Page 30 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)

RUEDOM

HE RESULTING AFTERNOON was a mixture of arguments, questions, and accusations. When at last the dust settled, Clea was on her way to Ruedom, sitting on the back edge of the carriage with Iris and Idan inside.

“And then,” Idan exclaimed emphatically, Clea glancing back at him with a smile, just as he pointed an accusing finger at her, “she tells the entire council that we’ve been inspecting the Insednian weapon in secret!”

Iris burst out laughing across from him.

“It’s not funny! You should have seen the look her father gave me!” Idan exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “He already thinks me an animal. Now I’m a liar and complicit in everything!”

Clea tried to bite down her smile, glancing back down the tunnel they were traveling through as the clapping hooves of the horses echoed around them.

“Oh Idan, one chip off your already-tarnished reputation won’t kill you,” Iris said, waving him off as she crawled out from the awning of the carriage and sat on the back across from Clea.

Idan poked his head out between them. “No, but the King of Loda might,” he said. “Do either of you not understand the gravity of this? Members of royalty in Ruedom are more symbolic than anything. I walk around the city looking like a prince; that is my job. I don’t command an army of assassins.”

“Idan,” Clea said, tilting her head toward him, eyebrows raised, “you’re going to be fine. I should be the one worrying about it. Not you.”

“Are you?” Iris said. “That was a pretty shocking move, even for you. How did everyone handle the news?”

Clea stared out into the darkness, feeling oddly calm. “It’s going to take Dae time. He’s not the forgiving type. Probably for the best that I came on this trip. It didn’t bother Yvan at all. She was only hurt that I hadn’t told her sooner.”

“Her father was completely stone-faced,” Idan said. “Unreadable.”

Unreadable. That’s how he’d looked when she’d crossed into his office before taking her leave. He’d been standing there in front of the window. She imagined it now, having replayed the scene multiple times in her head.

She’d entered but remained near the door, expecting an angry dismissal. He didn’t say anything for a moment.

“I’ve taken responsibility for this,” he said.

“You had no right—” she started.

“Clea,” he said firmly and then turned around to face her. He looked tired, sinking into his chair slowly and inviting her to walk over. He was strangely devoid of anger. She settled into the chair across the desk from him. At last, he looked her in the eyes and asked, “Do you want to be Lodain?”

Clea couldn’t help but feel hurt by the question despite not being surprised by it.

“I took responsibility,” he said, “not for your ignorance, or your healing of the Insednian, but for trying to force your nature. You are, as you have even suggested yourself, not meant for Lodain royalty.”

Her countenance softened at his admission, and despite Clea having said those very words, it hurt to hear him say them in the way he said them now. He was not critical or gruff as he often could be. She’d often disregarded any commentary in his gruffness, but this felt different. Too honest.

“Despite your strained cooperation in many ways, in others, you have resisted this path at every turn. You educate yourself in every practice not our own. You most closely ally yourself with others not our own—a Virdain outlaw and a Ruedom-born woman who openly defies our laws. You were intent on taking responsibility for healing the Insednian. If I had not known you better, I would have even called it pride,” he continued.

They sat in silence for a long time. “Can’t I be more than one thing? More than just a Lodain woman?” she whispered.

He placed his hands on the desk, his fingers intertwined.

“You have a lot of your mother in you,” he said at last. “She had the same inclinations, though she never pursued them with such fervor. You have the last of her. I admit, I am at a loss being any guide to you without her presence. I don’t know what you can be,” he said in a rare admission of vulnerability.

The apology in it hurt. For as long as she remembered, her father had never apologized.

There was a strange loss in hearing it for the first time.

He continued slowly, “You are a creature far from me. I am afraid, perhaps, we are at an age where you must choose alliances. Go to Ruedom,” he urged, “and should you find your soul at rest, then perhaps you’d be best to stay there.”

Her heart twisted. Clea was struck by the words despite the fact that perhaps she could have predicted them.

This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Freedom?

And she admired Ruedom and its people. She had often told her father that if only to needle him.

She swallowed and straightened with a nod.

Unable to grasp the complexity of her own hurt, she marched from the room, walking through the door and shutting it behind her, breathing in sharply to stifle tears.

She couldn’t have expected a better outcome, could she?

No yelling. No scolding. Freedom. Just freedom.

Why was it so surprisingly painful? She had invested so much into Loda for the last few years if only for this moment where she would no longer have to.

She’d sacrificed and sacrificed for this, and yet the reward felt empty in an awful way.

“Clea,” she heard and turned to see Catagard standing down the hallway. She composed herself at his approach.

“Catagard,” she greeted and swallowed.

He stopped, and they stood a measured distance from each other. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but remained there, still.

Tired of the silence, she nodded once to him and walked off in another direction.

Now, she felt relieved to be unburdened by her city, a city and its people who seemed dismayed by her very nature. She knew she could never be what she truly wanted there, and looked forward to Ruedom, looked forward to trying it on perhaps like a different costume to see if it fit better.

“He was fine,” Clea said. “He has his wife and his new child. I’m no longer a piece on the board.” She waved Idan off. “Idan, you’re just fixated on him because you’re afraid of him.”

“Do you hear how she talks about him?” Idan said, gesturing emphatically to Iris.

“His own and final daughter, just a piece on the board, doesn’t care if she offers herself up on a suicide mission to try and assassinate the Warlord of Shambelin!

He’d roast me for breakfast and serve me with a side of toast and jam. ”

Clea and Iris both snickered. Exasperated, Idan whipped back into the covered interior of the carriage, yelling back at both of them where they sat at the end, “Neither of you understand what I’m saying!”

Silence settled again, Clea looking back into the darkness as if leaving another world behind.

It was a world of ghosts, totems, relics, symbols and legends.

It was archaic and steeped in the heavy weight of traditions as sacred and burdensome as gravestones.

She had once been a goddess and now found relief in being none of those things.

Given flesh at last, she could be touched.

Her long hair flurried down her back, casual brown clothes an earthy break from the Lodain blue, white, and gold.

There was warmth in the traveling, and in the midst of debates or jests between her, Iris, and Idan, she remembered what it felt like to be young. So often, she forgot that she was.

“How are you feeling about all of this?” Iris asked, having offered to come with her almost immediately after Clea had given her the news. Iris had taken the reveal of the Insednian better, even, than Yvan. Clea knew that Iris had likely put some of the pieces together already.

“I feel strangely…” Clea started with a sigh, shaking her head back and forth as if she could hardly understand the feeling, “light.” A few seconds passed. “I feel great,” she added, glancing over at Iris.

“That will go away,” Idan called. “Trust me, the embarrassment comes next!”

“Idan,” Iris scolded.

“I’m just saying, her people never get a chance to be reckless. I do it all the time. It’s a high right now, but later, you’ll realize how absolutely un-strategic it was.”

Iris laughed. “I suppose that was very Ruedain of you. Disrupting a Lodain High Council and spilling your secrets in audience was something for the theater.”

“Ruedain enough that her father probably thinks it’s my influence,” Idan called back.

They both ignored him.

“So, you’re serious?” Iris said. “It is mad. I suppose not so much if you think it will help save your city, but I’m almost worried that you don’t seem more concerned.”

Clea pulled one knee up to her chest thoughtfully.

“For the first time in a long time, I’m strangely…

not afraid. I mean, I’m afraid, but not…

not like the kind of fear you live with, you know?

” she said, looking over at Iris. “The kind that makes you dread? I don’t have that.

I’m feeling so…” She shook her head. “Hopeful, like I’m finally myself.

And the council hasn’t agreed to the proposed plan anyway. In the end, I guess, neither have I.”

Iris smiled, looking off and nodding but not adding anything.

“Well,” she said, “if you do decide to go through with this, at least stay in Ruedom for a night. We can all go out and celebrate your newfound freedom”—she leaned over, lowering her voice as she added sarcastically—“before the embarrassment apparently sets in.”

They laughed again, and as their discussion continued, Clea at last looked away from the dark tunnel behind her, knowing that when she returned to Loda, she could see where the chips had landed, but until then, there was a different journey ahead.

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