The Millstones of Her Mind

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 410 words.  I'm going with the Late Reveal.  The timetable can be just as deadly tight after all, and now there's urgent reason to force all the actions that previously seemed contrived: Kate's rush to her Crowning Moment of Awesome in the next chapter; Bonecold Refugee's involvement in it, and what Flashy Elder Brother does to enable that; and why Katy of all people asked her that thing she did on the wind of the storm.

The woman Kate's come to love as a daughter turns out to be far too much like a daughter of her own indeed, and her new life's cause is pinned and failing, and her old life's love abandoned to sickening peril without hope.  She has nowhere left to turn and nothing to go there with.  She is my dearest of monsters, and I hated to understand yesterday quite what millstones I'd thrown her between.  But this is why she does it, at the last.  Not for Luke only, but for all of it.  There are millstones, and there are windmills with history in their sails; but then there is Golden Kate Alland, and she does not think of herself any more.

Attack!  Attack!