Page 42 of Light Locked #1

“I’m an object of their fears. You’re an object of their desires,” Ryson chided as if experimenting with the ideas. “You don’t see the real power of being an object, do you? No,” he purred in her ear, “because you’re distracted, still starving for something else.”

There was an aching sense of discovery in his voice, like he’d given her something and wanted to watch her unwrap it. Clea remembered when they’d first met and how he’d crafted conversations to stir a specific truth out of her.

In the silence that followed, she wanted to ask him to elaborate, but knew he’d baited that silence for her.

She couldn’t help but feel that she was being drawn into something, reminded that just a few minutes ago she’d been standing at the door, determined not to show her back, and yet here she was, lured into a strange and irrational sense of safety.

Was he an enemy?

She turned in his arms, reciprocating his slow and tender movement with her own. Ryson had almost impulsively turned their interactions into sparring matches and games. This was no different, only with higher stakes.

“The medallion,” she reminded him. In their proximity, she tried to trace the concentration of the cien, but it was so close and amplified that everything seemed covered in it.

She pushed him back with her fingers, and he moved without resistance, a one-sided smile tugging his lips at her gesture.

Clea held his eyes as a sense of the medallion flickered through her.

It was on the right side of his person. But where?

“Or what?” he asked, a playfulness in his expression as he continued to hold her loosely. She was confident that if she stepped back, he would let her go, but now she could only hope to use their proximity to her advantage.

“You will disappear,” she replied firmly, stifling her unease with a determined proclamation. She could do this. This was still Ryson, some version of Ryson.

“I can’t remember why I’ve tried to keep you alive.

” He seemed to return her firmness with a jab of his own.

It turned the direction of the conversation into dangerous waters Clea wasn’t sure she wanted to swim.

“I remember other things though, many of which involved hunting Veilin across the expanse of Shambelin. So, why would I keep you alive? What would this entire experience have to offer me?”

As she crafted her answer, she measured the ground she walked on.

“Something different,” she replied at last, with that same boldness that still concealed how his latest reply bothered her.

“Different?” He narrowed his eyes and smiled again as he neared her face in a challenging way.

“You, playing savior in your sheltered life, having lived the equivalent of minutes on a stage with a handpicked audience.” His grip around her tightened slightly, nudging her closer.

“You, growing up in a sterile chamber of isolation, believing whatever lies were fed to you. There have been single years of my existence that capture more variety than your entire lifetime, and you say that’s what you have to offer? ”

He backed off and turned away from her dismissively as he started back up the stairs of the throne.

“The Venennin here for the auction will be breaking into these hallways shortly. They can sense the cien of the medallion, and it’s drawing them in.

If you don’t want to die now, I suggest you run.

I might have the pleasure of hunting you later. ”

“You’re wrong,” Clea said, stopping him. She wasn’t ready to move on from their discussion, determined to not let his insults shock or silence her like they had in the past. She wouldn’t back down from confronting him this time.

“I may have lived life on a stage like you say,” she began. “People have wanted me to play savior, used me for that, but I’ve never forgotten how to be in the audience.”

He looked over his shoulder somewhat impatiently, as if waiting for her to get to her point. The words themselves felt like fighting, and she pushed forward.

“Through my short life, I learned to do something you didn’t.

You may know how to break people down, manipulate or hurt them.

You might understand power and weakness, but you don’t see how they’re linked.

You never learned how to heal, and that healing doesn’t make you a savior or a saint; it makes you a student.

You’re right. I haven’t experienced a lot perhaps, compared to you, but I’ve witnessed a lot, and everything I’ve seen, I’ve tried my best to learn from.

Your pride and your arrogance and what you think is your power have hidden the most valuable things from you about how life was always meant to be lived.

You’re right that you’ve seen a lot. You’ve seen too much. ”

His expression shifted into a more focused glare, and she fought forward, the messages like blows to this dark and angry expression of his being.

“The Ryson that I met had just enough humility to notice that maybe there was something life could still teach him, but you—” She began to question the direction of her words or how it might get her any closer to getting the medallion, but the truth felt necessary, more valuable than anything else.

“You think you see everything, and that makes you blind.”

Blind .

The word resounded louder than the rest, and despite the great uncertainty that followed her proclamation, she stood her ground.

In this way, all their interactions repeated themselves in an instant. Clea saw the constant bickering about light and darkness manifested and amplified in the discussion now.

She stood in an ornate gold and white gown.

Jeweled and painted, she was radiant, flushed in her frustrations, fueled by fears that made her more determined to fight back.

Steps away was her blood-soaked counterpart, faded clothes ripped with beatings, with a fearless gaze as even and heavy as death.

This castle, these people, this system had done this to them, and the blood of that system filled the cracks of the stones at their feet.

He eased down from the first few steps and started toward her, Clea walking back with only half the speed before he caught her in a few wide strides.

He cinched his fingers through the front lace of her corset and pulled her against the nearest column.

The motion tightened it around her ribs and jolted a breath from her lungs.

Her hands latched onto his chest and curled into his clothes with the challenge.

Ryson assessed her like she was an object that had just come alive. He was a predator that had just spotted a pulse, and they stared at each other face to face .

“Blind,” he repeated the word as if she’d shamed him in the worst way. Looking into the luminance of his eyes, silver eyes that in these woods were symbolic of power, she realized that of the available insults, she might have picked a rather offensive one.

“You were raised away from the poisons of the world, fed with refined doctrine, given only the best, and yet with no real teeth to defend yourself with. You fail to see what you are, but I’ve seen it a thousand times in a thousand ways,” he said.

The intensity with which he spoke assured her that his retaliation would be severe, and so she could only listen with the utmost attention, standing almost on her toes in anticipation of the knife in his words.

“Purity in this world only ever has one function. Don’t you understand it? Your people live short lives, and by every estimation, you have already spent more than half of yours locked inside a room.” His voice slowed and deepened as he added, “They didn’t raise you to survive. You’re a sacrifice.”

Clea held her breath as if he’d reached inside her chest and ripped away a closely guarded bandage, one perhaps, that she’d always sensed was there. Now she knew what Ryson had in some ways suggested through his questions at the campfire.

How could anyone say it? It seemed absurd, but in the deepest parts of herself it felt true. She had been raised with the expectancy of a narrow life. In all likelihood, they’d never intended to give her any more freedom than bearing children would allow.

He started to turn away from her, but she yanked him close, determined to show that despite having nothing to say, she wasn’t done.

This caught his full attention.

Clea then remembered what Ryson had said earlier about sifting, about how a Veilin’s touch could cripple a sifted Venennin.

She realized how just moments ago Ryson had grabbed her covered wrists, not her hands, seemingly avoiding her skin.

He was more of a Venennin now than ever and the beatings he’d endured in the dungeon had likely undone any past healing.

Measuring his reaction, she lifted her fingers to his face and touched his skin.

He did not flinch or back away. Clea wondered if she hadn’t recovered enough of her ansra to have any effect, flattening her palm against his face as her fingertips grazed the outline of his eye. Maybe he wasn’t Venennin enough.

Instead of pulling away, Ryson’s hand traced hers and he leaned into her touch, closing his eyes and inhaling as he relaxed.

His demeanor rapidly transitioned from that of savagery to a cat leaning into the delicate nature of her touch.

In this, he reminded her of a panther; she feared he might bare his fangs again in the next moment.

“They layer you in vices, and the fact that you could so easily be a poison is the most gratifying lure of them all,” he said on the depth of a whisper against her wrist that sent an alarming rush of sensations through her.

He moved closer to her, still holding her hand as his forehead rested against hers. Clea held her breath at their proximity, wondering how she’d invited such a reaction.

“You claim to heal with your hands,” he whispered, “and you’d use them to wound me with such a tender gesture?”