She did not know how long she had been staring. Her fingers hovered over the faint, unfamiliar mark on her arm. Now that she was truly looking, the shape of it unnerved her. It was not jagged or random. It almost looked… deliberate. Like something left behind on purpose. Her pulse thudded dimly in her ears.
What are you? she wondered, thumb brushing the edge of the strange discolouration.
She took a deep breath, eyes tracing the shape again, trying to decide if she should call Melyn back, or Levan, or if she was only overreacting and it would fade by morning.
But the longer she looked, the more the memory of the Expanse and the nightmare she has had pressed against her mind: the red haze, the distorted howls, the shifting shapes in the dark of the forests.
Her gaze dropped absently to the bathwater.
