Chapter 48 Chapter 48: Aftermath
The first thing I noticed was a warm, fuzzy white light, soft and diffuse behind my eyelids. Was this death? It was… quiet. Peaceful. Then I felt it a calloused, familiar hand pressing against mine, the weight of it real and solid and alive.
Slowly, like a ghost pulling itself back into its body, my senses returned. The smell of dried herbs, clean linen, and the faint, coppery tang of old blood. The feel of a rough wool blanket against my skin. The sound of quiet breathing beside me.
I forced my eyelids open, a monumental effort. They were gummed shut, and the light, though soft from a nearby lantern stabbed into my skull. My vision swam, then steadied on Mary’s kind, weathered face gazing down from a chair pulled up to the bedside.
“Good, you’re back with us,” she said, her voice a low, motherly hum that vibrated through the hand she held. “Took your sweet time about it.”
My throat was a desert, lined with sandpaper and glass. I tried to wet my lips, but my tongue was useless. “Where… am I?” I croaked, the words scraping out. “What… happened?” Instinct took over, the need to sit up, to assess the threat, to move. White-hot fire lanced through my shoulder and side, and I collapsed with a gasp.
Mary’s hand on my good shoulder was firm, gentle, immovable. “Be still, girl. Your body’s been to war and lost. Let it be. I’ll fill you in.” She resumed stroking my hand, a slow rhythm more grounding than any restraint. “First, you’re in my home. In the Warrens. You’re safe. John and the boys have kept a 24-hour guard on you, him and Benjamin taking most of the shifts themselves. You’ve been out for four days. Seamus has visited every day, sits right where I am, just… watches you breathe. I think he sees you as a sort of daughter he never had, the mad old bastard. Others came calling too curious, grateful, worried but John, he’s been a bear about it. Wouldn’t allow it.” A knowing smile tugged at her lips. “Said you needed peace, not a bloody parade.”
“Wha-” The questions tumbled in my skull, but she silenced me with a look.
“I’m getting there. Patience,” she chided, patting my hand. “First, your wounds. You heal well; I’ll give you that. The spirits favour you, or you’re just too stubborn to die. The bullet went clean through your shoulder missed the bone, tore muscle, but it’ll mend. The gash on your arm from that bastard’s knife was deep, but nothing vital. You’ll have a scar, but you’ll keep the arm. Your neck’s bruised and swollen fingerprints, if I’m any judge. And the rest of you? One giant purple and yellow canvas, my dear.” Her expression darkened, the gentle nurse giving way to the hardened survivor beneath. “As for what happened… I only have Seamus’s word. The Brits weren’t there to see the end.”
She leaned closer, voice dropping. “After the guard shot you, Seamus dropped him. A clean shot. You reached for your gun, same as the Irish did, God bless ‘em, but Nate, that bastard, our new sheriff” she spat the word like a curse “aimed his pistol not at the man who’d just tried to kill his mayor, but at your unconscious body. He told the Irish to clear out, to stand down, or he’d finish you himself.”
I could see it. The street. The smoke. Nate’s face…hard as flint, dead-eyed with duty that overrode everything else. The betrayal was a fresh wound, deeper than any bullet.
“Seamus and the boys were outnumbered, outgunned. They had no choice but to agree, on the condition he could bring you here, to me. And that everyone involved in the riots and Charles’s death would get clemency… a full pardon.” She sighed, heavy with weariness. “Including you. Seamus accepted. Grudgingly. I think he wanted to start a second riot right then and there.”
Her warm eyes found mine, past the bruises and bandages, to the fury simmering beneath. “So, sister,” she said, tone caught between awe and exhaustion. “You’ve turned this whole damn town upside down and shaken it by its ankles in your first two weeks here and that’s not counting the bed rest. What in God’s name is the next fortnight going to bring?”
She left me with a cup of water and my thoughts. I stared up at the smoke-blackened ceiling of the dugout.
This was meant to be my new world. My New Eden.
My chance at a new life. Still filthy. Still tainted. Still beautiful. A rotting lie.
With that rapist Guy as its mayor.
And that traitor Nate as its sheriff.
Could this be my new home?
I had tried to be part of The Human Race. Another race I had lost
The peace was over. The war had just changed shapes but not the colours
Thank you for reading this far.