Page 54 of Light Locked #1

The Altar

T HE FINAL JOURNEY to Loda was a lesson in agony.

During the night, the medallion often reached out to call the woods, and with her soul, Clea wrestled it back.

Being awake was sometimes less exhausting, but now the battle was familiar.

The Deadlock Medallion, in all its cravings, was no longer a stranger.

She did not fear the fight, but as familiar as it had become, the rest of the world was now an alien, splitting her into two versions of herself.

Standing upon the hilltop, haggard and filthy, her first glimpses of Loda on the horizon invigorated her with hope. The vast glow of those white walls against the sunrise reminded her of a former life, and then only intensified the divide inside her.

An entirely new world had been opened up to Clea like a chasm. The dark world of Venennin existed, and it was full of all kinds of horrors. They weren’t horrors she could dismiss or leave behind. They had sewn themselves through the fabric of who she was.

Light and dark no longer made sense, mixed with their sharp contrasts like a bowl of broken glass that she had to sift through. Every exploration of the events cut her fingers, and the worst part of it all was that she couldn’t stop doing it.

As she made her way down the hill and to the walls, her mind replayed the scenes in the castle for what felt like the hundredth time, overcasting the anticipation of her arrival home.

She remembered standing at the base of the staircase before the throne room, she’d known her direction. She had been prepared to face death with nothing but the light in her hands. Her power had returned to her, and she’d known her convictions. She’d felt like a single, united force.

Fear had not deterred her. She’d climbed each stair, heart racing, prepared to fight the medallion. Opening those doors, she would battle evil to the death, and then there he was.

Seeing Ryson on the throne had paralyzed her in ways she had not understood in the moment.

The clarity of good and evil had dissolved.

He’d slaughtered the slavers mercilessly—and King Kartheen, who’d no doubt committed all kinds of terrible acts.

He was bloodstained royalty in a world her people hated.

She would have fought the king’s men with light.

Some may have died, but as a result of too much darkness being expelled.

Ryson slew flesh and energies alike with little distinction.

She made her way through the final stretch of forest, the massive walls now visible through the treetops. Her memories repeated in a loop along with the determined churn of her steps.

In the shadow of the castle, she’d been humiliated as an object of light, then embraced the tenderness of a kiss in a room painted with bloodshed.

The strange surrender to his touch on her marbled skin had given her life back, and at the very peak of her power, she’d risked that life and her mission for an enemy of her people .

How had she let it all happen?

She could not deny her own agency, and yet every interaction had been a dizzying dance.

She’d touched his face, hoping to cause some pain, to neutralize the threat.

And yet, unable to commit to such violence, her touch had been gentle and tender.

This he had not denied, sensing her intentions but still embracing what had become of them.

He’d given her the medallion and exchanged it with a kiss.

Clea ducked under a branch and dodged past another, boots crunching over the brush as she bent and threw branches out of the way. She was nearly running at this pace, seeing little ahead but the base of the walls. She almost dared a forest beast to find her now.

A horn sounded aloud from the castle walls, scouts announcing her presence to surrounding guards. Her mind remained fixed on a point of the wall, as if touching it might expel all of the conflicting feelings inside her. She ran harder.

In her nightmares over the last few days, the maids tied her down as they dressed her, and the dress, made of light, covered much less than it had in reality.

Ryson’s savagery was more violent, his words more threatening, his touch like a toxin that traveled much farther and deeper than her hands, lips and core until her body dissolved into ashes.

She did nothing to stop it. Instead, the scene repeated on a loop.

Each time she stood before the bloodied gold of the throne room doors, she knew what waited for her inside, and she couldn’t resist the pull to open them.

She did it over and over again, relinquishing herself to that hateful feeling of being so hungry in his arms. She’d become an animal, rescued only by the mercy of his restraint .

Never again.

The dreams often ended with her right after the collapse of the castle, waiting at the crossroads between death and the life that Ryson’s more devious self had proposed.

He asked the question and then waited in silence as she suffered her wounds.

She never answered, feeling that as false as the dream itself was, her answer would be real if she gave it, and that would be the end of her.

This was why Veilin kept their distance, why they had their rules, why they avoided some knowledge. The forest was always trying to change, and shape and morph things into its likeness. Ryson, or whatever version of him had been there, had even offered her the life of a Venennin.

What if she’d said yes?

More trumpets sounded overhead, the last of the trees freed her from the forest. Her breath ripped harshly through her lungs.

How could she even consider turning to such a life?

It was one of a thousand questions, but the more she replayed them without answers, one resounding truth was clear.

She was a stranger to the forest and a stranger to her people.

She was an alien.

She was alone.

The wall was less than a hundred meters away. She could hear branches breaking in the distance on either side as soldiers closed in to intercept her .

She ran harder. Her entire body ached.

The stone was so bright against the sunrise that it glowed. She ached to touch it like it might heal her torment. She had to.

Her illness had crippled her judgment, made her vulnerable, and she’d exchanged the mercy of her death sentence for the punishing sensation of Ryson’s hands, worsened only by the bond of his honesty.

By cien, how she missed him. She so desperately missed him.

With all of the force in her body, she slammed into the white walls. Her hands flattened against them, breath leaving her in a single struggling gasp and the touch of those walls vanquished any thoughts of the forest from her mind.

She pressed her body to the warm stones and collapsed with all of the weakness she’d fought back in the final days of her journey.

She was many things, but at last now she was home.

She determined that she could leave all of her troubling thoughts on this side of the wall. Once she crossed the gates, the version of her from the forest would remain there, a helpless, wandering girl, who learned too much too late.

Once she crossed the gates, she’d be royalty, and no matter what discipline, pain or hardship it took, she would never let herself be helpless again.

?? ?

Her journey was over. Her return into the city was a blur of explanations and awe as soldiers verified her identity. The world was a rush of whispers that Clea floated through in a silent haze. Time slipped by, stopping only once when she was offered a blessed box.

She realized she was standing in a familiar waiting room, adorned with Loda’s colors of sky blue, white and gold, with wide windows created to invite the light. The entire castle was like this, the architecture worshiping the sky.

“Your highness,” the soldier prompted again as she stared at the box, wondering for a moment what it was for and then remembering as she recalled the reason for her journey in the first place.

She lifted her dirtied fingers to the back of her neck and undid the silver clasp of the medallion. She watched it dangle and spin in the light before lowering it slowly in the box, chain and all. The crack across the front still seethed ominously.

She eyed it now in the trappings of its prison.

“Destroy it,” she said, not knowing to whom she spoke as she watched the black gem which was soon eclipsed in the shadow of the box lid and then gone altogether.

After that, the world ran normally again, giving her enough time to collect herself before she was led to two double doors and left there at last.

Clea opened the doors and stepped into a dimly lit room, an open window in the corner allowing natural light to filter in and spill over the bed.

Everything had been moved and rearranged, perhaps a reflection of her father’s own restless habits.

She’d inherited those from him. Now a lot of the furniture was pushed and piled in the corner of the room.

Clea recognized several pieces of her mother’s, as if her father had pushed them out of sight but couldn’t get rid of them.

Her father was sitting up in bed, mostly covered by blankets and in a long green robe.

His green eyes had taken on a grayish hue, but had lost none of their sharp, speculative gleam.

He had a personal policy against lying down in the presence of anyone but her mother.

He always said it gave anyone an advantage in case of an attack.

Clea and her siblings, and even her mother, had sometimes laughed at the depth of this paranoia, but now his concerns seemed more real.

His gray beard hid all but the tightness of his mouth, and the headboard and pillows propped up his weakened body.

Hands that looked naked without their metal rings lay on his lap, and his eyes remained unreadable as they watched her circle the bed and sink down into a chair near his bedside.