Page 45 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)

The Vice

HE SILENCE BARELY lasted until they managed to work their way through the city and get through the walls, draped in ragged cloaks. Everything was open. Clea was surprised to see civilians wandering about rather peacefully with only scant sightings of Insednians along the walls.

“There’s not much more I can add,” Clea said. “You’ve heard the story, Dae.” Catagard had been unusually silent during the duration of their argument, the three of them now traveling with packs through the edge of the forest. “Let’s just get out of here and come up with a strategy.”

“What kind of strategy?” he argued. “Clea, he has the entire city. Do you really think going to Ruedom will help? They’ve denied us help once already.”

“Then we convince them!” Clea said, facing them both. “You saw how Alkerrai pulled in Idan out of nowhere! That must have frightened him. They don’t understand how vulnerable they are too. We have to tell them.”

Catagard and Dae both watched her quietly, and Clea sighed, searching the emptiness of the woods around them.

“What?” she asked.

Catagard and Dae exchanged glances.

“What?” she pushed louder, throwing her arms out at them.

“Maybe you should stay here,” Catagard said at last, and she stilled.

“What do you mean?” she asked, already feeling a prick of betrayal, arms lowering slowly by her sides.

“Venennin have very specific weaknesses. The more powerful they are, the stronger their vices are,” Catagard said.

“You were able to convince The Haunt to help you. You have the Warlord of Shambelin willing to negotiate with you. The symbolism you have with our people, being a light of some kind, seems to be just as potent with Venennin.”

Dae looked away as if trying to hide his anger.

“As strange as these circumstances are,” Catagard said, “you seem to have a way with them, and you are still a queen, even if your city has been taken.”

“What are you saying?” she asked. “I should stay and reason with him? He’s an Insednian.”

“And somehow you all seem to get along quite well.” Dae bit out the words as if they were an insult.

“And have for a while. You said it before you left Loda. Why would you even come back? At least dead, we’d still have our dignity, but you’ve turned the city into something else.

Even the people have lost any sense of resistance. Maybe you shouldn’t infect Ruedom too.”

Clea didn’t reply, the degree of the insults cutting deeper than any claim he’d made before. Dae had always disliked Ruedom, so accusing her of possibly contaminating a city he already disliked showed the severity of his feelings.

“Dae…” She shook her head. “I am still a Veilin.”

“Not for long,” Dae shot back instantly, and she swallowed.

“You have a way with them,” Catagard interjected. “You aren’t the first healer who has. Your abilities give you ways of understanding their weaknesses and sensibilities. Healing is what tied you to Alkerrai in the first place. Continue to use that.”

“He will be vulnerable if I heal him of his sifting,” Clea offered and saw something in Dae’s expression shift. “The most vulnerable,” she added.

“Then heal him after he defeats the Ashanas for us,” Dae pushed. “You obviously have a plan. Why didn’t you start with that? Why are we going to Ruedom?”

She adjusted the straps of her bag around her shoulders.

The suggestion still made her entire body squirm in discomfort.

“That’s if he’s telling the truth that that’s what he wants,” she said, defending her hesitation.

“It’s sacrilege for a sifted Venennin to undo sifting.

I’m not sure it’s ever been done before.

Ruedom needs to be informed of what’s happened anyway.

Idan will help now. Alkerrai frightened him. ”

“That could have been an illusion, Clea,” Dae argued.

“She’s right,” Catagard said to Clea’s relief.

“We do need to inform Ruedom. It could have been an illusion, but seeing as Alkerrai does have her heart and her his, it’s fair to say he has more reason to be earnest. He’s going to great lengths to gain her favor, whatever the reason might be.

Even if this is just a game, Venennin who live so long often have something of a death wish anyway.

They have little else to live for as cien consumes them. ”

Dae didn’t object.

“And,” Catagard added, exhaling steadily, “trying to assassinate the Warlord of Shambelin during a healing could be the best chance anyone could ever have of killing him. But.”

Clea clutched her folded arms.

“That shouldn’t be our first bet,” he said. “Clea, you’re tangled up with them. What we once saw as a weakness is now our greatest strength, but I’ve seen Veilin change before. We’re putting too much on one person. It’s time for more of us to carry the burden.” He gave a scolding glance to Dae.

Dae marched off into the woods, in the direction of Ruedom, leaving Catagard and Clea together in silence.

“Thank you,” she whispered, feeling burdened and exhausted.

“I wish I could do more,” Catagard said.

“It isn’t fair that every choice you make be given so much weight.

Dae doesn’t realize it, but the pressure he’s putting on your decisions may very well push you toward them.

The path to being a Venennin is paved with overwhelm.

” Clea chewed on her lower lip as he continued, “You should stay. Navigate this and be careful. We will negotiate with Ruedom. You handle things here. You’ve been given a lot of power, and the city has been given room to breathe.

Despite it being something else in disguise, what Alkerrai has done for the city has allowed it to survive.

I won’t say that’s not a good thing, just because it’s from him.

I’m saying that regardless of everything else, he’s protecting our people. ”

She nodded silently. He paused, inspecting her. The moments passed, and she avoided his eyes, which were always so perceptive.

“It’s interesting you haven’t fully rejected other obligation, and this time, you’re fighting tooth and nail,” Catagard noted.

Clea swallowed again, unsure how to share the truth that stirred painfully in the pit of her stomach, the truth that she felt torn between her own intentions, swayed by feelings that felt like traitors to her mission.

“My partner was a healer,” Catagard said after a moment, surprising her. “Healers are natured differently, just as any discipline is.”

“You said it, Catagard,” she admitted. “I’m too entangled in all of this. I’m not sure if I can—”

“Healers get tangled up,” Catagard cut in.

“They’re more liable to lose a heart than anyone else.

Your vulnerability here is also your power.

Same as him. You have his heart. Use it.

You can. It might feel like it’s against everything in you to do it, but you can, and you better, because I guarantee you that he can too.

We will do everything we can in the meantime to secure aid, or at least some kind of strategy.

You don’t have to defeat him, but give us as much time as you can. ”

She looked at him, strengthened by his words but feeling weakened by his coming absence.

Catagard had been a father to her. She’d had many fathers and mothers, none of them perfect, some of them severe, but all of them had played a part in shaping her.

His words and Ryson’s wrestled one another in her mind, two versions of her future clawing and biting at one another as she hung tediously in the balance.

She didn’t recognize these two versions of her being, or perhaps she did more than she wanted to admit. Maybe the dreams had never been messages of the forest but a picture of her own self.

Alkerrai had compared her to the forest, and he was indeed the moon, but she couldn’t decide which version of her was real: the illustrious symbol reflecting all of the good things she wanted or this growing, hungering creature, beating at an ever-bolted door inside her. The lines had once been so clear.

“Okay,” she said.

Catagard nodded and turned into the woods. Looking back one last time, he offered one more affirmation: “Clea, this situation isn’t as strange as you think.”

She nodded back to him. “Stay safe.”

They went their separate ways, and Clea was left with the council chamber of her own mind, no longer filled with anyone’s voices. Every chair was left empty; she stood alone in the center, with all of the burden to decide what she would become next.

After several minutes, she turned back to the city and made her quiet approach back to the walls.

“Hello, Princess,” a voice said after several minutes.

Clea turned sharply to see a woman leaning against a nearby tree. An Insednian woman, by every definition.

She approached with steps that pulled her along like a ghost. Her eyes were brilliant silver, her hair long with the same metallic sheen.

Clea eased back slowly, eyeing the woman’s body, covered in piercings of silver like a second skin that she wore instead of clothes.

They covered her like a scant cloak, trailing down her legs and ending at her heels with shoes that seemed drilled into her feet.

Similar fixtures crowned her head, glimmering horns affixed to her skull.

She didn’t look real. Stunning in her beauty and augmented by the silver piercings, she seemed almost mechanical, and yet her movements were like silk as she circled closer and closer.

“It’s nice to see you again,” she said, winding suddenly closer until they were face to face. Her claws lifted to Clea, who searched her carefully, wondering why she recognized this presence in the faintest way.

It dawned on her at last.

“Alina,” Clea whispered.

Alina grinned, perfect teeth flashing through full lips. Her claws hovered over Clea’s face on either side.