My hands are thin and translucent, flat against the grey stone, white skin turning bluish purple with the cold. My knees shake and give and I fall on my stomach pressed to the frozen ground. My tears feel hot as they slide down my face and taste bitter and salty on my lips. Hands shake me, pull at my arms. I rise unsteadily to my feet. Chaos rings around me, but the battle-noise is remote. I feel as though I were drowning or buried. My breath is a misty cloud in front of me. A person, the same person who helped me stand, drags me through the bailey, past red fires and freshly spilled red blood and the clang of soldiers' mail and awful, desperate screaming. I can't leave. I can't leave without...
"Edward." I say, and my voice is thick with tears and disuse. "I have to find Edward!"
My guide doesn't stop, doesn't even pause. I pull back away from him. "We must find Edward!"
He keeps towards the gate, the open drawbridge, his hand wrapped around my wrist tight enough to bruise. I fight, and he faces me. Recognition stirs at his fierce dark eyes. "He's dead, Bella!" The familiar man yells, spitting at me. I flinch away, and he pulls me away from my father's castle. My limbs go weak with shock, and I let him tug me along. His words pierce my clouded bubble and I am assaulted by images. My father facedown on the mosaic tiles of his throne room, a blade protruding from his back. The vicious smirk on Lord Caius' face. A head, tarred and unrecognisable, mounted on a spike of the battlements. Vomit pooled on the floor, dripping from the ends of my hair. I stumble along behind Jacob, as I know him to be now the last of my illusion is torn from me. New tears blur my sight, but Jacob's punishing grip propels me forward. We slip past a knot of brawling soldiers, and a young boy is waiting, holding two horses. Jacob heads towards them. How did he arrange this? He helps me onto the smaller. She is a clumsy and heavy farm horse, not bred for a gentlewoman to ride, nothing so fine as my Arrow. Even so, any horse is an impossible blessing in this situation. Jacob saddles the other, and I watch as he slips the lad some coin, and the boy runs off. He sets off at a gallop and I follow his lead. My head aches, and I remember a mail-clad fist slamming into my temple. I have been taught not to ride with a head injury, but the horse masters never advised on what to do when fleeing a castle swarmed by enemy soldiers. Perhaps because we all believed my father's castle impregnable as it had been for all the hundreds of years since its construction. I close my eyes for a heavy moment. How had this happened, in so few hours? This morning, my life had been flawlessly perfect and now...
The horses hoofbeats take up the mantra of my misfortunes. My father is dead, my husband is dead, my castle is fallen. My hands tighten on the reins, and I want to weep. I cannot rid myself of the awful truths. In the distance, they put Castle Silverlake to the torch and it makes a fiery dawn against the night sky.