Page 7 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)

After she conducted this campaign, she was to return and promptly marry and have children.

Leaving the city for Virday again had incited a heated and messy debate with both her father and the council.

She’d pushed to take a tremendous risk, and the only reason they’d all agreed was that her father was too weak to lead the campaign.

While his illness restrained him to the castle, Clea taking on the mantle of leadership without qualms had made the Lodain royal family look capable and fearless again while not raising questions about her father’s illness.

She was supposed to continue the Lodain legacy by producing an heir, but making that effort secondary, as if she had no doubts she’d return to Loda alive, had filled her people with ravenous hope.

The Golden Army had curled around their future queen with devastating power, the Heart of Loda inspiring the sword of its people into action.

Ignat and Fillip, in their expertise, had spun the tale brilliantly.

Iris had mobilized the Golden Army and appointed Dae and Achor as its generals.

Her father had made the proclamation of the campaign in elegant prose.

Catagard had organized them all like a conductor playing a symphony.

The Lodain machine, when engaged, was a ferocious creature.

Now, it was over. Done. Somehow not enough, and yet she had to retire from the battlefield anyway. She’d expected to feel settled, relinquish herself into the next phase of her life. Now it was as if some part of her were clawing back into the forest.

Clea rubbed her face.

“Dae, leave her be. Come back to the celebration,” Iris called again. “I’d love to meet Yvan. You can introduce us. I haven’t been able to interview anyone about Virday’s version of history in ages.”

“Clea, this is a huge victory,” Dae urged, undeterred. “Historical.” He looked over at Iris. “You don’t understand the responsibilities of royalty. Not everyone can be a penniless artist, making her bed in a new house every night.”

“I’m a historian, Dae. You’re only jealous I have beauty and intelligence and all you have is the spear of Lodain ideology shoved up your—”

“Lodain ideology is ultimately what protects your gluttonous whoring,” he snapped back with obvious restraint. “You belong outside the walls, but somehow, you’ve found yourself inside the castle like a garden snake.”

She giggled, becoming more lighthearted the more heated Dae seemed.

“Whoring? I wouldn’t be penniless, then, would I?

Oh, no. I do what I do for the sheer fun of it.

In fact, by the Lodain definition of things, I’m happily married.

It only just happens that I’ve married quite a few men in the city. I consider it a public service.”

Dae’s expression faltered but quickly recovered.

“Do you have no shame? Your Ruedain blood is a poison here.” He looked back at Clea.

“Your Highness, I have acknowledged and accepted your tendencies as a healer to attract the deficient sorts. I understood the strategy behind Yvan to promote unity, and I stave off her impropriety while managing her breath of a general’s responsibility, but Iris is a tidal wave of unapologetic foolery that threatens to drown us all! ”

Iris whistled in admiration. “Dae, when you are irritated, you are a poet, my dear.”

Clea rubbed her face and groaned. “Oh, Dae. I can’t do this right now.

” She’d once watched one of the castle dogs bark relentlessly at a feral cat on a garden wall.

The two had exchanged hisses and howls for hours until she’d been so distracted by her studies that she’d marched outside and shooed them both off.

She felt a bit like that now. Dae was older than her and yet respected status with such rigidity it was almost comical how he submitted himself with rigor to her decisions as if they were decrees.

“Dae,” Iris said, tossing her hair. “Ask me nicely and maybe I’ll consider helping you with all of that tension.”

If Dae had looked taken aback before, he was now completely horrified. He gestured to Iris, eyes still set on Clea as if the woman had said something so offensive he could hardly look at her.

Clea exhaled, exhausted, and gave a pleading glance to Iris.

“Anything new from Althala’s folder?” Clea asked, turning back to her bag.

She wasn’t exactly sure who in this argument she was rescuing, but she’d seen Dae and Iris get into it before.

There wouldn’t be any end to it until a third party intervened.

She’d never seen two people fight so regularly and with such persistent fervor.

They both stopped talking. Clea began to unbandage her hands.

Iris had been a student of the historian Althala, whom Clea had lost in the forest during her initial journey when the Kalex village that hosted her had been attacked.

Clea had ultimately handed Althala’s folder over to Iris upon her return, and she was one of the few people Clea trusted to search for the truth in their histories, or question it, for that matter.

“Nothing new, no. Athala picked a lot of pieces from the disparate histories of the three cities, and even made guesses about the city of Salanes,” Iris said with a sigh.

“I’m thinking at this point Ruedom’s version of history is likely the most accurate in terms of facts, but the mythology of Virdain and Lodain history is equally as interesting.

I’ve been interviewing those living in the new Kalex settlements outside the city as well.

” She twirled her fingers through her long golden earrings as she spoke.

“They’re expecting to see you there, celebrating,” Dae continued on as if they’d never discussed another topic, and Iris groaned.

“Do you know what it could mean if they found you here?” he persisted. “Training like you’re heading into battle tomorrow?”

“I know,” Clea said more impatiently, but not with him, with herself.

“Clea,” he pushed, and without thinking, she snapped back.

“It’s not enough! Not enough to face what’s out there.”

At this, both Iris and Dae softened their gazes and looked at her questioningly.

“What’s out there?” Dae replied, lowering his arms to his sides. “You mean Venennin?”

“It’s not just…Venennin,” Clea said, defending her position as she continued to unwrap her hands.

Her long braid felt heavy at her back, unusually heavy, like it would soon give her a headache.

Her anger and restlessness began to uncoil at his prodding, giving way to the type of honest conversations that had happened in the war tent out in the forest. “It’s what they can be,” she added.

“They have speed, strength, and the advantages of their senses over us. They have elaborate weapons and curses and lifetimes to concoct plans and strategies.” She raised her hands, turning back toward him.

“How can you rest? Don’t you see the potential they have, Dae?

Even their souls take new frightening forms, sometimes even with the capacity to manifest in our world.

They can literally become monsters and then turn back into themselves. ”

Dae shook his head, clearly confused in the wake of their fresh victory.

“No. I don’t. Clea, they have powerful bodies, but pain that never fades when they are wounded.

They have intelligence, but intelligence haunted by other voices constantly tempting them to succumb to their darkness.

They have great power, but power that eats them alive.

They have callous hearts, but they’re ensnared by cravings.

They have long lifetimes, but only as long as they manage to resist turning into bottomless forest beasts that we slay regularly.

Their vices make them undisciplined, while we train to be experts all our lives.

Their long lives make them careless, while we value every day we have.

Cien fills them with urges and emptiness, while ansra fills us with heat, hope, and warmth.

Yes, their souls are twisted into different forms, but that is only a foreshadowing of the mindless beasts they will one day become.

Ansra doesn’t change us in such a way because it is the truest form of what we are.

It is life. It is humanity. Life will prevail.

Even Venennin cannot survive without us. ”

His words echoed out into the arena with a firmness that seemed to make any argument futile.

Iris even kept quiet behind him, watching him with a thoughtful and, Clea almost guessed, admiring expression.

She’d caught that glance before when Dae had been surprisingly poetic.

He often was when talking about the Veilin cause.

Strangely enough, she’d seen Dae offer Iris a similar expression when the woman had once gotten carried away explaining the intricacies of Lodain history.

This time, however, Clea wished Iris would speak up. Unlike her, Clea never did like arguing with Dae.

Clea often had an intuitive sense of things, which made arguing with such a reasoned-out thinker difficult even when she was certain she was right.

Apparently, it was also a trait of a healer to have an uncanny sense of things that shouldn’t be known, an intuition that bordered on clairvoyance, but that certainly never worked in a society that so valued debate despite being superstitious.

In arguing with Dae, she often felt like she was arguing with the city itself. Luckily, Iris seemed to sense this.

“What I think she’s trying to say is that she feels as if we’re ill-equipped to fight the worst of them,” Iris said.

“What do you know about any of it?” Dae shot back, folding his arms.

“I read,” she replied sharply, as if he’d never opened a book in his life. “She’s talking about the ones who have managed on for centuries. The ones who actually achieve a sense of self-mastery. The sifted ones.”

That was exactly what Clea meant. Uncannily so. Sometimes Clea wondered if Iris was her own kind of healer.

“The ancient lords were wiped out during the battle with the Warlord of Shambelin,” Dae reasoned back. “And the Warlord was killed by Helina Hart. I suppose I’m not reading the heretical manuscripts that speak about these invisible enemies you both mutter on about.”

Neither Clea nor Iris responded.

“Or are these about the rumors?” he asked, looking back and forth between them.

When they didn’t respond, he shook his head.

“You women and your gossip,” he said, gesturing toward them as if frustrated that they wouldn’t engage with his argument.

“Ancient Venennin rising from the grave? Whispers of strange shapes in the mountains? Clouds, by the way. The flying Venennin with swords of fire? The Insednian we are apparently holding in our secret dungeon?”

Clea and Iris exchanged glances, not yet having discussed any rumors.

Iris shrugged over at her and then picked away at the ends of her hair and sighed.

“Yes, apparently, it’s the women who gossip.

Clea, I don’t know how you managed nine months with him.

I’m consistently impressed by your ability to keep up appearances. ”

Clea laughed in a somewhat exasperated way.

Dae looked between them as Clea hoisted her training bag over her shoulder and started back up the stairs. She was still restless, but feeling much better having at least voiced her concerns.

“Dae kills Venennin by the dozens, Yvan could build city walls of light, and yes, I am great at keeping up appearances. Trained since birth. If you had Catagard hovering over your shoulder all the time, you’d be great at it too.”

Now Dae and Iris exchanged a look, finally in agreement on something. Clea could read their minds and was pleased to have removed the tension between them, if only for a moment.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. It’s more than that.” Clea waved them off. “I am the symbol!” she said, thrusting an arm into the air. “The Heart of Loda. Goddess of light!”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Dae grumbled, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, someone has an ego,” Iris said with a whistle, and they all managed a laugh.

Iris then added, “So if all of you have such illustrious titles, then I must be a muse of charisma, beauty, and intelligence.” She flipped her hair dramatically.

“I’ll have to omit myself from the histories so I don’t outshine you all. ”

“Yes, as the goddess of delusion,” Dae shot back. Clea watched them both argue again, though the argument was lighter now, almost playful. She smiled as she turned back from the arena.

Some part of her felt settled enough to bathe, hopefully for the final time that day. She wasn’t completely at peace, but she felt calm.

It wasn’t enough, but alas, she was prepared to return home.