“I’m so sorry, my love.” Kelwood’s voice was broken, thick with tears as he held his wife’s body close to his chest. “I should have gotten here sooner.”
Julia knelt beside him, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. He flinched, evidence of how distraught he was. “She was a hero, Jared,” she said, keeping her voice soft. “She wasn’t one of them. She was fighting against them.”
He nodded, head bowed. Tears dripped from his concealed face and landed on Kathy’s arm, running down the cooling skin.
“The conversion, it had done something to her, to all of them apparently. But she was fighting it. The madness, I mean.”
“You’re not mad.” Jared looked up, and speared her with a hard look. The heartbreak in his eyes was hard to bear.
She swallowed, hard, past the thickness in her own throa
