Epilogue
The first blood plague arrived in the spring.
From holes and cracks in the stones below Khloye’s tiny feet, viscous, red liquid bubbled and pooled.
Sprawling in puddles, it surged along the grooves in the cobbles, reaching towards the rest of the piazza.
In but a moment, a thick sheen carpeted the market, bleeding into the streets beyond, crawling towards the villas and homes of Ferrovia.
The Thromarrians watched on as it reached the height of their ankles, realising the horror of the truth too late.
Then came the screams.
Those whose feet were submerged by the blood could not flee, their legs welded to the floor by a cast of rock. Rock the colour of rubies.
The children were the first to succumb, and Khloye the first of them all. Thalea looked on, arms thrust towards her young daughter as she thrashed, trying with all her small might to break free of the stone.
“Mama, Mama, Mama!” Khloye cried, not understanding why her legs would not budge, and why her mother had not come rushing to help. She longed for Thalea in the way all babes long for their mothers—instinctually, desperately, utterly.
Thalea’s soul splintered, if souls could do such a thing, when she realised there would be no saving her child. Not this time. Not when her own feet were fused to the ground.
“Khloye…” Thalea rasped, as the rising tide smothered her daughter’s mouth, no longer screaming, but open, silenced by the kind of fear that makes statues of us all.
The red mass of it crept over her freckled nose, her tear-streaked eyes, until nearly every part of her turned to stone. The last Thalea saw of her daughter were the tips of her chubby fingers, outstretched towards the sky in an unanswered plea to be carried and held.
Her boundless grief had nowhere to go—a cry stuck in her throat, unable to erupt from the pit of her chest. All she knew was that it hurt: the plague; burning, burning, burning up her legs. The hurt of Khloye, now cold, hard rock. The hurt of knowing what came next…inevitability.
The first blood plague arrived in the spring, but it was not the last.