Page 62 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)
The Key
LEA WAS RELIEVED to find the empty stairs as they descended together, and then startled at the sound of Ryson’s voice, which sounded surprisingly light. Everything was. The air, the morning light, the liberty she felt in her own body, and even Ryson beside her, hand looped around her waist.
It was the first thing Iris seemed to notice when she turned the corner and met them at the bottom of the stairs. Iris looked between them as if unsure what her first question should be. Clea spared her the suffering and asked one instead.
“Where is everyone?” Clea asked.
Iris looked around almost cautiously “Well,” she started, “Prince appeared at one point to usher everyone off. Dae took it as a threat and then was dragged off by Prince’s skeletons from our catacombs.
No one really stuck around after that. So, the healing went well?
” Iris seemed to be restraining any inflection.
“Um, yes,” Clea said, looking away and trying to restrain a creeping blush.
“Yes,” Ryson echoed with a smile and much more normalcy than she felt she could manage.
“Iris, would you mind taking her for a meal? I need to make some arrangements.” Clea was surprised when he slid a gentle hand under her chin, nudging her closer and guiding her head toward him.
In a low voice, he said with a subtle smile, half question, half comment, “I imagine you’re quite ravenous?
” He then leaned forward and kissed her, a motion that felt so natural and welcome, yet at the same time, in Iris’s audience, Clea couldn’t help but stiffen.
He leaned away and released her, saying, “Come see me in the council room when you’re done. ” With that, he walked off.
Clea’s neck felt like it was made of clay, chipping with every uncomfortable rotation in Iris’s direction as she grimaced in embarrassment.
Iris was staring. She then bit her lip and smiled, crossing her arms.
“So,” she repeated, “the healing went well?” Her lips broke free into a shameless smile. She glanced down at her hand. “Let’s see, you went in for the healing in the late evening…” She lifted a finger and then lifted one after the other as if counting the hours.
Clea grabbed her hands and pulled her away. Iris leaned back toward Ryson’s direction and shouted after him, “Fabulous work!”
Ryson turned back, and Clea was surprised and horrified to see him crack a genuine smile before she yanked Iris in the opposite direction. “Stop that!” she said. “Both of you are so public.”
Iris simply laughed. “Don’t worry, your poorly hidden secret is safe with me,” she said, crossing her arms. “Though who could be surprised?”
Silence settled as they moved toward the castle courtyard.
“I’m glad,” Iris said quietly after a few minutes, and then paused, her arms crossed. She watched Clea for a long moment and then placed a hand on either shoulder. “I was worried, for a moment, that you might—”
“I did,” Clea confessed, and then for the first time, she realized the illusion to which she could have fallen victim.
“But I nearly made the wrong choice,” she said, lifting a finger to her eye as if she could sense the growing silver in it.
“My illusion was not that he was dangerous,” she whispered, and then looked back up at Iris.
“The illusion was that he might be the answer to my own freedom, the freedom that I have craved all my life, that he could solve any of the problems that all along I needed to solve for myself.”
“So, you were meant to kill him?” Iris whispered, her brow furrowed in confusion.
“I was meant to sacrifice him for the sake of a greater purpose, at least in his words, because it seems, all along, if I had the strength to do that, then I might be capable of overcoming the grand illusion that he says ensnares us all,” Clea whispered and then shook her head.
“You were right, Iris. There is so much more to the story of our heroes and our cities. The four heroes set out to defeat something, but it was not the Warlord of Shambelin,” she concluded, glancing down at her fingers.
“They set out to defeat something much worse, and I’m afraid they failed. ”
“Yes,” Iris said, to her surprise. “Because their healer fell into darkness at the moment they needed him most.”
Clea’s expression faltered, and Iris sighed before at last imparting the truth of her and Ryson’s relationship, one which had long preceded his conquest of Loda.
“Ryson had me keep an eye on you,” Iris admitted. “He didn’t want to get close. He was respecting the distance, and your wishes. Imagine it. I’m minding my own business in my cottage and an Insednian appears with my cat in his silver claws. It’s comical now. Terrifying then,” Iris laughed.
Clea stared, her lips parted.
“He has an odd way of switching between seeming harmlessness and severe threat,” Iris defended her secrecy.
“I know you know that, but imagine my position when an Insednian says he has your heart and shares this secret tale of your journey with no ask in return but to keep an eye on you, which I already was by default. Not to mention, he was powerful enough to open a rift directly into the city without being detected. I’d never even imagined that before. ”
“And he threatened you?” Clea asked.
“To kill my cat,” Iris replied, raising an eyebrow, “and possibly my cousin.”
Clea straightened, staring forward as she tried to process the revelation. Clea supposed it wasn’t out of character.
“Though, after a while, I cooperated because he also told me truths about history which I then began to verify. I pulled on threads and then everything just started to unravel. I became addicted to the truth,” Iris explained.
“I couldn’t stop digging,” she added and with it, she imparted the very same history that Tenida and Ryson had told, verified in all her studies.
“Our heroes became Venennin in their failed attempt to defeat the heart of all cien,” Iris finished.
“The healer, however, left a crack in the door for someone else to finish what he could not. It seems like my guess was right after all,” Iris whispered after a while, calling Clea’s attention fully back to her before she said, “the last attempt has been saved for someone like you, someone connected enough to ansra to channel it into the very heart of darkness.”
???
The council room was empty when Clea arrived.
She’d eaten, changed, and was ready to go back to sleep, but eager to finish the conversation they had started before going their separate ways.
Ryson invited her to sit down, and she noticed one last piece had been added to the board, a scorched omen in the center of it all. She already knew what it represented.
“It is vacancy, an open wound,” Ryson said. “It cannot be killed, but it can be healed. The problem is that healing something means connecting with it, giving it a chance to touch you.”
“And that’s what changed all of you,” she whispered.
Ryson met her eyes. “This thing is a wound from another world, a creature that craves and eats, desires to exist again from beyond death.”
“Like a ghost,” she whispered.
“In a manner of speaking, a ghost that has haunted our world now for centuries, holding us as it strangles us, unable to reconcile with its very nature and constantly trying to consume, to become something else, something alive, something that exists. I imagine it came to us because it recognized our own tendencies to do the same. It was able to infect us with its intentions because it, too, had similar cravings. It is like mankind, but of a different realm, a wounded god. After we were defeated by it the first time, we struggled against our own transformations into Venennin. We knew we wouldn’t be able to kill it, and so in one last effort, we aimed in the end to seal it.
Oliver put his blacksmith work to the ultimate test, crafting a weapon capable of such a feat, but we needed something vast and powerful to make the weapon work.
For that, Vanida laid down the use of her very soul,” Ryson said, glancing over at his weapon, which Clea now recognized leaning against the wall.
“Her soul,” Clea whispered.
“This weapon is not just a weapon. It is a key. It was a weapon Alina, Oliver, and I were destined to use one day, but our natures could not last, and in our climb to power, we lost our way. Oliver lost control. I was tasked with killing him, and the war broke out. In my own rise to power, I was at risk of losing my heart, and Alina lost her humanity. Oliver became the Lord of the Ashana.”
“And you tricked him with a false alliance?” Clea asked.
Ryson grimaced. She knew that look.
“Let me guess,” she said. “That alliance wasn’t a trick at all and was a rather well-intentioned effort on your part, which ultimately ushered in the fall of Salanes.”
“It was perhaps the culmination of my vice, perhaps at its worst. I did defeat the Virads,” he said, “but I wanted to use them to negotiate. It was never my intention that the Ashanas consume them and become what they are today. After that disaster and the ensuing battle with Oliver, I descended into slumber. But then there was you, this fragile thread of life, and no matter how I pulled, it would not break. I was able to drag myself out of the darkness on that thread, and each time, I both feared and craved that you would collapse into me, become like me. Part of me wanted that very much, and still does, but there was a part of me, the heart, that still yearned to accomplish what we had set out to do all those years ago. But I knew that if your desires were too strong, in facing this darkness, you too would succumb to it. In such a way, I protected you from it, and always would have.”
“But I chose to resist instead.”
“In the wake of it all, yes,” Ryson replied, “and because of that, I must surrender you up to this final battle, should you choose to accept it. But I cannot guarantee it is not an illusion too. I want it badly, and always have, which very well means it’s not possible.”
“Yes,” she said without pause.
He chuckled, looking away, and then his smile faded.
“I thought as much. And I have so desperately dreaded and longed for this moment. You will be in harm’s way in a form in which I cannot protect you, and yet, your willingness inspires my own, and I perhaps can redeem myself from the defeat that has haunted my conscience since it happened. ”
He looked at her calmly. “You will want to rest, as we are limited in time.” He approached her, hands grazing her face, tracing along the eye marked even more with silver. “If we do this, we must do it soon. Dress for a battle, but not with armor.”
“No armor?” she asked, searching his eyes.
“I’m afraid the monster we face is beyond physical weakness. You will strike at the soul. Sharpen that,” he whispered. He leaned forward, and she closed her eyes as he kissed her forehead. Her heart began to drum in anticipation.
“Where are we going?” she whispered.
Holding her close, he murmured into her ear, “The city of Salanes.” He inhaled a deep breath and exhaled it. “Where we’ve kept it all this time.”