Page 44 of Light Locked #1

Breath

H ER BODY FELT numb, sinking away from her in a dark coldness until the slightest warmth returned, tingling into her feet, and then the rest of her skin.

She gasped for a breath as sensation returned in full, pulling herself up to her palms as she regained complete consciousness.

Her body returned with a strange and resounding fullness.

She felt lighter and yet more whole, her heart starting to race as she scanned herself, miraculously freed from illness.

The medallion had been tied back around her neck but she felt immune to its weight.

She sat up to see Ryson leaning back against the altar, looking over his shoulder and turning as she sat up.

“You,” she started, but didn’t know what to say. Awe and anger bubbled to the surface, Clea surprised to find that her first urge was to slap him.

He caught her hand in the air, turning it down as he faced her.

“I thought you killed me!” she whispered harshly, angry at his games and somehow feeling that the argument was private enough that she had to whisper.

She prepared to get off the altar, swinging her legs over the edge, but he braced his hands on either side of her, locking his eyes with hers as he said with a smile, “I considered it.”

She swallowed tightly, sensing a kernel of truth in the statement.

“You promised not to lie,” she replied, putting his words to the test.

His brows furrowed slightly as he tilted his head in honest recollection and then backed away with a laugh.

“By cien, you’re right. I did say that, didn’t I?

And I don’t break my promises.” He looked at his hands as if just remembering that fact about himself.

“Why did I make that awful oath such a necessary part of my life?” He seemed honestly horrified to remember such a fact about himself.

Clea was so caught off guard by his genuine bewilderment that she startled when he whipped back toward her, locking his hands back in place on either side of her before asserting his previous statement, “I considered it.”

So he was being honest after all?

Clea swallowed, eyes narrowing.

“You actually are a little insane,” she said, but couldn’t hide how her hand still marveled over the healed skin on her chest. She wasn’t even sure she was pointing out a flaw as much as she was finally coming to the conclusion herself.

“There is the door,” he said, extending an arm out to his right gracefully.

She followed the gesture to confirm that there was, in fact, no door, and wondered if he realized that. Maybe the invitation to leave was just as existent as the door.

Ryson smiled playfully. “I’m only insane when I’m in exceptionally good spirits, Princess,” he said as he lowered his hand back to the side of the altar, closing her in again.

She continued watching the space on the wall and the imaginary door as he spoke.

She really should leave.

“I am aware, and it seems you are too, that force is not power. As such, you’ve brought to my attention an…

imbalance of power in my own life. It is perhaps as lacking as the imbalance in yours.

I think we might be quite capable of helping each other.

” He tipped her chin up and toward him with a single, darkened finger, returning her focus to his face.

She pushed his hand away and it returned to its position by her side.

She was reminded that a less devious version of him from the carriage had warned her to escape him the first chance she had. Every second here left her only more entangled with him and blurred once stark boundaries in her mind.

She resisted the urge to glance at the imaginary door again.

“The terms are simple. The result, I would argue, creates perfect balance.” He spoke with a mischievous smile, the tone of his words mirroring their depth. He was poised as if ready to pounce on any inkling that she might accept his next proposal. “You heal for me,” he said. “I kill for you.”

“I don’t need killing,” she replied sharply, pulling his hand off the altar beside her. It floated to her hair as if he couldn’t resist some level of contact .

“The room seems to object,” Ryson replied as he inspected a curl on her shoulder, moving the hair through his fingers. She wondered briefly if he would kiss her again, unable to sort through her feelings on the matter, only that she needed to leave as soon as possible for an ounce of clarity.

“You didn’t need to kill all of them for me to escape,” she said.

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. A more transparent example then, shall we?” he asked, pushing away from the altar as he lifted his other hand.

Clea slid off the altar as she inspected the black and poisonous looking substance churning in the space between his fingers.

“It’s a very deadly, and powerful curse,” Ryson whispered, “Your curse. Your disease.”

He lifted it up to the light as if to admire it.

“Beautifully and powerfully done. Someone truly put their soul into this curse. Someone spent their lifeforce and decades perfecting it. I imagine it isn’t the only one either.

My guess would be that someone out there has been systematically tearing down the Veilin royal families.

” He kept that same, wicked smile as he lowered it to his chest. His eyes flickered back to Clea’s.

“Let’s send them a reply they’ll feel to their bones, shall we?

” he asked, moving his other hand over the substance.

His fingers tensed around it and it writhed as an icy chill swam across the room, stirring the world into energetic violence.

The wind whipped his black hair, blowing around Clea as she sunk her fingers back against the altar to steady herself.

Energy concentrated and zapped, black lightning cracking across the world around them.

Tension built as the torrent of force grew and spun faster around them.

Clea slammed her hands over her ears as a shriek of pure agony broke through the room.

Brief flashes of another world materialized in the whirlwind.

They looked like windows into a land of devastation and darkness, focusing in on a single writhing soul that bucked and stirred on the floor of a distant fortress.

The medallion lifted from where it hung around her chest, drawn to the force of Ryson’s hands.

Clea found herself grasping for the light inside herself, holding tight to it like an anchor in a storm that swirled around her.

As the world around them bent and broke, she saw Ryson’s hands twisting with it.

There was a deep violence and cruelty in the energy, and she could feel his body screaming with it.

Separate from his mind or heart, it was tortured in the act.

The smile on Ryson’s face never faded as she felt the suffering of his hands, cien twisting and burning the skin, splitting the fingers, snapping through the vacant hollow where his soul should reside.

A crack split across the soul between them and tore it open.

The blackness inside it spilled around them, changing the scenery until they were in an icy court.

The substance in Ryson’s hands exploded into ash and a blast washed over them like a cresting wave, settling into silence as it lapped against the walls.

A dead quiet remained in the wake of the energy and sound. Ryson turned his hand over, freeing the remaining ash from it in the presence of dark figures who were only distinguishable by their radiant eyes.

Clea grabbed the medallion radiating in the air ahead of her and she pulled it close to her chest .

Ryson faced the figures seated above him with a cool collectedness, blood dripping from his hands as he seemed to admire them.

Clea flinched as she heard something crack, and found to her horror that a line now bled energy across the medallion’s surface.

“Ryson!” she called.

He looked over his shoulder at her, and then forward again, offering a mocking bow, “Her highness calls,” he said, and the blackness in the room swirled and swallowed into the throne room again.

Clea saw now in the torchlight that a grotesque blackness had spread from his fingers, bleeding down his wrists.

His entire right arm looked scorched almost to the bone.

The silver in his eyes seemed dim and empty, one of his irises now a dull red.

He’d overused his power, power he no longer had and still a smile crossed his lips as if he didn’t notice the changes, didn’t notice any pain.

He lifted his hand between them, inspecting it as he approached. “Disappointing. You can heal this, can’t you?” he asked.

Clea inspected his mangled arm, taking it in her own as she still tried to process what she’d just witnessed.

Her eyes flickered back to his, and she ran her fingers through his, restoring the complex devastation that mangled the flesh.

It was a difficult wound, skin unfolding, yielding and twisting under her touch, the experience of healing it somehow more gruesome than what she imagined had injured it.

She was careful now to only heal one layer, afraid that she might unleash years of other wounds buried deeper in his skin.

“Not all of that felt necessary,” she said, trying to hide how her voice trembled with adrenalin.

“Necessary is boring.”

Despite how different he seemed from the Ryson she knew, she still hated to see him wounded and his response only angered her further.

He explored the result of her healing in wonder, turning it over as if he’d never witnessed healing before.

Clea lifted a hand to his face to salvage his eye, and he caught her hand as it settled on his cheek.

“I’m afraid that is beyond healing,” he said, kissing her palm in a natural way as if he’d done it a thousand times before.

“Your body has limits. Respect them,” she said, allowing the anger to show in every fiber of her resistance.

He watched her with eyes that absorbed all of it with delight.