Page 94 of Angel in Absentia
Iris looked away the moment Clea’s eyes touched hers. Fear simmered there. And sorrow. The air of a fresh argument lingered between them, and she had a feeling that they’d fiercely debated the choice she was about to make now.
Clea kept her face still. She let the linen dress and sacred rites be her armor, hiding the chaos inside her chest.
She climbed the stairs, step after step, performing the familiar ritual. This time, she did not pray; each prayer knocked on the door of her conscience. It was a conscience she didn’t want to acknowledge.
Before the massive double doors, Clea paused. She let her hand rest lightly on the worn wood.Then she pushed the doors open and entered the temple.
Inside, the air smelled of clean water, iron, and stone. The fragrance of lavender was faint.
At the center of the room, the pool glimmered, and in it, half-submerged, waiting patiently, was Ryson. He lounged against the closer edge, arms draped along the lip of the stone.
He stirred at the sound of her footsteps, turned his head, and searched her face. He offered a soft smile, and Clea’s throat tightened painfully.
“You’ll need to be fully submerged,” she said, forcing steadiness into her voice as she issued the instructions. “So I can heal everything at once.”
Ryson nodded and slid deeper into the water, but said nothing. She wondered what he saw on her face, and couldn’t resist the notion that he saw everything, and still, he consented.
He doesn’t think you’ll do it.
A darker version of her own inner council stirred.
Because he loves you or because you’re weak? Both?
Clea approached the edge of the pool. The knife weighed heavily in her sleeve.
You can’t do this. You can’t. This is against everything you are.
She knelt at the water’s edge and placed her palms just above the surface.
You have to. He is also a slave to his vice. It doesn’t matter if you love each other. He’s a Venennin. His power came at a cost. If he stays alive, he won’t be able to resist ushering you to your doom. If not one illusion, then the next. When you become an Insednian, it’s over.
Closing her eyes, she summoned the ansra, stifled momentarily by her own malintent. To summon it, she had to let go of her destructive intentions for a moment and just focus on healing.
Her energy swirled into the pool, and she felt the wounds open, all at once. She held fast to her abilities, and then came the difficulty of the healing. She connected with each and every wound, and with him. When she’d healed his abdomen in theforest, it had been a challenge, had drained her, reached through her soul, and introduced her to his, but this was another world of stifling grief, anger, and everything that lay at the bedrock that fueled him. She felt and released every feeling, her teeth gritting as her heart seemed to find his, their rhythms locking as she drew him from the mire of his wounds.
The waters began to glow, swirling around Ryson’s body. Every wound, every hidden fracture, every poisoned scar opened under the light and repaired.
She felt the ache of old injuries, the pain of battles fought and lost and survived. She felt the deep loneliness wound into the very fabric of him.
She wasn’t just healing flesh. She was touching his soul. And he let her. He trusted her completely. She could sense it in the healing of him. He’d been telling the truth.
I’m sorry, she thought again, tears blurring her vision before they poured down her cheeks. They reached the end of the healing.
Sensing the openness of his trust, she reached for the knife, and unable to bear it any longer, she hoisted the blade above her head.
Chapter 28
The Heart of the Matter
HE KNIFE NO longer felt like a knife. It was everything. It was all of the power she had, years of folded steel and ambition that felt like a lifetime. Still, it was a needle, a single fang compared to the machine of warfare her own heart sustained, the machine of warfare she had only these next seconds to strike down. Even a needle with the right placement, the right timing, could fell a giant.
The moment came with a sense of itself, vibrating through her body with its own will, and she knew she had to strike. She drew the blade, shimmering like a beam of light in her hand, clutching it so tightly in her fist that it felt like an extension of her raised arm, of her chest, of her heart.
She stifled a cry of blind emotion as she drove the blade into the water and it sank into the light.
The blade disappeared, and blood bloomed into the water. Clea’s hand trembled as she held onto the knife, horrified as blood stirred through it.
Her hand loosened on the blade, which now held steady in the pool, and she felt the fractured lines that covered her body break open with the reality of what she’d done.
