Page 17 of Light Locked #1

The Sun

I N SLEEPY WORDLESSNESS, they embarked into colder climates. As Clea walked, she was re-acquainted with the pains of sleeping on the forest ground.

The morning woods were no longer enchanting, but felt empty and dreadful.

After last night’s discussion, all that lingered was a painful sense of isolation.

The forest was a vicious alien, the medallion around her neck, a poison, and then there was Ryson, who balanced precariously on the lines between ally, enemy, and enigma.

She’d provoked him, pushed and prodded until she’d gotten the clarity she’d thought she wanted.

Yet, in the wake of all that, she was left feeling discouraged.

What had she expected? She felt foolish, but she’d had her reasons for pushing like she had.

Her life was in his hands. To trust him, she needed to know him, and despite still feeling like her statements last night had been true, she grappled for some sense of legitimate security.

She crossed her arms as they walked, her downward glances evolving into a focused glare on Ryson’s back.

In the past three years, she’d lost her mother to a horde of reaping shades, navigated Virday alone, stolen the Deadlock Medallion, and nearly died on multiple occasions. Now she was fretting over what? A Kalex ?

She shook her head as her free hand drifted to the medallion.

It had to be related to the medallion. The darkness she’d felt had to be nothing more than an illusion, creating fears for her.

But what if it wasn’t? Ryson was involved in the dark world. He made no effort to hide that.

She gritted her teeth, arguing with herself.

Ryson was a Kalex, and not the kind she liked. He was the kind she’d always been warned about, the brutish, violent, cold, cien-following kind.

Clea, this isn’t a battle . The words pushed against the barricade of anger that justified her cynicism. She struggled with the thought until her conscience beat her, warranting a sigh of defeat.

She and Ryson were supposed to be allies. They had to be. Otherwise, she was doing all this alone, and something about that battle felt even more unbearable than a tedious alliance.

But he is so difficult , she reminded herself, scrambling to collect the remnants of her grudge before accepting she would have to make amends.

Difficult or not, he was all she had for now.

She could make this partnership work at least until reaching Loda.

Their differences would teach her something new about the world. That’s how it had always been.

Her grip tightened on the straps of her bag.

Their situation didn’t warrant the luxury of a grudge, and she’d seen how petty disagreements could grow into fissures between people .

Uncomfortable with her own anger and fears, she walked herself through the standard mental reminders she reviewed to soften herself against someone: Ryson had come from a different world than she had.

She didn’t know his struggles. She couldn’t judge him.

Maybe he wasn’t as bad as he seemed. Perhaps she had been at fault to push him last night.

She continued listing off ideas that might rouse her sympathies, but her admission of guilt only angered her further.

He is really just wounded , she persisted. Behind his cold exterior is nothing more than a wounded m —

Clea gasped when Ryson released a branch and it smacked her in the face.

She stumbled past it, but the end of it caught her hair and jerked her to a halt.

She grabbed it and tried to pull it out to no avail.

A few more embarrassing attempts at freedom invited a pent-up torrent of rage.

She gripped the branch and wrestled with it, eventually snapping it off and whipping back toward Ryson, fuming.

She stormed forward, fishing through her hair in an attempt to remove the rest of it as she held a thicker portion in her hand.

Ryson watched the spectacle from a few paces ahead.

Monster , she thought, gritting her teeth at the innocence with which he beheld her struggle.

“I’m fine,” she said sarcastically, challenging his indifference as she passed him. She’d barely taken two steps when she felt him grab it and rip it free.

She shouted in pain, gripping her head as she spun toward him. He held what was left of the branch in his hand, hair dangling from it.

“Got it,” he said with a smirk.

Clea gripped the broken branch still in her hand and swung it at him.

He snatched her arm and flipped her over, her back landing flat against the grass and brush.

The landing sent a jolt through her, and he remained crouched over her, one hand poised in the grass next to her head.

She saw his full and genuine smile for the first time.

Multiple dimples under the now dark stubble of his face and two rows of wicked white teeth gave the smile a wolfish glow.

Pleased and wicked, it more than alluded to the fact that he was shamelessly amused, even delighted that she’d tried to hit him.

“Feel better now?” he purred, narrowing those silver eyes that burned in the shade of his coal black hair.

“You’re a monster,” she whispered with restraint, nearly holding her breath at their closeness. The vibration of the landing sent uncomfortable quivers through her as she tried to salvage what she could of her pride.

“Am I?” he replied breathily, as if he’d been waiting for the compliment. He closed the space between them as if he had every intention of suffocating her further.

“You could take a perfectly good person”—she hoisted herself up and he backed away—“and make them as angry and bitter as you are. I bet you do it for sport. We have names for people like you, cut off from others so that you become stagnant and rotten. Bad blooded.”

“Now you’re getting to know me. Keep going.”

“I stick by what I said,” she snapped back, brushing off her clothes. “There aren’t bad people. Just complicated stories.” Not a second after the words left her mouth, his foot hooked her ankle and knocked her feet out from under her.

She fell on her side with a shout, scrambled back to her feet, and thrust a finger at him.

“Now, that ”—she bumped her finger against his chest—“was childish!”

He stole her footing again. This time, her hands flew into the air. She fell on her backside, feet out in front of her. She didn’t get up this time, but sat straight, hands gripping the grass at her sides as she kept her gaze focused forward.

Ryson eased down onto his haunches before her, invading her vision.

“I’m sorry, my deep interpersonal issues and dark past compelled me to do that.

” He propped his head up on his hand and tilted it.

He was completely calm, and the happiest she’d seen him.

“I’m complicated,” he added with a delighted lilt.

Clea sensed he was feeding off of her anger, enlivened by it.

This isn’t the battle. She closed her eyes. Seeing him and hearing the words made her want to shout.

This is about the medallion. It’s about making it back home.

A heavy wave of embarrassment and guilt pulled her back into the grass. She rested her hands over her face and closed her eyes, inhaling. She winced as the realization hit her— she was now being petty.

She was being childish. Maybe she’d been the childish one all along.

His part of the deal was simply to get her to Loda. It didn’t matter how he acted. She still needed him.

Need.

The word filled her with an uncomfortable sense of dread as her pride deflated on the ground where she lay.

When it had become clear that her needs would be precisely what would be used to punish her, she avoided needing anyone or anything that could be taken away.

Now, here she was, acting like an entitled child all because she couldn’t tolerate that feeling. Need.

She receded into the darkness beyond her eyelids. Days locked in her room, nights staring out the window, it had been her freedom.

Lately, she’d been too afraid, too busy minded to visit it, but lying in the grass there she found it again.

A wave of peace settled over her. When she’d been deprived of everything else, they’d never been able to take that quiet space from her.

The warmth of ansra filled her chest and she remembered herself for the first time in months.

“What are you doing?” Ryson asked after a minute of silence.

“Finding my soul again,” she muttered breathily, uncovering her face.

Her hands slid down over her stomach. He was standing over her, and she looked past him to the glowing canopy above.

He seemed completely perplexed, likely judging her harshly, but she had no other way of describing what she was doing.

He crouched again as if inspecting a dead body, and she took a measured breath.

“I’m sorry I’ve been acting the way I have,” Clea said, still watching the canopy. “I just attacked you. I’ve never done that before to anyone. I feel like lately in all the fighting and survival I forgot myself, and you’re right, I do have to depend heavily on you to survive.”

Ryson seemed to shift uncomfortably at her apology, eyes narrowed on her face, before following her gaze back up to the trees and then down again. “What are you looking at?”

“It won’t happen again,” Clea continued, still focused on the canopy. “You’re taking me through the forest. That’s what you agreed to do. Nothing more. I’ve been…immature and entitled. I apologize.”

“It’s just the forest,” he reasoned, apparently unsettled even more by her second apology.

“No,” she said flatly. “No. I—”

He grabbed her hand, and she jolted as he hoisted her to her feet. He walked off as she steadied herself.

“Thank you,” she called, following him, but he didn’t reply.

“Stop talking,” he said, and Clea chuckled a bit at his strange response, but didn’t say anything more to him after that .