Page 83 of Angel in Absentia
He seemed to be offering it back to her, and she debated taking it. She debated synching it back around her throat like a shackle when it had once been a protective guard. Deliberation exhausted her mind, and she folded her hand around his, closing his silver fingers around the golden necklace and hiding it from sight. She exhaled and rested her head against his chest, leaving the choice in his hands where she now rested her tired soul.
He did not return the necklace.
Her thoughts began to wander to other things, her questions flowing freely just as they had in the woods with him.
“What does Prince do with the bodies?” she asked.
There was a stir and then a pause, followed by a subtle groan. “Prince is the last thing I want to talk about right now,” he mumbled somewhat humorously.
“I was just curious,” she offered with a chuckle.
“You’re always curious.”
“Tell me,” she urged, smiling as she looked at him.
“It’s going to ruin the moment,” he replied, raising an eyebrow, and she was surprised by her own laughter.
“Pointing out the moment ruins the moment. Now, tell me,” she urged, nudging him.
He tilted his head back with another groan, looking up at the ceiling as he held her. “He builds cities. Out in the Wraithlands.”
Her brows furrowed. “With corpses?”
“Corpses, skeletons, mummies. He builds cities and is always running them.” He rubbed his face with his other hand. “Gods, by now, he could have hundreds. I visited one once. They have shopkeepers, families, kings, servants, but each corpse is like a poorly paid actor. It is very disturbing. I would not recommend it.”
Clea stared, mouth agape. “The power it must take to maintain all of that.”
“If he were focused, he’d be the most powerful Venennin that perhaps ever existed,” Ryson replied easily. “But you know him. Can we discuss anything else? Prince is probably my least favorite subject.”
“Let’s talk about you,” she replied and he winced and smiled.
“Nevermind,” he whispered.
She didn’t relent. “Why are you so at ease, when the version of you I knew…was perhaps more angry? You are accommodating when you were once rather brutish.”
“Because I am rather brutish. I am rather angry,” he glanced down at her. “Don’t mistake my countenance. I haven’t changed. My flaws remain more intact, concealed only by my power.”
“You warned me you were dangerous,” Clea whispered and almost urgently added, “that I should distance myself from you. That the powerful version of you was ruthless.”
His free hand moved back to her face, a silver thumb moving across her cheek as his expression softened. “None of that has changed,” he breathed. And then he said the words she felt through her body. “Only then, I didn’t have you yet.”
She searched his eyes, recognizing how she was wrapped in his arms, having shared both her feelings and her body. Only minutes ago, she’d begged his name, pleaded it at his command, in desperation of his touch. She realized that his words were more true than ever. He had her now.
None of that has changed.
He hadn’t truly changed.
She had.
She nodded and laid back against him, hiding how his words had shaken her. They stayed for a moment longer in the comfort of shared company, until at last, they went their separate ways and Clea returned to her room for the tentative hours of rest she’d have before they met the Ashanas in a pit of devastation.
She closed the bedroom door, undressed slowly, and got into the bath. Looking into the mirror, she, too, retraced the lines of her illness and knew he had replaced her illness with something much worse.
Beneath everything else she’d been told that she was, this was not an act she could play or a role. Beneath all that she’d trained and learned to be, the very essence of her being was meant to be soft. She was a healer, and any natural thing ached for its natural form. Perhaps that’s why it was so dangerous.
Ryson was the opposite in every way. Craving freedom and control and relishing it, but having sacrificed his own light in the pursuit of power. She was so clearly the holding place for the thing he no longer felt he could contain in himself.
They fit perfectly together, were natured for each other, and those forces were base and untrainable. By nature, desire, and destiny, she was to be owned, and he was to own. In a cosmic folly, they’d found each other, and once the Heart of Loda, she was also now its greatest weakness because she was his.
