Page 25 of Light Locked #1

Scars

C LEA RAN HER hand between the tattered pages of Althala’s folder and divided the stack down the middle. Ryson still clutched his shoulder, as he now often did. They hadn’t spoken much since the attack on the village two days ago.

Althala had included a diary with lots of information about the Kalex, and Clea lived there.

She strolled between the pages, walking through the lives recorded within them.

She memorized names, stories, legends, and facts.

She attempted to decode Althala’s writing, and failed, but tried consistently.

The folder’s contents built a thin wall of paper between Clea and the reality in which the village no longer existed.

On the other side were tiresome and familiar feelings of loss, fear, guilt, frustrations with her burden of the medallion, and then there was Ryson.

She couldn’t start to decipher stirring, uncomfortable feelings that he incited simply by being there in front of her.

He was the enemy who’d held her back from fighting, and the friend who’d pulled her close for comfort.

He’d been there when she’d healed the Kalex. He’d seen their faces too. She’d never witnessed a monster of the likes that had attacked the village, and any dreams that those faces had survived were short-lived.

Could it have been her fault ?

How could Ryson, seeing all those people just as she had, make such a quick and sharp decision to leave them behind?

It was a widely known fact that the experience of healing connected people.

She’d been warned against it in Loda and Virday any time she’d offered to heal Kalex or criminals.

She’d readily dismissed such warnings, lumping them in with the slew of other rigid and foundless rules and biases they’d tried to teach her.

She knew what they were afraid of.

In healing someone, you had to see their potential for wholeness, and that required empathy. Empathy required connection. Connection, in their minds, led to contamination.

She’d healed plenty of Kalex and criminals and still hadn’t seen what there was to be so worried about. If anything, exercising such healings had broadened her understanding of the world.

The attack on the village had shown her a different risk of healing that she hadn’t anticipated. She’d completely lost any sense of herself as the Kalex died. It had been as if she were dying. She’d felt so connected to all of their wounds and thus all of their fates.

Even Althala had the mind to give up her folder from the beginning, tuned in, perhaps, to Ryson’s reasoning, but still. The reasoning was cold—heartless even.

Now the only evidence she had of their existence, perhaps the only evidence anyone would have, was the folder in her hands. Forest deaths were unmarked, the vast expanse of trees serving as a nameless mass grave. She resolved to be their marker.

Clea closed the folder for the fourth time that night.

She waited to speak; the silence between them was a closed floodgate.

Ryson was watching her expectantly from the other side of the fire.

She didn’t understand why he seemed so intrigued until she remembered that she’d talked often during the first part of their journey.

To him, her silence must have seemed like an absolute miracle, but she was reluctant to dwell on his emotions. She’d never felt so indebted to and angry at the same person at once, and the intensity of the combined feelings left her perplexed.

Clea leaned back against a tree, placing the folder in the bag on her lap.

“What?” Ryson said, jerking her from her thoughts.

She realized she’d been glaring at him and averted her gaze.

“Nothing,” she replied. “Thank you.”

Thank you was always a safe option, whether she felt it in her heart or not. She did. Somewhat.

“I could only think about the people in front of me,” she continued, folding her hands in a controlled and polite way in her lap. “My emotions got the best of me.”

“You’re human,” he replied, surprising her. He almost sounded sympathetic until he followed the words with, “Emotions are the bane of your existence.”

Clea was surprised to find comfort in his callous response—relief even.

Inwardly, she laughed at herself. Days ago, she’d been trying to convince herself that he had a heart, and now she was struggling to convince herself that he didn’t.

Assuming he was the disgruntled, closed-off Kalex she’d started her journey with somehow made everything easier to digest.

He’d held her the night of the attack in the same way he’d given her his cloak. It wasn’t a heartfelt gesture. It was a cold and calculated practice to help support her as she fought off the strain of the medallion. He was just trying to make the journey easier for them both.

“How is your shoulder?” she asked.

He withdrew his hand from his wound.

“It’s fine,” he said curtly, as if attempting to draw her attention away from it.

“How badly does it hurt?” She hoisted herself up and made her way around the fire.

“It’s fine,” Ryson repeated, eyeing her like an animal caught in a trap as she approached.

He leaned away from her as she knelt by him. He seemed so threatened by her proximity that she almost found it comical.

“What do you think I’m going to do? Punch it?

” she asked. “I just want to see the wound. It can’t be fine.

You’ve been holding it like that since you were hurt.

You’ve neglected it.” She leaned closer to him as she eyed the bloodied bandaging.

“I can heal it for you. It’s going to get infected. What if we get attacked again? ”

“It will heal soon. Leave it be,” he growled.

“You need to clean and bandage it,” she said. “You’re being reckless. You stopped me when I was being reckless. Now you are. I’m stopping you.”

“I’ll bandage it.”

“No, you won’t, and even if you did, it would be sloppy work based on how you bandaged my arm when you first found me. At least let me do that.”

Ryson seemed to withdraw into some mental debate as he stared at her.

“You let me begin to work on it after we escaped. Why not now? It won’t take long. I promise. It’s fine to let someone help you every once in a while. This isn’t the time to be hardheaded.”

He narrowed his eyes on her.

Clea sat back on her legs. “Fine,” she said. “I won’t bandage it, but I’m not moving until you do. I don’t care how fast it heals. It’s against my nature to watch someone suffer when it’s easy to do something about it.”

“Then avert your gaze, Princess ,” he replied in a snide tone.

“Your entire arm is drenched in blood!”

“Get used to it,” he snapped back.

“No.” She folded her arms. “You should care. I care.” She could almost see him recoil at the sound of her sympathy, and his reaction gave her pause. “You act like you’re offended. ”

“There’s no pride in being tended to by a Veilin,” he said. “It’s an insult to suggest it.”

“Pride?” She had never heard the word used in such a way.

“And what sense of pride could those living in the darkness have?” She explored the idea with genuine interest. Somehow, she felt that she would soon see a new part of him that she hadn’t understood before.

“You should be proud of saving someone.” She meant the words as statements, but as she continued, they sounded more like questions.

“Of helping her protect mankind, of guarding a poisonous medallion, and yet”—she came to a sudden realization—“you’re ashamed of it? ”

She searched his eyes. He didn’t deny it.

“You’re ashamed of the kind things you’ve done for me?

Why? Because your evil peers would not approve?

Then what makes you proud, Ryson?” She couldn’t help but feel irritated.

“Would you rather kill me and leave me here? Would you smile at my terror and pain? Laugh at my despair? Would all this lift your heartless pride ?”

“And if it did?” he asked.

“Then you would be a monster,” she proclaimed.

“I keep telling you that’s exactly what I am, but you’re a deaf fool.”

She hesitated, realizing that he was pulling her into the same trap she’d fallen into before. “You aren’t a monster,” she argued. “You aren’t a monster at all.”

“Make up your mind,” he said, rolling his eyes .

“I think despite your facade, you feel so deeply that you can’t stand it.

” Clea spoke the words with a sense of mischievous accomplishment, as if she were proud of her deductions.

“You’re unreasonably passionate in hate and love.

You practice both with such an unbridled intensity that to any normal person, the two emotions are unrecognizable. ”

Ryson did not object. Instead, he actually looked taken off guard. She continued with more fervor, pleased that she could surprise him when he was so often the one doing the shocking.

“You love as if love is a religion. In its intensity, it becomes an almost self-destructive dedication to whatever it is that you love. It is because of this you know love only as a commitment; you’ve seldom seen or long forgotten its other faces.

Acts of cold commitment are love to you.

Your hatred is ripe, your love robbed of warmth. You aren’t callous. You feel .”

He grimaced. “All of that is incredibly optimistic.”

“You’re right.” Now she was rolling her eyes. “You are incredibly evil with your scary attitude and your scary eyes.”

“This isn’t a joke.” He leaned toward her.

“I know,” she shot back, mirroring him.

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

He sighed, falling against the tree as he tilted his head back. “Fine. Do what you want, but quickly. ”

She smirked.

“Stop it,” he snapped, staring up at the darkness above.