Something in me has hardened to stone. I can’t say it’s my heart, because I still feel it beating wildly in my chest; pounding my ribcage as a fist might pound on a door.
I’m not unaccustomed to death. My father had made sure of that from a very young age; with public executions and gory tales of past werewolf and human wars. And so I didn’t slip into shock, or feel insanity tug at my consciousness. But grief, anger, sadness, and regret coagulated inside my core, turning my resolve to stone as if Medusa herself had stared into my soul.
I wipe away my tears, in the process smearing blood on my face. The stench of death and violence is all I can smell, all I can taste, all I can hear.
For the last time, I smooth down Kate’s hair. In death, she’d shifted back to her human form; fatal wound
