Viz'en by Katie Neptune

Author:Katie Neptune [Neptune, Katie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Viz’en

I hike for hours while my Wrath burns in my blood, a low simmer just painful enough to make it difficult to think. I don’t want to think. The memory that kiss invoked is like a barb in my skull.

I was in my cell. Mara was in my cell. Gray fog smeared across my vision. Hands touched me. My hands touched warm skin.

But the fog won’t clear enough to show me the full scene.

When I kissed Mara by the river, when I succumbed to the promise of her pink lips and flushed cheeks, the memory hit like a freight ship entering a low atmosphere planet. Hands on my skin. My brain fritzing, my tongue numb in my mouth. The bars surrounding me. My sparking release, cold, and then an endless black.

But the longer I walk in the damp heat of the jungle, the more my memory splinters. Was Mara in the cell with me at all? I know I’ve touched her before. I know it. I’ve felt that soft, smooth skin. I’ve inhaled the source of her waterdyas scent at her nape.

A root trips me, knocking me to my knees. I take the moment to stare at the swaying canopy overhead. I don’t know what’s true and what’s not.

I don’t know that Mara deserves to be left in this jungle. Vulnerable.

When I tied her up, my heart full of rage, I intended to return for her once I found help and called the Feds. I want her to be in their custody, far from me. My Wrath is bubbling too close to the surface of my skin.

But it’s been hours now, and all I can focus on is the fact that she’s alone. She’s tied to a tree, for fuck’s sake. If that gnaar finds her, she’s doomed.

And I’m miles away now. I put her in that position. I made her helpless. If I return in a day or so with the authorities and she’s dead, it’ll be my fault.

She may be a sorry excuse for a sentient being, complicit in my torture and imprisonment, but that doesn’t mean she deserves death. Especially death by my hands.

My mind made up, I get to my feet and head east once more. As if the new resolution gives me strength, I travel swiftly through the warm jungle. My Wrath fades with every step I take back toward the female, but I refuse to think about what that means.

However, when I return to the tree by the river where I tied her, and see the blood-soaked vine tangled at its roots, I’m shocked at the guttural roar that bursts from my throat.

She’s gone.

And there are gnaar tracks in the dirt, deep impressions of a coiled tail. The scent of its scales is thick and cloying in the air. Below it, I can smell Mara’s fear, and it guts me.

I’m too late. Something like grief wells in my chest, a knot of pain surging upward until it chokes off my roar. I crouch, pressing my fingertips against the vine.

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