At the top of the stairs, waiting where he had been told to wait and listening in on everything that had been said was a teared-up boy with a torch of his own.
It was the stable boy, Sniff. The boy cried to himself, his lip trembling hearing the horrific truth of his mother’s fate.
Finally, both he and Katryna had the answer they had feared, but the answer they needed to hear either way.
Katryna did not reach the stairs leading up from the dungeon until all the cressets had been extinguished, her bucket of water finally empty.
She could feel the weight she had been burdened with since returning home begin to finally lift from her shoulders. It was almost as if, despite knowing that she would never be free from her traumas, she could finally begin to come to some sort of a resolution.
Willem’ death. Her mother’s horrific abuse. Her father’s neglect. None of it could be changed, but she could finally lay some of it to rest.
Some closure was better than none.
Sniff looked at Katryna, wiping a tear from his cheek and nodding. Katryna patted the whimpering boy on his shoulder, scrunching her face up as his raw pain transferred to her.
Katryna tossed the empty water bucket down the corridor which had been completely consumed by a terrifyingly deep darkness, before leaving the dungeon with the stable boy at her side.
Katryna and Sniff took the only torches left.
Trish was completely enveloped in blackness, alone for the rest of time with no one but the demons she had sown and the starving rats that would soon return for their feast.
Chapter 46 - The Way Ahead
Tomas shuffled forwards in a great deal of pain with Lynn around his arm, helping her to remain steady as they travelled down the frozen river.
His legs were stiff and aching, and the impact to his back that he had suffered in the fall was excruciatingly painful. Yet he pushed on, determined to get himself and Lynn as far away from jeopardy as he could.
Lynn was nearly a deadweight. Her body was weak, and mind was floating in and out of consciousness. After having sipped the black liquid to fight the giant spiders, Tomas was fearful of what was happening to her body.
He pictured the twisted, blackened forms of slop from the Repository, malformed into barely distinguishable horrors after being exposed to Blight.
For all he knew, she had signed her own death sentence.
Is she going to die, all to save me?
The idea was repeating in Tomas’s mind. He was feeling even more angry towards her than he had previously. This girl’s fate meant that Rilan had died, and now he was responsible for taking care of her. He felt mad that she had not run when he told her to.
The conflict in his head was waged as he trudged through the snow-covered ice along the ravine, staggering and struggling to keep Lynn from collapsing every few seconds until the point of near-exhaustion.
When dawn finally arrived and the sky shifted from black to a brilliant violet colour, Tomas was beyond relieved. The warm rays of sunlight were a welcome blessing upon his wind burnt, frigid skin.
The light fought the shadows of the previous night away. Finally, they could take a moment to catch their breath.
Tomas carried Lynn to a steeper part of the ravine’s bank, beneath an overhang of large tree roots that had broken through the earth and created a sort of protective shelter.
He leant Lynn up against the wall of dirt and rock before sitting down himself.
There was so much, too much, to comprehend. The attacks against such horrific abominations, losing Rilan, Landry and his squad, his village being destroyed, his father who was now probably dead, and of course, Lynn’s actions to save his life.
He gazed over to the fire-haired girl, her chin against her chest and eyes still rolling around as she sucked in sharp breaths of the chilly morning air.
She had not been sick for some hours, yet her skin had grown as pale as the ice on which they sat upon. Her veins were still bulging, far darker than usual as if her very blood had transformed into shades of maroon and black.
But Tomas was hoping that the most life-threatening part of the reaction had passed. He could not keep carrying her like this.
As her head continued to wobble, Lynn’s tricorn hat fell into her lap. Tomas did not want her getting any colder. He reached over, taking the unique hat, and placing it back on her head.
Lynn’s eyes shot open, tinged with broken blood vessels. Suddenly awake, she grabbed a hold of Tomas’s wrist so fast that he didn’t even see her arm move. Her grip was tight, so tight that he growled in pain.
Unnaturally tight.
Lynn, upon hearing his groan, quickly recognised that she was not in danger and released him.
“What was that for?” Tomas shouted, rubbing his wrist.
“Sorry, I…” Lynn murmured, trailing off in thought.
“That hurt, you know?”
Lynn looked down at her forearms, marvelling at the blackened blood vessels beneath her pale skin. She began to feel her face with her fingertips, as if she were assessing herself.
“Where are we?” Lynn asked.
“I carried you down the river all night. I don’t know where we are,” Tomas said.
“You… you carried me?”
Tomas shrugged. “Not like I had a choice.”
“You could have left me.”
Tomas huffed. “It was the least I could do, after what you did for me.”
Lynn gazed down at the vial of Blight still hanging from her neck, noticing that its volume had decreased. It all seemed to come back to her at once.
“Oh… of course.” She released the vial, scrunching her face up as she surveyed their surrounded and sorted
