Page 55 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)

Into the Storm

LEA PACED IN the throne room, changed and restless.

Iris paced more slowly. Both women were silent.

The agreement had been that Ryson would come for her here, and Iris had wanted to wait with her.

Iris had not been surprised to hear that Clea would be going with Ryson to Ruedom as their healer.

Rather, she was more surprised by the missing necklace whose absence she noticed almost immediately.

“Ryson has it,” Clea said, and saw a strange expression register on Iris’s face. Shock, perhaps? Clea didn’t understand it, but stopped her pacing, trying to read the expression as Iris scanned her over thoroughly.

“What is it?” Clea asked, suddenly embarrassed.

She had bathed thoroughly, thinking perhaps the water might help wash away the woman who had squirmed and panted in Ryson’s arms only minutes before.

The more time passed between this moment and that one, the more clearly she saw the crime.

The only evidence was the missing necklace and the ghost of his touch.

Clea had to remind herself that Iris could not see the latter. As perceptive as the woman was, she could not see how Clea felt changed. She didn’t need to. No one needed to. Clea would finish this herself. No one needed to know what she’d done, or how helplessly liberating it had felt.

Despite the reasoning, as Iris watched her, Clea felt she saw everything. Iris’s expression softened, and carefully she offered, “It’s okay.”

The two women stood silent now, several strides of space between them. They regarded each other carefully.

She knows? Clea thought. How does she always know? No. There’s no way she knows.

Iris opened her mouth to speak again, approaching as if Clea were a frightened deer.

“It’s nothing,” Clea said, eyes intent and firm. “I have a plan, remember? He still wants me to heal him. He trusts me more now,” she started, “during the healing, I’m going too–”

“Clea,” Iris interrupted, still careful with her words, still gentle, her hands lifted slightly. “It’s okay. Whatever happened. I’m sure it’s fine. But the healing, don’t rush to the healing. I know the original plan was to,” she paused, paused as if she didn’t want to say the word:

Assassinate him.

Clea thought it, and looking into Iris’s eyes, knew they both had.

“Everything is going according to plan,” Clea reassured her, uncomfortable with the ambiguity between them. “The Insednians will defeat the Ashanas, and then after I will perform the healing.”

“Not everything needs to go according to plan,” Iris interrupted firmly.

Clea’s expression faltered as she tried to break down what Iris was suggesting.

“I’ve been breaking down the histories,” Iris said, “I am so close to figuring it out. Who the real enemy is. All I know is that both you and Ryson need to stay alive. I know you’re afraid, but don’t do anything too brash. Do you understand?”

No. She didn’t.

Clea’s expression faltered. She didn’t know what question to ask first.

“Tell me,” she said, but it was more of a challenge than an honest question. Who could possibly be more formidable than the Warlord of Shambelin?

“Not yet,” Iris said. “You’ll think I’m mad.”

Me? Think you’re mad? Clea was so thrown off by the mere suggestion of it that she didn’t reply.

They both startled as a rift tore through the throne room and an ashen figure stumbled through it, followed by another. She recognized Dae, Ryson following after him.

Dae was coughing violently and completely black with soot.

Ryson was covered just the same, his eyes brilliant against the darkness that stained his body and skin.

With his presence came an outpouring of a harsh, cold layer of darkness that sent a biting chill under her skin and made the air around her crackle in protest.

“Dae!” Clea cried out, inspecting him as Dae thrashed back.

“I’ll alert the others!” Iris called and raced from the room.

“The city is indeed lost,” Ryson said, and Clea looked up from where she crouched. His face was cold, unreadable; the energy so often buried in his depths brimmed through the surface. She felt her fingers might freeze if she reached to touch him now.

“There are still people there,” Dae coughed roughly, barely able to speak.

“He pulled me off the lines! Left them to die!” One of his eyes bled profusely, and a laceration across his chest swelled.

“The lines are falling. Crushed. They’re crushed.

There are more than Ashanas. Enemies came from all sides.

Enemies on all sides. Not just the Ashanas.

” He spoke in a way she’d never heard him speak, his voice almost overcome with a strange hysteria, his gaze intent but glazed over as if he were still trapped in the battle now, seeing monsters that had no presence here.

Ryson seemed completely disinterested in the accusation. He didn’t try and argue his point. His eyes moved to Clea.

She watched him questioningly. “More than just the Ashanas?”

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Clea straightened slowly, and Dae looked between them.

“You’re going?” Dae said. “No. You can’t go. You can’t leave me here. You can’t go and leave me here!”

Iris returned with water and several healers behind her.

“The city is done,” Ryson said again and looked at Clea solemnly.

“I can give you ten minutes to save who you can on the lines Dae is referencing.” There was a strangeness to him, a reserve that made him seem foreign.

He was directive and vacant, like the real version of him resided somewhere distant.

She felt the edges of his cien boiling beneath his skin, a steady but writhing power, a quiet river with a ripping current underneath.

Clea dropped her bag, and it made a loud thud on the ground. Shedding the weight, she prepared her hands. Ryson finding Dae gave her hope. Maybe Catagard, Idan, Merune, and any other Ruedain contacts were still there somewhere. At this point, she’d already feared they’d lost them all.

Ryson stepped aside, opening the black rift. Steeling herself, she took a breath and, against Dae’s protests, stepped through the portal.

???

Heat, smoke, and death greeted her in a putrid wave that stole her breath.

There were no traces of Ruedom, just miles of swollen, burning flesh and carnage.

Beyond the wasteland, something moved before the firelit smoke, deep inside the city walls and far beyond what seemed to be the lines where Veilin had held their last defense.

She took in the horror of it all, thinking for a moment that the survivors Dae referenced were huddled in a mass near one wall, only to see them crushed, the bodies pressed down into the earth in a ghastly ensemble of limbs, like a spidery mass of blood and bone.

There were more horrors of similar caliber in every direction, people trapped in alternating poses of escape and battle. Finding survivors suddenly seemed to be an impossible task. Any hope she had of finding anyone she knew evaporated.

“Ten minutes,” Ryson reminded her, though when she turned, he wasn’t there.

She tuned into her senses, pouring through the devastation where they remained in a forest of death and fire.

She sprinted forward, following her senses to one victim and then another.

Her mind became a focused scalpel, ignoring everything else; every horrible shape became blackness in the periphery.

“Here!” she shouted, patching up a mortal wound before Prince’s mask appeared.

The portal opened next to it, and Prince delivered the body through it.

She sprinted on, tracking signs of life through her senses.

“Here!” she called, finding another, and then another.

The seconds pounded on, and then when she sprinted toward one last person, a portal swallowed her whole.

She staggered atop an elevated tower lost in a storm of wind and smoke.

Prince’s mask hovered near another portal.

Clea looked for Ryson, but he was nowhere to be seen.

It’s time , Prince said.

“Where is Ryson? What’s about to happen?” she asked, heart pounding, skin and clothes covered in sweat.

She turned as an explosion echoed powerfully across the wasteland with a searing blast of cold and ice. She realized she was standing on a tower that had once been a portion of Ruedom’s walls. The air grew suddenly cold, the wind whipping with traces of snow blackened by cien, smoke, and ash.

Above her, the sky churned, a black hurricane rimmed with flickering veins of crimson light.

Prince’s mask looked red, reflecting the lights around them.

Our battle now begins , he said. I am afraid life will not survive it. You must return.

Another blast echoed. Massive figures stirred against the shells of the city walls that looked like crumbling mountains in the distance.

“Ryson is out there already?” she asked, her voice elevated above the burning city and the swirl of icy winds. “Fighting without an army?”

Clea could see nothing but blackness with flashes of lightning above her.

She glanced down and saw bustling and movement.

She thought for a moment it was a flood of Ashanas soldiers but then realized that they were corpses, corpses from Ruedom, repurposed from the battle and fighting under Prince’s will.

She swallowed.

Precious bodies , Prince said, so many precious bodies. You see, Princess, my army is the fiercest of them all. As long as Alkerrai defeats Javelin de Gal before succumbing to his own madness, we will prevail . You should return to safety .

The battle had begun. She turned to Prince, her voice steady despite the terror clawing through her.

“Prince,” she said, “be my mask again. You can protect me. I know you can.”

She knew it was against a direct order. She knew what she asked was insanity of every kind, but Prince, seemingly unable to resist the request, drifted toward her, and then the mask collapsed like an object into her hand.

The result was so instant, she nearly dropped it.

Apparently, he was eager for them to borrow each other again.

“Thank you,” she said and put it on, her skin soon covered by the coolness of his power before the portal dissolved.

Let me have your eyes, and you will see what I see.

“Borrow,” she corrected.

Of course. Prince replied, and suddenly her vision cleared and she could see through the vast night. The truth of it all sent terror through her spine. The entire world beyond the walls toiled and churned like piles of ants. A numberless army, vast beyond all prediction, had swallowed the world.

“These are the Ashanas?” she breathed, but something was wrong in what she witnessed. The numberless army, swarming in the darkness, was a boiling tide of mixed banners and beasts.

The largest of them congregated in a massive torrent, some flying in a twister that bent and bowed, wrestling with an unseen force within.

The Ashanas did not come alone. No. They have few allies, but the Insednians have many enemies. Beyond are the armies that remained beyond the Wraithlands, eager to destroy the Insednians and claim Shambelin. I, too, will soon join the fray.

“This was an ambush,” Clea breathed. “Why do they all hate the Insednians much?”

Let me have your body, and I will show you.

“Borrow,” Clea corrected.

Of course.

She looked over the wall, a question in her mind.

Prince answered it, and her body moved on its own accord. She screamed as she leapt, falling several stories in height but landing lightly on her feet before racing off toward the battle, shrouded by his abilities in a slew of Ashanas soldiers and possessed corpses.

“Give it back! Give it back!” she urged. “We can work together!”

Of course. Prince replied, and she resumed control of her limbs again, feeling his subtle urging which gave her direction.

His mist wrapped around her body like breath and armor, and she felt herself slip once more into something not wholly her own.

The wind tore at her. Dark snow lashed her skin.

The landscape around them transformed around her eyes as they raced forward, fires flashing into an icy, black tundra, the snow falling heavier and clashing sounds echoing like lightning and thunder across the dark and loathsome world.

The cien felt thick and dangerous. Clea knew Prince was protecting her from the worst of it when she saw corpses iced and frozen, cien eating away at them in such high saturations it swelled in the air and eroded the world like acid.

As she moved deeper toward the core of it all, she felt herself shielded under the crushing weight of an ocean, approaching something ancient and dangerous.

Inside it was the beacon of a traded heart.