You’ve been wandering in your sleep as if your body has been repeating tasks out of habit. ”

Dae chimed in next. “We’ve been taking shifts checking in on you.

Iris has been incredibly dedicated. We’ve had several Veilin screen you, and we’ve done it ourselves.

They said such wandering was a common side effect of a body detached from its mind.

You don’t have any cien infections. We’re not completely sure what went wrong, but can only assume you suffered significant backlash from that curse.

That said, you were successful. King Hart is in excellent health, in fact, by his own estimation, he feels like he has a new life.

He’s been out in public and back in council meetings without ceasing since the healing you performed. ”

“That’s amazing,” Clea said and then backed toward the bed and eased down. “But two months,” she repeated, puzzled, and then glanced up at them all. “I’ve just been wandering around? You’ve all been watching me?”

“Making sure you didn’t eat anything poisonous, fall down stairs, bathe in the open fountain,” Yvan said.

“Those are all very specific,” she whispered with some alarm. She scratched her head, overwhelmed. “I missed my wedding.”

“You missed a wedding,” Yvan said, and Dae glared down at her.

Yvan and Dae then shared all of the events of the last two months that she’d missed.

As they spoke, Iris retreated back to her chair, watching the three of them with an unusual quiet.

Clea assumed that Iris was tired from being with her all day, and in light of the news that followed, she forgot the strangeness of it altogether.

???

Clea stormed to her father’s study. The guards jerked their heads forward at the sight of her. Her hair was woven loosely over her shoulder, her tunic slightly wrinkled as she’d haphazardly changed.

She hadn’t slept since hearing the news and had asked servants to give her first word of her father’s location as soon as he was decent and left his room.

She didn’t knock on the study, instead bursting through the heavy wood doors.

Her father looked up from his reading, a slowly brightening window at his back where he sat with an array of reports, books, and articles he had previously read in his bed.

There was a brief lapse in anger in seeing that her father was a changed man, and he stared at her as if he’d seen a ghost. His cheeks were fuller, with color beneath a still graying but dark beard.

His eyes were awake and alert, and he was dressed in stiff formal garb, layers of light blue and white, laced with gold.

All of his rings were back on his fingers in addition to a new one, which glimmered with the others on his hand.

“You’re actually awake,” he pointed out, rising to his feet. He examined her closely as if to reassure himself. “Awake this time,” he repeated, which made her feel like she might have wandered into his office before asleep.

If the people didn’t think her mad before, they certainly did now after their princess had been haunting the upper halls in a mindless stupor. She found it extremely embarrassing, and yet right now, she felt more angry than anything.

“Three days?” she said, temper obvious.

He said nothing for a moment. She noticed how his beard had been freshly trimmed along with his hair. He looked so much stronger, standing a head above her for the first time in two years.

Relief flooded her but was quickly eclipsed by anger again when he opened his mouth.

Taking a breath, he said in his characteristic firmness, “I’m glad to see you’re awake. I was unsure you would wake up.”

“Three days?” she repeated, incredulous and not wasting another second. She started to pace and he said nothing. She rubbed her head with one hand and her heart with the other. Both hurt.

She wanted to groan aloud but resisted the urge.

“I am doing my duty. One which you have delayed tremendously,” he replied.

“You sound so burdened,” Clea said sarcastically, crossing her arms as she stood across the room from him. “In fact, you were so burdened that it took you a whole three days”—she paused as if tripping over the words that threatened to choke her—“to marry.”

“Her name is Eticia. She was a friend of your mother’s,” he continued. “A good match.”

Clea continued rubbing her face. She’d met Eticia a couple of times when she’d come to visit her father, but the visits had been infrequent.

She vaguely remembered the woman with long, light hair and sharp features that vaguely resembled her mother’s.

Eticia and her mother had been friends, sure, but her mother had been fiercely independent and had only been truly close with a couple of women who had since died.

“Did you not want me to utilize my good health?” he asked, and she cringed.

“Please don’t,” she whispered. “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”