Chapter 3

ChapterThree

Katherine’s hip was on fire. The pain and stiffness had become a familiar companion in the long days she’d put in at the clinic. But a bad case of lung rot had spread throughout her town, and everyone else had called out sick.

Katherine had already had lung rot when she was a child. Most of these townsfolk hadn’t traveled through the kingdom in the earlier years of their life, and unfortunately, that meant they were very unlikely to have been exposed to it.

So there was no one else to work in the clinic. Her boss had nearly coughed up a lung, telling her that she would get paid double if she came in. He hadn’t needed to offer the money. Katherine only had her work, after all. If they closed the almshouse, she’d have ended up in people’s homes trying to treat them, anyway.

Otherwise, she’d be sitting in her room. Alone, while the pain slowly drove her mad. At least when she was standing and moving, her mind had something to do other than focus on the pain.

But now it was nighttime, and that made everything so much worse. Like now, lying in her bed and staring up at the ceiling. The pain spiked at night, so she tried to distract herself with the numerous cases that came in today. Cases outside of lung rot, even.

A little girl had walked in covered in red bumps. Her mother was coughing into her sleeve, trying to explain that the bumps had appeared overnight. They didn’t know how to treat them. They weren’t itchy, but they were spreading and getting worse.

Then there had been the young man who had food poisoning for the last three days. He’d thought he had lung rot as well, but no one else in his house was vomiting quite so profusely. Then he’d vomited in her trash can and promised to drink more water.

She didn’t know how to help them. Katherine had been trained for stitches and surgeries, not... this. General ailments weren’t her speciality, nor had she ever been trained. After all, she wasn’t a healer. She was a stitcher, good at closing wounds and mending clothing.

Even now, anger bloomed in her chest. How dare her boss throw her to the kelpies like that? What did he think would happen?

He didn’t want to invest the time or energy into making her a real healer, but he was perfectly fine treating her like one. She didn’t even need the money. Katherine was well aware that the trained healers were paid more. And she didn’t mind it. What would she do with money?

Move into her own house?

There weren’t any buildings to buy. The swamps were already threatening their small town that was sinking into the muck. Monstrous creatures waited just below the walkways and they were certain to eventually drag someone into the deep. She couldn’t ask someone to build a home for her in those conditions.

Not to mention she’d be alone. At least here she could yell and someone would tell her to quiet down.

At least here she could pretend she was alive.

Rolling onto her side, she let the cool breeze play over her face. Though outside was getting colder, the boarding house was always ridiculously warm this time of year. She didn’t know if the owner started up the fires in the basement early, but if he did, the man needed to reconsider the resources he was wasting.

Not that they didn’t have a surplus of peat to use whenever they needed it. They were drowning in the stuff.

Her scratchy wool blanket was too warm. Sweat slicked down her back, but she’d never been able to sleep without a blanket covering her toes and back. Annoyed, she sat straight up and shoved her rioting curls away from her face.

This was ridiculous. She was exhausted. Her heart was already racing to keep up with her movements, her entire body ached from standing all day, and all she wanted was a little sleep. But her mind wouldn’t let her, and the zinging ache at her hip only made everything seem worse.

Katherine would go insane if she tried to sleep like this. But if she didn’t sleep, she’d go insane as well.

“Damn it,” she muttered, rolling out of bed and taking a few hesitant steps forward. Her leg dragged behind her, useless now that the nerves were exploding with sensation.

She staggered to the window and threw it all the way open. Bracing herself on the windowsill, she stuck her torso out. Neighbors be damned. If they got an eye full of her in her dingy gray nightgown, then so be it. They could look for all she cared, but she was too damn hot.

“Thank the gods,” she whimpered as the air chilled the sweat on her skin. At the very least, she could cool herself down. Her hip might hurt. Her mind might worry that she’d accidentally murdered someone today, but at least she was no longer sweltering.

She ran her fingers along the smooth wood, the sensation of it as familiar to her as every step of this town. How many times had she stood here in the winter just like this? Too many to count. Years upon years after her father had died and her mother had disappeared into the moors. Though she’d been alone as a child, she’d had enough money to buy her first year here after selling all her parents’ things.

And then she’d worked. Oh, she had worked herself to the bone day after day, because there was nothing else in this kingdom but that.

A sharp spike of pain stabbed her in the pointer finger. Frowning, she looked down at the windowsill to see that small splinters had been carved into the wood. Almost as though something sharp had cut through it.

It took her a second to see in the dim moonlight, but she realized it wasn’t just one mark on her windowsill. There were ten of them. Ten marks gouged into her windowsill that looked rather like where someone would put their hands.

“What—” She tried to think of any words, but nothing would come to her.

She didn’t know of any creature that could make marks like this. And if it had been some monstrous being, they’d have woken her trying to get through the window. Besides, none of the creatures had ever gotten up onto the wooden walkways. The silent truce between human and swamp monster had always been followed for countless years.

So if they weren’t trying to attack her, then what had made these marks?

A sound echoed across the moors. Not something she usually would have noticed. It was like someone had kicked a stone into the water. The wet plop could have been anything from a bubble popping as gas leaked between the layers of peat, or it could have been a frog leaping into the shallows.

But her heart stilled in her chest. Katherine felt icy tendrils of fear trailing between her shoulder blades like water dripping down her spine and she knew—she knew—something was watching her.

She could feel their eyes. She could sense their breath that was coming faster now as it realized how defenseless she was. It would be so easy for something to race at her open window and yank her out of it.

No one would even realize that she’d been taken until they needed her at the almshouse. Then someone would ask, “Where in the world did Katherine get off to?”

And it would be too late. They’d never find a trace of her and the entire town would think she’d wandered off with the wisps. Just like that mad mother of hers who had muttered about spirits and ghostly creatures living in the moors.

Breathing hard, she tried to control the panic that told her to run. It whispered through her mind, dragging claws inside her skull as it told her that something terrible would happen if she stayed here. She needed to bolt. To hide. To put herself somewhere that no one would ever find her because a predator watched her from the shadows.

But this wasn’t her. Katherine didn’t believe in superstitions and she knew how the real world worked. No creature was going to yank her out of her house. That had never happened before.

People didn’t just disappear in the middle of the night. Even one person going missing would put the entire town up in arms and she would have heard about any incidents. The only reason anyone disappeared was because they had sought out Gluttony’s castle and they had offered themselves up in dire circumstances.

Sometimes those people didn’t make it home. But there was a reasonable explanation for why they didn’t make it. She was a woman of science and logic. If she felt like something was staring at her, then she was strong enough to look back.

Still, her fingers curled around the chipped wood and she had to push herself to be brave. Her heart raced, her breathing quickened, but she lifted her eyes to the darkness and peered into it.

At first, she saw nothing. Just the shadows and the mist and the strange shapes the moon cast in between buildings and railings. It was her town, the same as it always was and never all that surprising.

Until she saw him.

The shape of a man waited in that darkness, almost impossible for her to see. He was standing perfectly in the shadow of a willow tree right in the center of town. It wasn’t anyone she recognized, because she knew the shape of every person.

Jimmy Tompkins had one shoulder higher than the other. Andrew Riley was much more round than this man. Even Bruce Calloway had a distinctly coifed haircut that billowed around his head like a dandelion puff. This man was none of them.

His silhouette was tall and lean, a powerful figure that seemed almost otherworldly. Not a creature like any she’d seen before, so at least she was certain nothing had crawled up out of the muck to attack her home. But there was an air of danger around this man. Almost as though it vibrated around his form.

And she felt that vibration deep in her core. A sudden heat flushed throughout her entire body, coiling through her being in an entirely unfamiliar way. Suddenly, she wanted… something. She needed it. But what she needed, Katherine had no idea, and still she wanted to beckon him closer. She wanted to know what he looked like beyond the outline of his body.

They were dastardly, foolish thoughts of a woman who had read too many romantic stories. No one was waiting outside her window because she’d beguiled them with her beauty.

Katherine had lost that future long ago. She had never been the blushing young woman who had countless men at her doorstep, hoping that she’d let them inside to visit. The fire had taken everything from her. Her grace, her looks, even the feeling in much of the right side of her body. It was ridiculous to think this man was here for any reason other than the nefarious ones.

And still, she leaned a little further out of the window. Just to catch a glimpse of this tall, dark, stranger who stood outside her window without moving even a single step.

She opened her mouth, about to call out to ask who he was, or if he needed lodging for the night. Though the thought fluttered through her mind that she was a foolish girl indeed if she thought to invite a stranger into her bed.

Then it happened.

For just a split second, she thought she saw gleaming red eyes in that shadow. But surely not. They were gone just as soon as she saw them.

Katherine took a deep breath and her hands flexed on the wood. The slivers dug into her fingers again and this time the pain startled her so much that she ripped her hands away. One of the slivers cut through the pad of her thumb all the way to the first joint. Hissing out a breath, she found her gaze on those red eyes that glowed from the darkness. Not staring back at her eyes, but watching her thumb with all too much interest.

The madness that had possessed her disappeared. Shocked at herself, angry that she’d ever make such a foolish decision, Katherine lunged away. She slammed her window shut so hard it shook the wall as she locked it. She smeared blood all over the glass, but she didn’t care.

Whatever was out there, even if it was just a conjuring of her exhausted mind, she wanted nothing to do with it.

She was logical. She was intelligent. She knew when there was danger right in front of her and that man, whoever it was, risked her very life.

Stepping back from the glass, Katherine stared at the meager shield between herself and whatever monster waited for her there. It wasn’t enough. If it wanted to come into her room, it would. It would be so easy for it to break through the glass and snag her long before anyone else had heard her screaming.

Breathing hard, she found she couldn’t move. Katherine had backed up into the very corner of the room with her gaze locked on the window. She held her bleeding thumb to her chest, pressing frantically on the wound as though the creature outside could smell her.

And when a shadow passed in front of the window, she thought she might faint in fear. It had come for her. Whatever it was, it wanted her blood.

It wanted her.

She had no idea how long she stayed frozen in that corner. Katherine wasn’t even sure she blinked before she flinched at the sound of knocking on her door.

“Katherine?” Grace asked through the wood. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the clinic?”

“I—” She could hardly speak. Her voice sounded like she’d been screaming all night, but she hadn’t. Had she?

Her door creaked open and Grace stepped inside. Katherine watched as Grace looked around, only to find her huddled on the other side of the door, still clutching her hand to her chest.

Grace’s eyes widened before she burst into action. “Katherine! What happened?”

She didn’t know what to say, even as the other woman crouched beside her and placed a hand on her forehead. “You’re burning up. Have you been here all night?”

Katherine tried her best to unlock her legs, but they just... wouldn’t. Every bone in her body felt like it had stuck in place. How long had she been crouched here?

With that thought, the rush of pain came as well. Wincing, she tried her best to straighten her body, but the creaking and clicking sounds gave her away. Grace ducked underneath her arm, gently easing her upright and taking all of Katherine’s weight when she couldn’t stand on her own.

“You know better,” Grace scolded as she put Katherine to bed. “What in the world has gotten into you? Too many hours at that almshouse, I reckon. I told Alexander to not put so many hours on you while the rest of us were sick. I told him that hip of yours couldn’t take it, but why listen to the trained healer? I’m not the one who runs the almshouse, he is.”

She finally found her tongue. “Grace, I’m fine. It was a nightmare, that’s all.”

“You’re not fine, and you’re staying here today.” Grace pointed at her with a rather severe look. “If you move, that hip of yours will stop you from doing it. So I know I don’t have to tell you to stay put. However, the only reason you’re allowed to get up today is to get more ice. Do I make myself clear?”

Though she hated to admit Grace was right, Katherine wasn’t certain it would take her weight at all.

So sullenly, she nodded. Grace flitted around her for a while, scolding her for a few more minutes until Katherine was as comfortable as she was going to get and then Grace left for work.

Leaving Katherine alone, staring at the window and wondering how much of last night her mind had conjured up.

And how much of it had been real.