Page 2 of Light Locked #1
He tried to remember what truly living eyes looked like, and guessed for his own amusement that hers were brown.
Common in every city, he imagined hers would be uncommon in their vibrancy.
They were brown, but not the burdened, dull brown of an encumbered existence.
They’d tell the same story her body told, eyes with the unspoken potential of churned earth.
Dark, slumbering, lush, so recently and violently sifted that it better exposed the rich potential of life beneath.
She’d bitten her lower lip. It gleamed with a wounded redness against the snow. Red wings blossomed from the claw marks on her shoulders.
A victim of the forest’s depravity, she was beautiful where she lay, picturesque in ways humans could not understand.
They never saw the artistry in their suffering, not in the same way that the forest and its beasts did.
Few, if any, suffered well, and this woman had been transformed by her struggle into something remarkable.
His bandaged hand reached for her chin and tilted her head toward him. The movement exposed a patch of glowing skin rubbed clean by the snow. He shot up at the realization of what she was.
“Veilin.” He snorted in disgust as he backed away from her.
Every prior notion of her shattered into a wall of disdain.
He retrieved his weapon from the reaper’s remains and returned both daggers to their rightful places.
No wonder the reaper had been so furious at Ryson’s interruption. He should have let it kill her.
Kill her instead. A voice within him spoke as he watched the girl. He blinked and a perfect image of himself appeared crouched over her. It watched him with black irises that absorbed all light. Veilin are the enemy. Do it .
Ryson’s hand reached for the heavy scythe strapped to his back.
He hesitated as he gripped the handle. Glowing eyes materialized in the darkness around him, more reapers and other beasts anticipating his decision, no doubt.
Little was more aromatic to forest beasts than Veilin blood; Ryson only now realized how poor his sense of smell had gotten.
No doubt the girl’s struggle had filled the forest with the scent, and it had drawn monsters in from all directions.
He had a thirsty audience, compelling him to do what his dark replica demanded.
Kill her. The world will be better off without another lightwalking charlatan , the replica chided, a messenger in times of doubt, always tilting the scales in darkness’s favor.
Ryson gripped his weapon but was filled with a pervasive tiredness, as if the very thought of drawing it drained his enthusiasm.
It felt heavy on his back. He found himself more disappointed by her Veilin blood than anything else.
His hand slipped loosely from the hilt and dropped by his side.
What reason was there to kill her, really?
What are you doing? the figure hissed.
“She’ll die anyway.”
He turned to leave, but from this angle, the girl’s extended wrist caught his attention. Beneath the ashes and mud was a black tattoo of a crown and a familiar crest of a lion, swan and shield.
Ryson stilled, unsure if the image was real or if he was simply haunted by it .
Kill her. The figure whispered now from beside him. It awakened a bloodthirsty ache in his bones, compelling him toward her.
The reapers’ wide eyes blinked as they drifted closer to the clearing.
They wanted the girl just as he did. He pitied the wretches.
She bears the Lodain family crest. Killing her would be perfect poetry. The figure sauntered behind his back and stopped at his other side. In contrast, the dying reaper’s words still burned in his mind.
A royal, delivered to him on a full moon, sprawled out in the snow. A Veilin. In previous versions of his life, this would have been a stroke of exceptional luck, but not any longer.
“What an exhausting night,” he whispered as he rubbed his face.
He’d forgotten how much commotion life caused simply by being alive, and tomorrow he’d have to cross the gates of a human city. He already missed the forest’s silence.
Peering through a bandaged hand, he looked back down at the girl.
She was already so close to death, likely wrought with anxiety and fear long before tonight’s hunt. Maybe she would be happy to die. He’d long outgrown the notion that life was innately some kind of gift. Maybe by leaving her, he’d be doing her a favor.
On the other hand, taking her would hardly be a risk.
The faded luminance of her skin was a clear indication that the energy in her blood was nearly gone.
Even if she woke up, she’d be too weak to sense what he was.
Not that it mattered. His own kind wouldn’t even recognize him now. He was basically a human too.
One of the reapers inched into the light of the campfire, a slender hand extended toward the girl.
All Ryson needed was to go to Virday and find that wretched beast Alina. He had enough trouble simply anticipating Alina’s reaction after he’d disappeared for so many years. This girl was an added inconvenience, wasn’t she?
Ryson released a heavy sigh, and the reaper startled at the sound. He ran a hand through his hair as the beast clamored into the forest, stumbling over itself in fright. The dark replica of himself vanished as he settled firmly upon a decision.
“Cursed fate,” he muttered before returning to treat the girl’s wounds.
He’d take her back to Virday and then be done with her for good.
Alina might be more inclined to let him past her threshold if he brought her something anyway.