Page 48 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)

Illusion of Love

HREE WEEKS PASSED. The Ashanas were nowhere to be seen, and the city settled into the strangest sense of monotony.

It astounded Clea how quickly a city adjusted to a new normal as long as the momentum of their lives did not change.

There were brief altercations and whispers of groups intent on revolt, but rumors dissolved, and the more Insednians instilled some return to security, the more the desire to question revolt dissolved with it.

Fed, given water, and protected both in their walls and their customs, Clea heard little true discontent.

The longer time went on without any real interference from the Insednians, other rumors began to circulate.

There were rumors that an Insednian had prevented a robbery, another that one had helped carry an injured woman from the woods back to safety, and another still that no forest beasts had been spotted anywhere in the last several weeks.

Of course, to Clea’s dismay, the rumors were not as false as she would have liked.

The truth was, the Insednians had indeed come to their aid, had indeed helped restore the city to working order, and had allowed its queen and new council members to run things as they wished, while offering protection, support, and asking only for healing in return.

Clea had to hide her shock when one morning she noticed a Veilin man, freely healing a small cut of an Insednian woman on the healing temple’s steps.

They had been talking to each other too.

She swore she even saw one smile. Others noticed, but the moment came and went, and before long, it no longer seemed so strange.

On a day like today, Clea was reminded of how the streets of Loda no longer cried.

She’d finished a council meeting and in the late evening was planning on staying with Iris in her cottage near the wall.

She’d been sleeping there as of late, a part of her own strategy of avoidance and as a public show that there was still some separation between herself and Loda’s new ruler.

She couldn’t imagine the rumors if she’d continued to maintain her status as queen and remained in the castle with Ryson.

“Can I join you?”

She nearly jolted when Ryson greeted her from a nearby street as she left the castle courtyard.

She watched him carefully, feeling that she should decline but not seeing an obvious reason to.

She would be walking through the city to Iris, all in public, and her people had seen them together already before.

If anything, it seemed to give her people a sense of peace that she and Ryson were being civil.

He smiled at her obvious deliberations as he approached.

“I suppose,” she said firmly and walked on. He kept pace with her and for a moment said nothing. They made their way through the streets, catching eyes as they crossed along the cobblestones. Castle guards followed tentatively behind them.

Clea had walked the streets so many times, past shuttered doors and broken stalls, through markets left hollow and stoops once filled with mourning.

Now, they were open. Lit. Quiet in a way that wasn’t tense or grieving.

There was little trace of the Insednians other than the one that now paced silently beside her.

The people walked freely. Even children passed them by, so engaged in play that they didn’t notice when they rushed by the knee of the Warlord of Shambelin.

The contrast was jarring. She saw a peace she hadn’t dared to hope for, and he was at the center of it, a lion in a den of lambs, tender and careful. And her heart, a traitorous thing, softened.

She didn’t trust him. But part of her wanted to. She wanted the peace she felt tonight to stretch on and on, uninterrupted, permanent.

Their steps were quiet. He didn’t push or rush or tease; he acted like he’d only wanted to walk with her. The innocence of it inspired an angry torrent of words that wanted her to stop him now and demand that he reveal his true intentions.

She knew what else lived inside him. The thoughts had persisted with painful weight as the weeks passed with no word from Dae or Catagard, or even Ruedom for that matter.

“You’re doing all of this for my people,” Clea said after a while. “I need to know why. You promised once not to lie to me.”

“Yes, a hefty promise I made at the end of my life,” he said smoothly. “Remind me to renegotiate that later. I can’t guarantee I can keep it with all of the time we have now.”

He glanced down at her with an even, truthful expression.

She scanned him for malintent, but he was saturated with cien.

He was malintent. He wasn’t like a Veilin or even humans or Kalex who accumulated cien when planning awful things.

He was already infected by it, and unlike Myken, the darkness of his soul filled all the space inside him.

There was nothing but that darkness. She couldn’t read him.

“Stop that,” he said, and flicked her nose.

She jolted back, holding her face in shock. He looked equally offended.

“Why did you—” she started, resisting the urge to glance at her guards.

“You’ve been scanning me,” he said, “or trying to, for weeks.”

She lowered her hands by her side, gaping. “You can sense it?”

He raised an eyebrow, “Of course I can sense it,” he said emphatically.

“You may as well be rifling under my clothes. I expected you to engage in some manner of warfare, but the incessant ansra scanning has been particularly distracting. There isn’t much I can feel, but I can certainly feel you poking around. ”

Her eyes widened and she continued walking, staring ahead.

“But while the promise is still in effect,” he said, “you know exactly why I’m doing this.”

“What? A romantic gesture?” she shot back, eager to move to the next topic to avoid thinking about all of the Venennin she’d scanned with ansra in the past. “You think I’m so foolish as to be carried off with something like that and from someone like you?

You’re toying with me,” she accused, adjusting the plain white cloak she wore around her body.

“It’s not romance,” he said with a chuckle. “There is a power between us, an exchange. We create something, you and I.”

“I kill for you, and you heal for me,” she repeated, recognizing for the first time that it wasn’t so much about actions; it was about energy. “I don’t understand.”

“You do,” he assured her with a lightness in his voice. “You feel it right now,” he said, glancing down at her.

She almost objected too quickly. Instead, she stopped and inspected him. They’d cleared many rows of cottages and were now on the outskirts of the inner city. Flower beds bloomed nearby; this was a familiar street she often visited simply to see those flowers. It was strange, having him here.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, watching him and almost desperately wanting him to answer the question.

Every passing day had made her more restless, more tense.

“I can’t help but think Prince was right.

This is a trap. One choice I make will lead to destruction, and the other will lead to…

” She hesitated, unsure what Prince had meant when he claimed that she could set them all free.

“A trap,” Ryson breathed, looking off with a chuckle and then directing his attention back to her.

“I suppose that is one way of describing it, but just one way. Prince has his own motives. He just doesn’t want me to convince you to return to the woods with us.

He wants you to resist, to defy any influence I might have and instead ask me to find his body again.

He thinks if you come to the forest with us, you’ll become a Venennin.

If you become a Venennin, you’ll lose any incentive to help him.

I’m not sure why he thinks you’d help him now anyway, but I’m sure he plans to manipulate you for that very purpose. ”

Clea paused, inspecting him closely. “Prince made it sound so…”

“Dramatic? Like the fate of the world depended on it?” Ryson replied, eyebrows raised. “I’m not going to make any claims about what the fate of the world depends on, but I can guarantee that Prince’s motives are certainly not, and never will be, to save the world.”

“So, he did lie to me?” She asked, coiling her sleeves softly into her hands as she searched him. His eyes were black now in broad daylight, his face dusted with the faint shadow of stubble. He almost looked human.

“Not at all, at least not on purpose. But you can’t really expect a Venennin’s version of reality to be exactly in line with the objective way of things.” He continued walking, and this time she followed along beside him thoughtfully.

“But…” She hesitated. “Alkerrai al Shambelin. Warlord of the Land of Light. Illusion. Your vice. You also have a vice that ensnares people.”

He grimaced slightly at the use of the name. She felt she could see a reaction each time she said it with such confidence.

“I do,” he admitted. “I am a slave to it. When it arrests me, I can’t see beyond it.

I truly did believe the Belgear Kingdom was great.

There was no convincing me otherwise. I presented myself to the Lord of the Belgear, convinced that he would see past my ruse, that such a great man would not so blindly underestimate me and then he would valiantly prove himself and thus be worth some kind of partnership. ”

“But then when he fell for it, you killed him. What if you do the same to me?” she asked.

“Well, of course I did. He’s a Venennin Lord,” Ryson replied. “And he tortured me rather brutally.”

“But you wouldn’t have felt any of it. You’re sifted,” she argued.

“It’s the principle of the thing, which I’m surprised I have to explain,” he said, glancing down at her with a subtle grin. “You’re rather determined to see me as a villain, aren’t you?”

They arrived at the final street before Iris’s cottage.