Page 42 of Angel in Absentia
“It’s because she’s no longer being bossed around by you and everyone else,” Yvan muttered with characteristic Virdain bluntness from behind him.
“We still need to come to a final decision,” Catagard added, taking control of the meeting again. “We have considered that option. We always come back to the same dilemma. Insednians are notorious for their hatred of Veilin. Even if Myken doesn’t betray us, which would be its own shock, any gift worth gaining an audience with the Warlord of Shambelin would be too great for us to risk. What would earn an audience with him? Fifty Veilin? Bound and tied on an altar? Secrets of the city itself?”
“You have a proposal,” her father said, perceptive and impatient as always.
They all looked at her father and then back at Clea as if to confirm if he was right. Several members of the table leaned back thoughtfully.
“What?” she asked, wondering what had gardened the room’s complete silence.
They all looked at each other.
“The first time you declared something be done, it was destroying the Deadlock Medallion,” Dae said. “The time after that it was sending the Golden Army out to Virday.”
“And then instituting a Virdain woman as a leader in the Golden Army,” Yvan added.
“Healing your father, which essentially put you in a coma for three weeks,” Catagard noted after nodding with a mixture of exhaustion and regard at each idea the others offered.
“Adamantly pursuing healing at all,” her father added as more of an old habitual jab than anything else.
“What we’re saying,” Idan interjected with the politeness and eloquence that so often captured him, “is that we’re bracing ourselves.”
Clea straightened. “You all think I’m mad?”
She’d heard whispers of the Mad Rising Queen several times but hadn’t thought the persona widespread enough that it might be commonplace.
“Yes,” her father added. “Since you were a little girl. Talking to plants never helped your cause.”
“None of us would be here without you,” Idan said. “And I think it’s safe to say that despite all of us having our differences, we’ve really benefited from this,” he added, gesturing to all of them.
Her father’s eyes narrowed with the faintest hint of distaste, and Clea was uncertain why. No one in Loda liked open flattery, but her father seldom expressed clear disregard for other royalty in public. Silence settled back over the room. For the first time in a long time, she’d arrested the entire room, and she realized that every other time had been a moment like this, where her ideas had been wild and broad. She learned something then about herself, that though she was passive and compliant in many things, in the core of her passions, when she had a sense of what needed to be done, she declared it with everything in her body.
Maybe she’d never been as naive as she thought. Maybe naivety had never been the driving force of her decisions. She’d befriended Ryson and then thought herself a fool, learning to love him only out of foolishness, but it wasn’t that. It had never been that. She’d learned so much in the past two years, and though she was wary of her bond with him, she didn’t regret it.
She didn’t regret any of it. Her journey, her secrets, the risks she’d taken. She wasn’t naive.
She was bold.
“I am not the rising queen anymore. There is now another heir,” she said. “But no one outside of this room knows that.” She then shared the idea and realized too its insanity, its risk, and at the same time, its inevitability. “Send me. I think I have to be the one who goes. I’m meant to be the offering. It all makes sense now.”
The room stirred, and before anyone could speak or object, almost mechanically, she looked up at the room and said, “I healed an Insednian.”
Several members in the room straightened. Yvan leaned away from the wall, her arms falling to her sides.
“What?” Dae questioned as if he’d misheard her.
She was surprised at the lack of fear she felt. Looking into all their eyes, she realized that without the mantle of needing to be their light, she was no longer afraid to be their darkness. In fact, she now realized that she’d perhaps never been afraid of having them discard her. She’d felt separated from them from the very start, different from what they needed.
“An Insednian helped me cross the forest and destroy the Deadlock Medallion,” she said, and as if the truth had to be said now, more than ever, she didn’t hold back. “He had apparently been an Insednian of some renown. I didn’t know what he was at first,” she added, casting her gaze to her father, who knew his role in that.
She looked back at the rest of the room. “He was injured almost fatally. I healed him.”
“Why?” Dae asked, the most vocal while others seemed to look on in complete silence and reserve. Any other Lodain warrior would have died before healing a Venennin, much less an Insendian.
Clea looked over at him. “I didn’t—” She paused. “No,” she corrected herself, preparing to claim that she didn’t know and now choking on the word, realizing that she’d perhaps been convinced of her own naivety for far too long when she was much stronger than that, and always had been.
“Because I wanted to. I knew,” she said, looking down at the table and the scattered pieces on the board before leaning back. “I knew all along. Every choice I made, I knew. Maybe not the facts, but I knew what I was choosing.” She looked up at all of them. “We saved each other. I wouldn’t have made it back to Loda without him. It’s the very reason I have his heart and he has mine,” she declared, allowing the revelation to sweep across the room, but not giving anyone time to respond. “And that’s why it has to be me. They are indebted to me, and I have an Insednian weapon. I sent it to Ruedom in secret to be analyzed.”
Her father gave Idan a scolding look as if he were perhaps to blame for everything, and Idan leaned away from the table sheepishly.
