Something Blue

Chapter 35

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Hello! Couple things: 

1. From now to the end of these books, I'm going to respond to in-line comments instead of what I've been doing. It's fun and it's going to be my policy going forward, but right now I don't have time. Wanna know why? 

2. Because from now on I'm posting ONE CHAPTER PER DAY. Wanna know why? Cuz I'm DONE WRITING THIS EFFING THING. I don't like cliffhangers, so from now 'till next Sunday (the epilogue) I'm going to post a chapter a day, around this time, to keep from stringing you along with all the cliffies. 

3. From this chapter on, the story gets... a little dark. Like darkER than it already was. So if you have triggers, please be advised things get unpleasant and you may just want to skip forward a bit. 

Alright. That's all 'till the end of the chapter.  I hope you enjoy! 

***

Katherine

Katherine was born in this town. Raised in this town. She fell in love in this town and married in this town, became a mother in this town. She had fled in this town, died in this town, and been reborn in this town.

She knew this town. She knew all the people and all the roads leading in and out of town. She knew the way it smelled each day of each season. She knew the sounds of festival and the sounds of famine.

She knew it all so well, so it was odd that she couldn't make sense of where she was. She'd long since given up escaping Mulligan's horse, and lay belly-down across the saddle horn, her cheek pressed against rough hide. Her head was whirling and thick and aching, and every so often she would lift it, brace her chin on the horse's side, and vomit yellow strings of bile down the horse's side because each minute movement took the earth and sky and swirled them together into a nauseating mess. Every time she vomited, Mulligan cursed at her, but she couldn't stop.

She couldn't keep her eyes open for very long, because doing so made her unbearably dizzy and she invariably slammed them shut to keep from falling off the horse into the sky. But even those glimpses she was able to capture made no sense to her. She was lost. Alone. Stranded in a world that no longer made sense to her. The muddy, trampled earth beneath the horses' hooves was black like tar in the darkness, and even when Mulligan slowed his horse to a walk, the brush along the side of the road was a pale blur.

The men didn't talk as they rode, but she felt their intent as keenly as if they were carving the words into her flesh with knives. They were angry. They were going to hurt her. Jacob was going to hurt her.

Mulligan's horse stumbled, jostling her hip against the saddle horn, and she bit out a moan of pain.

"Shut up," her captor grumbled, and she felt the reins smacking against her back. It didn't hurt through the heavy wool of her coat, but it didn't matter. There would be time for that kind of pain later.

For some reason, the thought didn't fill her with as much dread as it used to. Perhaps because she knew Isobel was safe. Of course, she didn't know. In some dark and ugly corner of her mind, she watched a nightmare in which Gabe's horse stumbled and lost the pursuit. Gabe was killed. Gabe was hurt. Gabe was removed from Isobel's rescue as swiftly as he had turned away from Katherine's. She never watched that nightmare through to the end. She couldn't bear even to imagine her daughter's fear in the last moments of her short, short life.