Something Blue

Chapter 1

Katherine

Hurt.

It was everywhere.

Her face throbbed, one eye refusing to open and her jaw sending lancing bolts of pain through her head every time she moved it.

Her chest ached, agony strangling the breath from her lungs when she dared draw too much air into her lungs.

Her heart... her heart was still and cold. Worn and torn.

The hard floor dug into her knees and she leaned to the side, bracing one bloodied hand against the wooden slats as she stared at her husband's still body. Was he dead? No, his chest still moved. His face twitched. She had hit him hard with that heavy cord of firewood, but she hadn't hit him hard enough. It was one thing to kill a man who stood poised to hurt her daughter. It was entirely another to kill him while he lay bleeding and helpless on the kitchen floor.

"Ma?"

The world whirled around her as she spun to face her daughter. Isobel was crawling forward across the floor, a bruise blossoming across the side of her perfect cheek. Tears had turned her eyes red and her cheeks puffy. She looked as rough and worn as Katherine felt, and it was only a small comfort that looks were deceiving.

Her daughter would survive, but Katherine had made peace with the Almighty. Death loomed in the outskirts of her vision and she would welcome it when it came. Fatigue and pain had replaced all the myriad colors that used to paint her life. Her world was sketched in shades of gray. Terror and hatred. Sorrow and guilt. And through it all, heavy lines of black that showed her the last clear picture she knew she would see-- hard, unyielding love.

"Come here," she said, her voice raspy from screaming. "Come here, Izzy."

Her daughter crawled faster, and Katherine's ribs wailed when the girl slammed into her. Instead of pushing the pain away she clung to it. Clung to Isobel. Those harsh black lines of protective love were all she had left, and damned if she wouldn't see them through.

"Go get your bear," she rasped, stroking her daughter's lush hair, midnight black and falling to her trembling shoulders.

"Ma..."

"Go get your bear," she said again. "We're leaving."

"Where?" Isobel asked, her whole body shaking with shock and fear.

"Somewhere better, sweetpea. Go now. I'll wait here."

Isobel was only four, but already so strong. So old. The wisdom burned in her hazel eyes and broke Katherine's heart with more force than her husband broke her bones. She wanted her daughter to be free and innocent. Fearless. Blind to the evils of the world, as she had once been. Once upon a time, she had thought herself weak for her innocence. Now she knew that the bitter tonic of reality didn't make a person stronger. It tore them apart. She had been stronger before she knew what this world could do to her.

With Izzy gone, Katherine fought the weakness, the dizziness, and the pain, and pulled her apron over the top of her head. Pain screamed, but she felt strangely numb to the world as she crawled forward and wrenched her husband's limp arms behind his back. Blood spilled from the split in his temple, and he twitched but didn't wake as she bound his wrists together with the apron's neck strap. Tears of agony spilled down her cheeks, her breath coming in pants as she wrestled his legs up and secured his ankles to his wrists with the strap that usually wrapped around her waist.

It wouldn't hold him forever, but hopefully it would keep him long enough.

Just long enough for the sun to rise.