Page 39 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)
Embrace Before the Blade
HE CITY STAUNCHED its bleeding quietly beneath the pale light of dawn, and by midday, the remaining wounded had been moved into one central medical wing, and what was left of the Golden Army took up their posts again.
Clea stood on the highest wall of Loda, wind pressing against her face. Dae was at her side. His wounds had healed, though shadows still lingered under his eyes. Soldiers moved below, mending stone, piecing together a broken stronghold into something that could still stand one more night.
“It’s going to take days, maybe weeks to rebuild that portion of the wall,” Dae said grimly, his hand still hovering over the bandaging of a wound that no longer existed.
Clea suspected it wasn’t just the physical wound he was trying to reach.
He’d been different since waking up again, silent.
Maybe, like her, he was avoiding words and the thoughts that paired with them.
Clea was now the Queen of Loda, and Dae was now the sole general of what remained of the Golden Army.
Catagard was the sole council. As Clea looked out at the forests, she hoped that the others were out there somewhere, alive, finding a way to carry on the name and story of their city.
Neither she nor Dae discussed that. There was no room to believe that they were anything but thriving, because she and Dae were what remained to help hold up the city in its final moments.
The longer they survived the oncoming onslaught, the better the chances that the previous queen and her caravan would be able to establish safety somewhere far from here.
She and Dae spoke only of strategy, and briefly of losses, but there were so many losses, and Clea found herself unable to truly digest many of them. Or maybe it was that she digested them too quickly.
It was hard for her to understand the complexity of her own feelings. There was little fear, little insecurity, little grief, only one action and then another. It was a slow, deliberate march under eyes who searched her daily for signs of weakness and panic, permission for their own panic.
She showed them nothing. She couldn’t.
Clea observed the mountains in the distance, the sun inching toward another tedious night.
She glanced back over the city, taking in a breath of the fresh air that pushed over the walls, protected from the whirling scents of destruction and smoke.
Up here, she could breathe and also get some perspective.
The top of this portion of the wall was vacant.
“We will have guards stationed there en masse until it’s rebuilt,” Clea said, but knew the vulnerability that Dae addressed could hardly be mended by a few guards.
The aftermath in the city had been catastrophic.
Dae had told the story well. The Ashanas had come in the early night, submerged in darkness and vast in number.
Loda’s warriors had held them off for hours, but there had been so many of them, and even touching one could cause the illness they carried to leap and infect.
They bit and gnawed hungrily, at moments so distracted eating a corpse that they were at last able to be killed, but the sheer carnage of it had been enough to freeze some Veilin in their tracks.
Three Venennin capable of manifesting their own monstrous souls had accompanied the Ashanas army. They had towered above the army with massive claws and gaping mouths that could slice and bite a soldier in half like straw.
Dae was a seasoned warrior, but he still seemed haunted by the stories he told. Her father had been decisive, ordering his wife, guarded by Ivy and her noble house, out into the forest with Ignat.
“How is Iris?” Clea asked, knowing full well that Iris was fine and only seeking to move Dae’s mind to a lighter topic. Iris had remained close to him and she’d watched the two of them huddle by each other in times of quiet respite. All arguing had ceased.
“She won’t go back to Ruedom,” he said without emotion, and yet his hand drifted from his wound at last and landed back on the hilt of his sword. He swallowed and glanced over at her. They both wore full, polished armor, looking much more together than she knew they both felt.
“It’s been an honor serving you,” Dae said honestly. “I am proud to fall in defense of our home.”
“We’re not dead yet,” she replied coolly, unwilling to admit openly that her feelings were the same.
She was, by all estimations, the last queen of her city, and was in many ways grateful that she would not live to witness its passing.
“You would have made a fine ruler, Dae,” she said, a sentiment she’d always had, but never shared.
“A natural king. There is humor that I now wear the obligation instead.”
He chuckled sorely at this, following her eyes beyond the walls. “Your father once told me the same,” he said, which startled her.
Clea shifted in her armor, inspecting him, but he didn’t return his gaze to her as he continued.
“Though, I’m quite sure it was an insult.
When he spoke of you, it was as if you weren’t meant for this world, but this world wearied him.
I think he ultimately admired you for it,” Dae said, and Clea could have sworn that she saw the subtlest traces of forming tears, but he blinked twice, and they were gone.
Clea prepared to offer another word, an encouragement or even just an acknowledgment of their struggles, but then the horn of alarm groaned through the air.
Clea’s eyes followed it along the wall, and her stomach dropped in horror as she saw the Veilin with the horn facing the mountains to the south.
She and Dae both turned. A dark line was visible on the horizon. The mountains rippled like wind through long grass. Next, Clea made out shapes, thousands of shapes.
“By cien,” Dae breathed in recognition as Clea’s mind still struggled to understand what she was seeing.
Another wave of Ashanas poured over the mountains in such volume it looked as if they were water spilling into the valley.
“This wave is even larger than the last,” Dae said.
Clea’s stomach twisted, but she didn’t flinch. She whipped back along the wall, marching off.
“Archers to the walls! Light the signals!” Dae shouted behind her, and the orders cascaded through the city, from one leader to the next.
“There is no way out but through,” Clea said in a lower voice. She and Dae exchanged glances a final time before descending into the chaos of preparations.
The command caught fire in her people. All across the ramparts, lines of Veilin raised their hands, igniting the barriers in radiant threads once more. Blessings wove into walls, burning prayers that made the city shine like a beacon against the approaching dark.
Archers lined the walls with blessed arrows, shielded back behind the wall of light. As the army assembled, the sky bruised crimson. The forests beyond Loda—once golden and alive—shifted. Their leaves curled, their trunks blackening into burned casts.
The next few minutes were filled with the dialogue of warfare, urgent commands, shifting metal, and the roar of burning fires. The air was saturated with ansra, giving it a crackling warmth that brought the light sheen of sweat to Clea’s skin beneath her armor.
Clea and Dae took positions on the front lines, a symbolic gesture more than a strategic one. The first few minutes of silence after preparations were the longest minutes of all. Every drawn breath felt as if it lasted for ages, the quiet beyond the woods pulsing as thousands lay in wait.
A whistle echoed from the walls, signaling to the front lines that the enemy was closing in through the woods.
Dae drew his sword and lit it as a signal.
The motion was followed in rows on either side; swords were drawn in a long and powerful sequence of scraping metal.
“Brace!” he shouted again, and the order echoed along with the sounds of clanging shields soon blessed with ansra.
Everything around them burned with light against the redness of the setting sun over the mountains.
Clea first heard the Venennin tearing through the trees en masse, the horde large and hungry, breaking into Dawn Field and triggering the first rain of blessed arrows that soared down and struck with explosive blasts of light.
More charged on, met by a second wave of arrows.
Other Venennin stumbled sickly over the felled masses, not stopping—charging, hungry.
The air cooled with an icy bite as the first waves of cien-soaked air preceded the onslaught.
Several Venennin morphed into monstrous beasts, towering floors above the others in disfigured bundles of claws, tentacles and eyes.
Clea tightened her grip around her sword, feeling lightheaded as she steadied her breathing.
“I’ll meet you again in the light,” Dae murmured beside her, voice wavering with adrenalin.
“You better mean dawn,” she replied back sharply and saw the slightest smirk greet his eyes beneath the helmet. Alas, the fourth true smile on record.
The Venennin thundered forward, and Clea felt the collective tension as they waited for the clash. Only feet remained between them, the Venennin churning forth like a rapid boiling wave.
Clea forced one last inhalation before sword and shields met their foes. The earth shook beneath her. She could see the Venennin’s eyes in a vast array of hungering color. Their snarls roared into her ears. She drew her sword back.
A thundering line of explosive darkness drummed down the space between them with such force that both sides were thrown back.
Venennin were violently crushed away, and Clea was lost in a fog as a black veil of scattered earth, ash, and smoke washed over them. The first lines were thrown to the earth, and disoriented, they scrambled up, Clea’s ears ringing.