Chapter 39
GILLIAN
The cage sways from side to side in the breeze high up in the canopy. I’m not sure if the Sarkarnii females have hoisted me up here because perhaps they think humans can’t fly so they can’t climb or if they’re trying to intimidate me.
In fact, it’s giving me a good idea of my surroundings.
We’re not so far from the ship, I can see the occasional glint of metal through the leaves, and from the occasional gust of wind, I’m sure I can smell the sea.
That’s presuming alien planets have saltwater seas.
If not, I have no idea what I can smell.
I shift from one buttock to the other. The cage floor is not comfortable, being just bars suspended over a void. My heart squeezes in my chest.
What have they done to Dalox? From what Dyana said, they’re not going to kill him, but it’s what else they might be planning which concerns me.
After all, she’s already bitten him to incapacitate him.
Allegedly Sarkarnii are pretty indestructible, but when they’re fighting each other? I don’t know how that works.
I feel like I probably should have asked more questions. Although, I could ask questions until the end of my days. I’m never going to understand this new world I’m living in more than my own.
Still, I have significant doubts I’m safe with Dyana.
I’ve seen the look in her eyes in the eyes of others in the past. There’s a cold, raw hatred which cannot be assuaged.
She would die rather than fail her objective, whatever it may be.
And she will take as many of the rest of us with her when she does as she can.
“Female!” A voice rings out above me, and I see something land in the vegetation above, causing the tree around us to swing wildly, setting my cage in motion.
I don’t respond, and eventually a familiar face comes into view. Dyris, the Sarkarnii who seems to be Dyana’s second. I turn my back on her.
“I brought you food. I trust you can eat meat,” she says.
I continue to ignore her.
She moves around the outside of the cage until she is in front of me. “Here.” She thrusts a rough Hessian-style bag through the bars.
I don’t take it. She releases it, and it falls through the bars, down and down to the forest floor. I stare at her. She shrugs.
“Suit yourself.”
“What’s the point in eating. You’re only keeping me alive for your own ends.”
“I’d have thought you’d want to stay alive for your male,” she says, with a slight curl of her lip.
It’s my turn to shrug.
“How do I even know he is alive? Or if Dyana is going to keep him that way.” I look down below me at the ground and the bag of food, a tiny splotch of beige. “How do I know Dyana is going to do what she says she will do?”
“Dyana is very…focussed,” Dyris says. “She helped saved all of us when no one else cared. I’m only here because of her.”
“And keeping me and Dalox captive, when we’ve done nothing to you, is a price worth paying her, is it?” I query. “Because from where I’m sitting, it seems like misplaced loyalty.”
Dyris bares her fangs. “It is the fact Dalox did nothing which is the reason he is in chains and you are here,” she snarls. “Doing nothing is what male Sarkarnii are famed for. He will pay. All the others will pay too. And if we ever find Deus…”
She swings away from me, wings sprouting from her back.
“I hope it’s all worth it,” I say quietly. “I’ve seen the death…on the ship.”
Dyris stills. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve seen what you went through. I saw the bodies. I saw how hard you fought. I hope more death is worth what Dyana wants.”
Dyris opens her wings and sets the cage swinging again as she pushes away, beating hard to get into the air. Her tail, unlike the males, is forked at the end, swirling in the eddies of the wind.
The arc of the cage slows after a while, and I am alone once more. I doubt I’ve got through to Dyris, but at least I know a bit more as to why I’m in this cage. As usual, it’s revenge.
I release a slow sigh. Nothing changes. I want revenge for losing my mum.
She was my rock, and cancer took her far too soon.
Mum wanted me to fight it, to fight for her.
She wanted me to raise money for more research into the disease and to continue empowering women with the skill she passed on to me.
Revenge was never in the question, and as much as I hated the way cancer turned her into a shell of her former self, robbing her of her life, she never lost her spark or her desire to help others.
She was a beacon in my old world, as she is a beacon in my new one.
There may be no hope for Dyana, but these female Sarkarnii have to survive for the sake of the Sarkarnii on Vorostor. They all have to have the opportunity to meet, to fall in love, to be together, as I have with Dalox.
Wait.
What?
Fall in love?
I can’t be serious. I don’t love Dalox, do I?
Just because we’ve…
It doesn’t mean…
And how long have I known him…
Nah.
Nah.
Oh, shit. My heart squeezes in my chest once again, flip flopping like it’s a fish out of water, trying to get my attention.
I can’t possibly love him. I can’t feel anything like love. My heart is supposed to still be in mourning. There’s not supposed to be any space left for anyone else. Especially a great big, scaly male with smoldering eyes and a voice you could grate bone with.
Love isn’t supposed to strike in the midst of despair. But the way my heart is behaving, it most definitely has.