Page 3 of Light Locked #1

Virday

R YSON WATCHED AS Alina flattened her hand against the door outside her cottage, facing the road behind her with a mischievous smile.

She gripped the brown sackcloth she wore, the fabric a perfect complement to her tanned skin and dark hair.

With her back pressed against the door, she slid down into a sitting position.

It was as if she were guarding the exit, the Veilin asleep inside.

Alina said nothing to Ryson but made the silence painful as she picked away at the long locks of matted hair resting over her shoulders.

Ryson hadn’t seen her in decades, and she’d said little when he’d appeared at her doorstep at sunrise, a bloodied Veilin slung over his shoulders. Alina had first thought that the girl was a peace offering, and despite him telling her otherwise, she had become transfixed with her anyway.

“This is interesting.” Alina’s words brimmed with a level of speculation that was unbecoming of the child she appeared to be.

Of all the forms she could’ve possessed, she had the nerve to stuff all her guiles and scheming into something so small.

Alina preferred children. They were more malleable, lasted longer, and the streets of Virday were rife with young faces that wouldn’t be missed.

“Not as interesting as you think, I’m sure,” Ryson replied from beside her.

He rested against the outer wall of Alina’s clay cottage, his arms folded.

From such a point, one could look out at the destitute city and its dry, crumbling walls.

Huts of the homeless and impoverished huddled close.

Alina had no doubt chosen this cottage for its proximity to pain and desolation.

Of the three human cities spanning across the continent of Shambelin, Virday had experienced the most decline.

Decline seemed to be everywhere these days, so much so that it was often simply referred to as The Decline by the collective population.

Humanity was gasping for its last breaths, dying for some glimpse of a brighter future.

It was a long death, two centuries in the making since the forest beasts had first appeared.

There was perhaps another century before extinction, but all living things seemed to sense its approach, like the earth was tilting down under their feet.

“Judging from the crest on her wrist, she’s the last princess of Loda,” Alina said. “She’s in the wrong city. Better yet, she was running away from this city—from humans who should have been protecting her. Something is wrong.”

“There could be a thousand explanations, none of them scandalous,” Ryson lied almost on reflex. The last thing he wanted was for her to latch on to a scandal. She’d never let go until she unraveled it. The cost never mattered.

“Of course not,” Alina replied, rolling her eyes as she threw her arms out. “She was escaping back to Loda! It’s obvious!”

“She was disoriented. The forest does that to people. She probably thought she was running toward this city,” he argued back, stiffly.

He had to admit that he was at a disadvantage in reasoning out her intentions.

Not only had he been dormant and likely presumed dead for the last several decades, but he’d never cared for idle gossip about the royal families anyway.

Alina may very well know this girl better than she knew herself.

“Why would she have left Virday in the first place?” Alina huffed, clearly frustrated by his reluctance to conspire with her.

“You said she was alone. Why would Veilin royalty be alone in the forest running away from safety? Something is wrong. That’s why you couldn’t help but save her, right?

You want to know.” Alina searched his face for a glint of emotion that might support her claim.

He couldn’t tell if she’d succeeded; he remained locked in place, unwilling to reveal any sign that she was right.

She looked back at the ground, curling her bare toes in the dirt playfully. “Don’t even try and stifle that desire now and tell me you did it out of compassion .” She grimaced as if the word tasted sour.

“And what if I did?” Ryson attempted to deter her attention from the princess.

Alina gazed up at him with dark-brown eyes that always saw more than he wanted.

Even though his were bandaged, he felt inclined to look away.

His cloak and coverings couldn’t hide him from her, though they made him a faceless shadow to everyone else.

It had been months since he’d even seen his own reflection, but in Alina’s eyes he was painfully aware that he had one.

Her expression softened like she’d found what she’d been looking for.

Her face rounded with a smile. “It’s in your dark nature to be curious.

The more you know, the more control you have, and control feels so divine.

” She clenched her fists and shivered in excitement.

“Oh, Ryson.” She reached out and stroked his sleeve.

“You’ll never have to hide that part of yourself from me. ”

She was rubbing salt in his wounds.

“I brought the girl here so that she could rest and then leave. I don’t want anyone to know we had anything to do with her,” Ryson said, now trying to distract Alina’s focus from himself.

It seemed his plan to bring the Veilin here was already backfiring.

Alina had welcomed him with open arms, but now she was ceaselessly spinning webs.

“Ugh! What pleasure is there in that?” she whined, dragging her hands down over her face before crossing her arms in defiance.

The switch was sudden, like she had forgotten to discuss him at all. He thanked the darkness for her unstable mind.

“You can’t take this opportunity away from me!

These past years in hiding have been much too boring.

I need a mystery to solve, a game to play, a story to tell!

” She threw her hands up as she exclaimed, “Oh, I need something! Life is simply too dull here—terribly dull! I don’t even have to use all my fingers to count the things I do every day”—she pointed to the severed appendages on her left hand—“and I only have seven!” She mentioned her missing fingers casually, as if he hadn’t been the one to cut them off.

“Things have changed, and we must adapt like everything else,” Ryson replied, urging Alina into some kind of sensibility despite how he felt her unraveling.

He could tell that her human container was tearing at the seams, and from it dripped something unnatural and distorted.

He was assessing her, reading her, gauging what lingering power remained in that tiny, deceptive frame.

“We were never meant to adapt; you and I are different,” she said, gripping the neckline of her dress. When he didn’t reply, she pressed her back to the wall and folded her arms again. “I refuse to rot from existence!”

“The world is rotting from existence, Alina, and it’s about time.

People have plenty of other things to be afraid of these days.

Being something frightening hardly makes you an object of worship.

” Ryson felt exhausted. He hid a sigh on a controlled breath as he looked out at the woods beyond the walls.

He wondered how long it would be before the entire world looked like those woods.

The trees crowded around the city like they were begging to come in.

“Oh, don’t mock me! You treat me as if I don’t even know why you’re here.

You think I’m a fool?” She laughed, nudging him with her elbow.

“There’s only one way for either of us to really adapt, and it isn’t living quietly in some pitiful human city.

” Launching her body off the wall, she danced into the street, her fingers pinching the end of her dress.

She swirled around, her eyes closed, face lifted to the sky like she was enjoying the sun.

“Oh, Ryson, we’ve known each other too long. ”

Ryson didn’t respond, and the silence grew thick between them. The bustle of rattling carts and beckoning salesmen seemed to fall still in the distance. The intense light crashed down over her body and Ryson winced as a memory surfaced from the mire of his muddled mind.

The blinding light was no longer the hot, white sun of Virday but a sunrise from numberless years ago, spilling a red curtain over the silhouettes of a fresh battlefield.

Alina’s true body twisted like an uncoiling snake as she arched her back into the sunrise that ignited the curvature of her form.

She laughed against the silence of the carnage, wringing the blood from her silver hair as it made rivers down her bare shoulders and arms.

Witnessing her pleasure had intensified the sensations of blood on his own skin; the sins on his own hands. Sitting against the bodies in the wake of their victory, he’d known that one day he would have to kill her.

In contrast to the memory, her voice continued on in the present. It was a small, childish voice. It was a joke.

“You’re running out of power and you want to use what’s left to kill me,” Alina said, opening her eyes and releasing her dress.

“You want to put me out of my misery— free me from my insanity.” She returned to the shadows, each step dainty, and practiced as if she were dancing.

She whirled around and pressed her back against the cottage so that she faced the city.

“Every day, you grow weaker. I can already tell you what you’re trying to figure out right now.

You don’t have the strength to finish me off, trust me. ”

He felt like a statue under the sun, and somehow, her words unraveled something in him.

Looking out at the city, struggling on, his sense of age extended far beyond the reach of his memories, and he felt as old as the world itself.

“I’m tired, Alina. This entire world is tired. Do you really want to keep living?”