Page 148 of The Frozen River

I do not swing blindly.

I do not miss.

And I am not sorry.

The blade catches him right between the legs. It is a clean cut, the kind that takes a moment to feel.

But when he does, his scream rises high in the early morning air, for Revenge has done its job. Joseph North will never rape another woman as long as he lives.

North falls on top of me, and now we are a tangle of arms and legs, and Ephraim’s blade toggling between us. I try to scramble away but have no leverage, so I must use my arms to create some distance. I feel him shift on the ground beside me, and I swing wide, again, but connect with nothing but air.

North isn’t coming for me, however. He is bent over himself, hands cupped at his crotch, blood flowing between his fingers. Cicero goes insane, unsure whether to defend his master or attack, the smell of blood making him frantic.

“What did you do? What did you do!” he gasps, then begins to cry and curse and swing his arms in my direction, and I feel each drop of blood hit my face. It smells of copper and rust and salt. It smells of fear.

I can hear the words that he hurls at me, but they do not make sense together. Random insults, violent but utterly impotent. He screams. Gags. Curses.

“I told you not to touch me,” I say. “I told you to leave.”

I scoot away from him and use the worktable to pull myself up. Wipe the blood on my skirt. I grip the blade as Cicero takes careful, measured steps around his master. He has made his decision and identified me as the threat, the cause of all this pain and screaming. One large paw glides through the slick red puddle, and when he sets it down again, the print is perfect, as though stamped in wax.

Revenge is ruthless but might not do much good against those teeth if Cicero gets them around my arm. Or throat. My hand is shaking now anyway, and the hilt is slippery in my palm. The dog senses this, edges closer.

I had thought that the rising sun might bring one of my sons to the mill for work, but it brings the sound of hoofs thundering down the drive instead.

It brings an unholy screeching as well. It rings in my ears. It makes my teeth hurt.

Blood.

It spreads on the floor beneath North. I feel no pity for him, but neither do I want him to die here, in my husband’s mill, in such a way that I will bear the blame. My intent was to maim, not kill. To teach him a permanent lesson. To ensure that he had one less weapon with which to wound the women of this world. I shrug out of my shawl and throw it to him.

“Use that,” I order. “Staunch the bleeding.”

He screams at me. Curses through a slobbering haze of fury.

“Calm down and do as I say. Or you will die.”

I expect Cyrus or Jonathan but instead it is Ephraim who steps through the door. I stare at him, stupefied.

“What the bloody hell?” Ephraim asks when he sees North sprawled out, blood pooling between his legs, as he tries to press my shawl to his groin.

Cicero is backing away now, alternating between growls and whines, when Percy swoops through the door and dives for him. The dog yelps, as though he’s just been branded, and runs for the door. Percy takes a sharp turn and is after him, talons extended.

My journal is on the floor, torn to shreds.

And I am crying at the sight of my husband. I drop Revenge. The blood feels oily on my hand, and I wipe it against my skirt.

“He was waiting for me when I got home.” I look directly at Ephraim and try to communicate everything in two sentences. “I told him not to touch me. He wouldn’t listen.”

My husband goes still. Quiet. His pupils dilate, and he takes me in, looking for injury, then he turns to the gory sight of North twitching on the floor. He understands what I am trying to say.

“Are you hurt?”

The question is both gentle and ferocious.

“Only because Brutus threw me.”

I test my weight on the sprained ankle, limp toward Ephraim anyway. “North needs a doctor.”