Page 98 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

That intangible thing I can’t fully ignore in my chest pulls before I can stop it. Something deeper and stranger, that keeps turning toward the empty space he left as if my body knows a direction my good sense refuses to read.

I think of Sera and Kavor. The way people lowered their voices when they talked about mates, as if the word itself might hear them and come looking. I thought it was comfort language. Story language. One more beautiful thing people said after surviving too much ugly.

I’m beginning to doubt my understanding of all of it.

I’m not going to name whatever this is between Rhazek and me. Naming things gives them weight and weight becomes need. Then, before you know it, need becomes a hand on the wrong side of a ration slate.

But I know I’m not this angry because he betrayed us. I’m angry because he left.

“Away from the heart,” I say, and my voice comes out rough. “Down first. Then east. Away from the City.”

Syin makes a hard sound. “Convenient.”

I stand slowly. “No, convenient would have been taking the upper gate, where he could move fast and leave no one able to follow before sunrise. Convenient would have been killing the guards who got in his way. Convenient would have been vanishing without leaving me a route only I would read.”

“The guards live,” Lio says, stepping into the passage. His gaze goes to me, then to the blood by the drain.

“One has a broken wrist,” Syin adds. “The other is unconscious.”

“But alive,” I repeat, because if I don’t keep my voice practical, it will become something else. “He disabled them. He didn’t butcher his way out.”

Syin’s face has the pinched look of a man whose good argument has stepped in something damp.

“That does not make him loyal.”

“No. It makes him controlled.”

“And control is what Krix built into him.”

That strikes right where fear is already softening me up.

I see Rhazek’s throat pulsing green. Rhazek saying yes when I accused him of deciding for us. Rhazek offering his body like a blade because he still thinks use is the closest thing to worth.

I hate him for leaving.

I hate him more for making sense.

“He did what we would not let him do,” I say.

“Betray us?” Syin asks.

“Leave before the dead drop’s last path could map the City.” My voice sharpens. Good. Sharp is usable. “The thing we broke already sent something. Maybe only a piece. Maybe only direction. If the hook in him is still carrying that path, then every safe corridor near him became a marked road. If we tried to move him as a guarded group, whatever answered could have followed back through the safest routes we had left.”

Lio looks at the floor scratches. His brow creases, slow and worried. “So he took it out.”

“He took himself out,” I say. “There is a difference.”

“Gather them, Lio,” I say. “I need to brief the leaders.”

Lio nods sharply and runs off, leaving me alone with Syin. His mouth parts but I hold up a hand.

“No,” I say.

“I haven’t spoken yet,” he says.

“I don’t care.”

Syin watches me silently for several heartbeats. I stare at the message, the tunnels, and then run the most likely route in my head.