Page 57 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)

Javelin broke through the smoke with a sweeping claw. Alina was struck down, transforming just as the long nails sliced through her and cast her form back into the nearest city wall. The wall exploded with the force and Alina’s form vanished inside it.

Ryson laughed, a laugh tinged with pleasure and madness, and she sensed something in her heart darken–in his heart, as if it knew what would come next. Ryson’s human shape suddenly seemed fragile, like glass, aching to break.

The end is here. We should retreat. We are too close.

“No. Wait,” Clea whispered back, not understanding Prince’s warning when it seemed the battle had just begun. The smog began to clear with Javelin’s movement and for the first time, Clea saw Javelin clearly.

He was a lumbering monster, boiling with rows and mountains of muscle, interlaced with rotting sickness and ice.

Two gargantuan horns, one broken, gave shape to his head and formed rows down his hulking back.

Fangs like pillars opened in a mouth that exposed rows of teeth spilling down a tongueless throat.

His thick lips dripped with carnage, three eyes wide with reddened veins and icy blue pupils glowing like spotlights in the darkness, searching in all directions.

Long, snaking tails thrashed behind him, breaking buildings in a chorus that forced Clea to cover her ears against splintering wood.

She felt, even then, Prince shielded her from the worst of it.

And there was Ryson, a sole, dark pillar, armed with little but a smile.

Javelin lifted another claw, high into the air like a tower.

Clea wanted to race forward and shout. Ryson wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t he moving?

Stay away. Prince warned. Stay away.

She wanted to argue, wanted to scream. The claw slammed down.

Ryson transformed. A blast of freezing air swept through the clearing with such violence that vibrations shivered across nearby stones.

Loose structures crumbled. The massive, rotten claw was intercepted by another, the collision so intense that it blasted the fog away as two beasts locked together in an exchange of power.

A wave of potent cien crashed through the environment, and that vibration of power Clea had sensed before intensified into a high too potent to resist. Her ears rang. She felt her consciousness swim as her vision blurred.

Prince! She urged, resisting the feeling as darkness swelled around her and her mind was overwhelmed with it.

She felt as if she were being cast inside an ocean, struggling for the shore as it threatened to pull her under.

Surrounded by darkness of such a great caliber, she was no longer aware of any battle around her.

She withdrew inside her body with the singular goal of ensuring her own light survived within it.

She faded out of the present and was soon standing on the shore of a red and black ocean, the waters boiling up toward her feet.

Give me your soul. The tides pushed and then withdrew again as they said, Let me have your pain.

Another wave crashed against her legs. Give me your sorrow, the waves said, Let me have your life.

A million voices chanted the words. She looked out into the ocean of cien, certain that for a moment she would be lost inside it, before she saw faded footprints of light over the water.

She inspected her glowing body, realizing that she was once again on that vulnerable plane where cien and ansra resided. She was in the shape of her own soul, navigating this plane through that form.

Tenida had spoken of The Eating Ocean–the heart of cien, and as Clea looked forward, she began to follow the lit footprints of residual ansra that guided her over the water.

She knew, without being told, that this was the path the ancient healer had taken when he’d been overcome with cien and lost in the ocean of it. He’d somehow found a way out. He’d found an answer to rescuing himself and the other heroes who were drowning with him.

Clea followed the footsteps across the water, careful not to step beyond them until they led her to the horizon where a handprint of light exposed a door that would have otherwise been invisible. It was cut from the very appearance of the sky.

Tenida claimed that the hero of Salanes had called upon a mysterious force to save them all.

Clea reached for that door, hypnotized by it.

Princess? She heard Prince’s voice call her, and felt the tug through her soul.

Princess. Princess. His voice repeated as she reached for the door.

Her hand grasped the handle, mirroring the fingerprints of the healer.

No! Prince’s voice called with such fervor that it shook through her body.

In a severe demand, he said, You mustn't give one your soul!

And she was torn from the vision, cast into her own body with a gasp.

She came back to consciousness just as Javelin was shoved back, the new creature before him lunging and sinking his teeth into Javelin’s neck, ripping a chunk of rotting flesh free and casting it out in a gruesome rain.

Prince’s mask shielded her from the poison of the rain. The monsters rolled until Javelin de Gal was pinned, another beast crouched atop him with a claw synched tightly over his squirting throat.

For the first time, she saw the other beast as well.

With a silver lion’s body and a wolfish head, he soaked himself in the dark blood of the fallen Ashanas Lord.

Layers of wings lined his back, half feather, half skin like a white bat and a black bird.

Silver layered portions of his body like a metallic exoskeleton, covering eight-fingered paws in sharpened armor and hooks that similarly dressed the monster’s spine and face.

Rows of horns formed a curling crown on his head, one broken from the struggle, the others drenched in blood.

His side was torn, metallic ribs exposed from the chest to the slew of boiling tails that extended out like silver smoke in long streams around them all. Their movements alone quaked the earth beneath her feet.

Ryson’s beast opened his jaws and prepared another final bite to the throat as Javelin’s soul began to recede back into a disfigured body. He sank his teeth in and broke the neck. The battle was done.

Clea’s heart pounded, and she straightened slowly before Prince’s skin shivered over her. Out of nowhere, Alina’s serpent leapt through the smoke. It tackled Ryson to the ground and sank its fangs into him in what could be presumed to be a lethal bite.

Clea screamed. The betrayal was sudden and ruthless. No doubt, Alina had been lying in wait for a moment such as this one.

The roar was metallic and cold. Clea leapt out toward them, having some control again of her own body. She was tempted to call Ryson’s name. They toiled in the darkness, the black serpent coiled around Ryson, its sharp, dangerous tail struck into the silver monster’s chest like a scorpion.

Blood splattered across the clearing, the silver beast peeling Alina’s serpent loose and crushing it in tight jaws before ripping it in half.

The serpent squirmed, its neck straining and sinking into the silver beast’s chest before rolling into the smoke and dissolving into an eerie quiet.

Fog swallowed the silver beast that collapsed motionless onto the frozen earth.

Clea started out into the clearing, and the serpent with barely a head thrashed out of the smog toward her, transforming into a figure and then pinning her to a nearby building by the throat.

Prince slipped away, running from the danger of Alina’s claws and exposing Clea to the harsh cold of the elements and the toxic air beyond.

Alina’s silver eyes glowed, her mouth dripped with dark blood, body ragged and torn, but she smiled. She drew a bloodied claw back. Clea struggled to breathe. The air was suffocating. The light inside her body felt repressed and suffocated.

“Good bye, Princess,” Alina snarled, licking broken lips that bled profusely, her teeth painted red.

Clea shoved her hands onto Alina’s abdomen just as Alina’s claw struck toward her.

The healing was focused and deep.

Alina’s hand came down, and Clea barely dodged the misdirected claw, which sliced deep into her cheek as Alina stumbled back.

Alina looked at the gaping hole opened in her abdomen, no longer able to repair itself. Her body shook, and she looked up at Clea and shrieked, taking a step forward before her body curled and struggled forward, turning back into her serpentine monster as if to shield her wound.

Ryson’s silver beast sprang from the darkness behind Alina, crushing the final pieces of the serpent and flinging the carcass aside. The corpse rolled toward Clea as the soul dissolved around it. Prince’s mask returned, and Clea gasped through the breath of air he seemed to filter around her.

Ryson followed soon after, walking woundedly from the smog, human again.

Clea ran to him as he collapsed, catching him by surprise and helping him sink down.

“Ryson,” she breathed, tempted to touch him, but knowing unless she was prepared to heal everything, she better not try and heal him now.

He laughed, of course, and coughed up blood as he rolled over and cursed.

He started to push himself up and then paused, allowing his head to rest on the earth before rolling over again and breathing irregularly.

Despite the way his body appeared to be suffering, he watched her calmly.

“Prince, you’re looking rather more handsome than usual,” he said, surprising her. The sheer absurdity of his humor, considering the circumstances, surprised a dark, nervous laugh out of her.

She shook her head at him. It was all she could do before pushing her arms under his back. “Sit up,” she demanded, her mind still reeling from the events of the last few minutes. “Sit up right now. We have to get you back.”

He chuckled but consented to her prodding.

“Alina,” she said, voice still trembling with adrenaline.

“She’s been waiting for her chance and this was a better one than any,” Ryson replied. “She might have had me had she not gotten so distracted by your fear. She rather hated you.”

“I guessed that,” Clea whispered grimly, tempted to inspect the gravity of his wounds, but reminding herself she could do nothing with them. “Prince, can you open a portal?” she asked.

One sparked ahead of them and began to swirl slowly open.

“I was planning on killing her anyway when I was done with her. Part of our deal,” Ryson said.

“What deal?” she asked, horrified as she balanced him up.

“That I keep the burden of the heart so that I remember our purpose and dispatch the horrors they might one day become,” Ryson said, and she looked up at him as the portal swelled to its fullest point.

Ryson continued, “You’ve met your hero. Another reason that perhaps she hated you. Alina al Nevena was once Helina Hart.”

Clea had only just learned that fact and was tempted to confirm her next suspicion. If Alina was Helina Hart, then who was he?

Clea held tighter to him, looking forward to the portal as she swallowed dryly. At such a point she recognized that there were heavy truths behind Tenida’s story from Ruedom.

“I’ll heal you,” she said, “as soon as I get back and recover.” She offered the promise like a penance, determined to find another way to salvage them both. Ryson had just saved her people for the second time. “I’ll heal you,” she repeated again, and meant only that.

They stumbled through the portal, greeted by soldiers who helped peel them apart. When they confirmed that the job had been done, the Ashanas slain, several sprinted from the room as if eager to share the good news.

Clea and Ryson remained in the throne room, propped up against each other as he healed slowly. She watched his skin stitch back together, eager to speak to him when he seemed almost peaceful lying up against the throne.

Anyone who walked in was intent on leaving them be in the silence.

“So, that’s it?” she whispered, inspecting her own bruises and cuts, the one along her cheek still burning. “The Ashanas, all of the other kingdoms.”

“You’ve taken in the Virdain and Ruedain refugees,” Ryson whispered, eyes still closed. “No more cities, but one rather spectacular one, and no other enemies to tear it down.”

None but one.

Clea continued to watch him carefully. His eyes opened slowly, and he glanced down at her. She felt safe in his arms and yet was fully aware of the terror he could one day be for everyone else.

“You have an assassin’s eyes,” he whispered down to her, and her brows furrowed, hurt that perhaps he could see her line of thinking. Of course, he’d considered the possibility. The world of warfare and assassins was his, not hers.

“No, I’m afraid,” she whispered “Though at times, I wish I did. Perhaps we’d all be better off.”

He lifted a hand and grazed her face, careful not to touch the cut but moving as if tempted to.

He kept it there as they looked at each other.

She wondered then if he knew the debate she was struggling with, how it felt surreal for him to touch her, and how she’d felt only capable of returning his affections with the violence of her duty.

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with what you are,” he whispered, and she realized then that his previous comment had meant little but the opposite of what he believed. He often seemed keen to do that, to suss out the truth of her simply by having her object to a falsity he knew wasn’t true.

She huddled into his arms several minutes longer, and then he helped hoist her up when she nearly fell asleep. He took her back to her bed, still wounded himself, and too tired to bathe, she simply lay down to sleep.

“Get some rest,” he said, hunkering down next to the bed and leaning back against it.

“I’ll heal you tomorrow,” she promised, her fingers intertwined with his.

She no longer knew what that meant.

She could only think of Iris’s words: Not everything has to go according to plan.

Clea hoped dearly that Iris was right.