Violet (The Never Series) *EDITING*

Chapter Nineteen

VIOLET:

I couldn't understand what was going on. My head was clouded with grief and my eyes blurred with tears that wouldn't stop; they overflowed and showed no signs of slowing anytime soon, impossible to differentiate from the glacial raindrops that hailed my misery.

Feet dragging slightly behind me in the sodden ground, I stumbled every so often as they caught in loose debris. Thunder cracked somewhere in the distance and the wind blew death's grim whispers into my ears, my heart catapulted into an uneasy and fearful rythm. I began to run, desperate to escape the lingering grasp of Death's grisly claws that I imagined scratching down my spine and shredding my already worn, bloodstained dress, my black leather boots, soft from years of use didn't make a sound as I sprinted through the underbrush, in a futile attempt to escape from my horrible misdeeds.

Of course, nothing that I could ever do, would be able to erase my sins, my guilt. I would wear them on my soul forever as I do scars on my skin.

And I knew, with a heavy,  moroseful heart, that Peter would never forgive me. 

My breaths stuttered with barely contained sobs as this thought settled like an anchor inside of me; burrowing like a festering sore inside of my mind, burning like sea salt into a chest wound.

I pumped my arms harder, desperate to break free from this forest, with sillhouetted trees stark against the dying sun and pointing accusatorily towards me, their taunting arms enclosing above me: caging me in my misery.

The Sea, the thought flittered through my mind, it will end at the sea...

I didn't stop running, my demons and their unquenchable hunger grasping at my heels. 

There!

In the distance, I caught sight of a break in the horizon, crimson sunlight reflected unevenly upon the tumultuous seas, splashing the reflected colours like blood droplets against marble.

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PETER:

We had been searching for hours now. The sun was beginning to die a sultry death upon the crashing waves of the horizon; Ashe's desperate cries for his brother had already turned to hoarse screams in the distance, I didn't know why he was screaming, too lost inside of my own thoughts to really register what was ocurring around me.

A heavy stone of misery sat in belly, I sensed imminent danger of someone close to me, and a nagging feeling of loss. My head was turned to me right, a lock of my dirty blond hair slipping in front of my ield of vision: I was met with Blue-Jay's frantic gaze. 

Why does he look so scared?

His shaking lips widened in a distant sounding panicked shout of my name, slowly, ever so slowly I lifted my eyes to meet his obsidian orbs once again and forced myself to listen, fighting against the fog that I knew had subconsciously enveloped my mind in an attempt to shield me from what I already knew to be true.

I wasn't having some horrific hallucination, there, lying in a pool of his own blood and white as a scar, lay my best friend.

               Dead...

The word echoed inside of my head, wandering the catacombs of my happiest memories and painting them with tormented grief. Ashe's harrowing screams writhing inside my ears, piercing me: stabbing me like thousands of corkscrew daggers.

I knew, I knew that this was all my fault.

Trust me to fall in love with a killer. If I hadn't given her my heart and my trust, she would have never gotten out of camp without anyone noticing. And Locke wouldn't be dead. His evergreen eyes dim and listless in death, all traces of his precious life gone.