Chapter 21 Catherine
Catherine
We hit the ground so hard it knocked the sky loose.
I tasted earth before anything else—wet, ferrous, thick with the rot of last autumn’s leaves—and the echo of my scream stuck in my teeth.
The world righted itself with a jolt, and I blinked, expecting blue fire, a second shock, the rage of the rift clawing for more.
But there was only stillness, and the taste of my own blood.
Dawn hovered at the edge of the graveyard.
No city. No sirens. No future. Only the cold bones of home, ancient and small, and the waking chorus of blackbirds in the distant larch.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, not because of Sully’s hand clutching the back of my neck, but for the empty, sucked-dry hush in my chest. I spat, wiped mud from my mouth, and looked up.
He was already standing—how did he always do that?
—shoulders hunched, eyes sweeping the horizon like a wolf torn from its pack.
His face was pale and raw, split at the lip, flecks of blood still beaded at his nose.
He looked down at me, then at the world, then back to me, as if trying to decide which was more likely to shatter.
I thought maybe we were alone. But then I saw the body.
It hung on the far fence, just visible through the mist—a man impaled on the black iron, arms splayed wide, his coat flapping wet and heavy in the morning wind.
The spikes of the fence had been hammered dull by centuries of moss and rain, but the corpse wore them like a crown.
The blood was almost beautiful, bright against the rust, running in a dozen clean lines from belly to groin to boot.
I didn’t need to see the face to know who it was.
Hale.
I don’t remember standing or how Sully got me across the yard.
One moment I was slumped at the stone, wrecked, and the next I was walking, his arm under mine, guiding me past the twisted gate and the body pinned to it.
The cold bit harder as we passed, the blood on the iron already crusted dark, and I turned my face into Sully’s chest so I wouldn’t have to see.
He led me to the far side, a patch of grass pressed flat between two old oaks, their trunks bent from a lifetime of wind. The moss here was softer, the shadows long and blue. Sully knelt, knees leaving perfect impressions in the dirt, and pulled me down to sit with him.
He held my face in both hands, thumbs scraping the tear tracks clean. For a while, we just breathed together, not looking at each other, not looking at anything. My heart thudded hollow in my ribs, a thump so loud I thought the trees might hear.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and it sounded like he meant it for every dead thing in the world.
I shook my head, words rattling in my throat before I could spit them out. “They’re gone,” I whispered, the truth of it a splinter in the back of my mouth. “They’re really gone.”
Sully said nothing, just let his hands cradle me until the shiver stopped. The first sun cracked the ridge, and the tips of the grass glowed gold. It didn’t feel like light—more like the world had bled out all its heat, and this was what was left.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said, voice small.
“If I can’t—if they’re not here, what’s the point?
” I expected him to tell me to be strong, or to say he loved me, or to give some speech about starting over.
Instead, he just rocked back on his heels and let his head fall forward, the stubble on his jaw scraping my forehead.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he said. “Any of you.”
“Then why—” My voice cracked. “Why did you take me from them?”
His breath hitched. “Because I couldn’t let you die. I tried to warn you—”
I jerked away, hard enough that his hands fell from my face. “Warn me?” I said. “You never said a damn thing about this. You never said I’d lose them.”
He looked at his knees. The blood at his wrist had dried, leaving a black rill under the shamrock. “I thought maybe there’d be a way. That we could all make it. But I lied. I always lie to myself and you because the truth is worse.”
I wanted to scream at him, but I was so tired. I let my hands fall to the moss, clutching it like I could dig through to the roots and find my sisters buried under there, waiting. The damp seeped through my skirt, numbing the skin. My toes curled, and I felt the mud ooze under the nails.
Sully reached for my hand, and when I didn’t pull away, he laced our fingers tight.
“Before I came back,” he said, “I looked for you. In my world, I mean. I went to the libraries, the graveyards, the churches. I found your name and your sisters’ in the death rolls. I knew what would happen, so I came.”
The words hit different. He’d known.
“You could have told me,” I said, and my voice was ice. “You could have warned me, or lied better, or left me where I belonged.”
He let go, rubbed his palms together, stared at the lines like he could read the future in them. “I wanted you to choose. I thought maybe you’d all come, or maybe you’d want to stay. But there was never enough time. There’s never enough of anything. I didn’t plan it the way it happened, though.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering again, though the wind had dropped. The cold came from the inside now.
“Where are they?” I said, not expecting an answer. “Where do you think they are?”
He hesitated, a twitch in the corner of his jaw. “Alive,” he said, and there was a catch in his voice. “In my world. In the future. Your sisters—they’re together. Maybe they’re scared. But they’re alive, and my friends will take care of them.”
I squeezed the leather ring on my finger. It didn’t feel like enough.
“My parents?” I asked.
He looked away. “They never made it, not in the records I found. I’m sorry. Time couldn’t stop their deaths.”
I wanted to say I hated him. Instead, I pressed my knuckles to my mouth and held the cry there until my teeth ached.
“I’m here,” he said, voice so soft I barely heard it. “If you want to stay. If you want to go, I’ll help. I’ll do whatever you ask.”
For a while I just breathed, trying to find some shape in the world that wasn’t loss.
I thought about Maeve, bossing Nora and me, even after she was supposed to be asleep.
I thought about how Nora used to sneak out at night, climbing the roof just to sit under the stars.
I thought about their faces the last time I saw them—Nora’s eyes huge with fear, Maeve’s hand clamped tight on my arm, the three of us locked together, praying for a miracle.
I looked at Sully, really looked. He was bleeding, his face a ruin, but in his eyes was something I’d never seen before. A kind of shame, but also hope.
“What do we do now?” I said, not expecting an answer.
He smiled, and it was crooked but real. “We live,” he said. “For them, for us. For the baby.”
The word caught me off guard. For a second, I couldn’t breathe.
He put his hand over mine, slow and careful, as if I might shatter. “If you want to leave me, I’ll go. If you want to run, I’ll carry you. Whatever you want.”
I pressed my forehead to his, the pain blurring at the edges. “I want them back,” I said.
He nodded. “So do I.”
We sat there as the sun climbed, the light finding us between the old trees, the moss warm and sweet-smelling under our legs. I let my head fall onto his shoulder, and he held me—not like I was broken, but like I was the only thing left in the world that mattered.
Maybe I was.
Maybe we both were.