12. Kit
Kit
The woods were silent but for the crunch of twigs and last autumn’s leaves under our boots.
Twilight gave way to night within minutes, and it was all I could do to keep Penny and Rosie in sight as Isla and I searched for Delilah.
The waning moon high above was our only saving grace as its light gave us something to see by with the sun tucked away beneath the horizon.
“Did Penny really release the sheep?” Isla asked at length. “I wouldn’t blame him if he did; this whole thing is terrible.”
I shook my head while holding aside a low hanging branch for her to pass.
“No. I suspect she chewed the rope free and wandered off. Not surprising, since she’s been two days in that crate with no food and little water. She probably found a field somewhere to graze.”
We lapsed into silence again as we walked. When we started to veer too far from Penny and Rosie, I adjusted our course and halfheartedly searched the murky darkness for the bright flash of moonlight on wool that never came.
After several more minutes, Isla cleared her throat, prompting me to glance over. She wasn’t looking at me, but her hands were twisting in the hem of her shirt.
“I’m sorry about Levitt,” she said. “I know the two of you were close.”
The mention of his name still stirred pain in me.
Things had been so promising before he was murdered; the future looked bright at long last, and I wanted the chance to move on from the Bone Men for both of us.
Levitt gave more in his efforts to change the cult than I ever had.
He did impossible things, gave up all chances of having any sort of livelihood when he gave up his hand, all to keep Merrick from power so he could steer things away from the darkness my father had driven them to.
Isla was right. Levitt and I had been close, but we could have been closer. If I’d trusted him enough to be honest, if he hadn’t been so afraid, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe with Levitt behind us, our resistance could have stepped out of the shadows and done real good.
But I was a coward. Always had been. And what had it ever gotten me but pain?
“Thank you,” I said softly. There wasn’t much else to say.
Her eyes, eerily bright in the moonlight, met mine briefly. She gave a tight smile and turned her gaze back out to the woods ahead of us.
“I’m glad you and Penny survived your third Oath,” she said, then fell quiet again as she chewed her lip.
It wasn’t the first time she’d expressed the sentiment, though this time I appreciated it more now that I knew she’d risked her own life to tell Levitt about what she overheard the morning before we drank the hemlock tea.
That she’d turned in Merrick, Harlan, and her own brother for conspiring to give Penny and me twice the concentration of poison that they gave everyone else.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t do more to help you,” she said after several long moments of silence.
“You did more than anyone else,” I assured her. Even if Levitt hadn’t been willing to risk Isla’s safety to confront our would-be murderers, it still meant a lot that she tried. “I don’t begrudge Levitt prioritizing your safety since Penny and I were out of immediate danger.”
There was no denying that I was still bitter about the whole thing, but this far on the other side of it, I could see why my old friend made the decisions he did.
Isla was the only one who could have known what was said in secret in the apothecary, and making those accusations public would have put a target on her back.
There was no way to know if there were more people involved in the plot than Merrick, Harlan, and Otis.
Clearly, Levitt had been more confident in my ability to keep Penny and myself safe than he was about Isla.
Though, judging by how she’d stepped between Anders and me back at the campsite, I wondered if Levitt had underestimated her the same way I underestimated Penny.
“I would happily risk it again,” Isla said, and when I met her eyes a second time, she had a determined look about her. Her words were pointed, too, and I had a feeling we weren’t talking about the past anymore.
“Some things aren’t worth risking,” I replied.
Her pale brows drew down, casting her eyes in shadow. “So that’s it, then?” she asked, her tone accusatory. “You’re giving up?”
I wanted to protest but almost couldn’t bring myself to. She was right. I was staring down a hallway of closed doors with nothing but the abyss awaiting me at the end. There were no more avenues left to me that didn’t end in countless deaths.
“I’m not giving up,” I argued, “I’m being prudent. I’m trying to make sure as many people as possible make it to the other side of this alive.”
She scoffed. “You aren’t responsible for everyone, you know.”
“So I’ve been told, but that doesn’t make me feel any less culpable.”
Isla rounded on me, walking sideways so she could fix me with a hard stare. I looked away, searching the woods far to our right for a sign of Rosie and Penny.
“We all knew what we were getting into when we agreed to join you,” she insisted. “We knew the—”
“I can’t see them anymore,” I broke in. My heart lurched in my chest as I stared harder into the gloom, desperate to make out the shapes of our companions between the trees.
Isla stepped up beside me and squinted into the dark. Her swallow was audible before she said, “I don’t see them, either.”
I broke off in the direction Rosie and Penny had been heading. Isla hurried behind me as we crested a small rise. I hoped they were blocked by the curve of the hill, but all that stretched before us were rows and rows of densely packed trees.
“No! Stop!”
Rosie’s scream tore through the woods, high and sharp enough to freeze the blood in my veins. I bolted toward the sound, heart hammering so hard it drowned out thought. Somewhere to my left, Isla kept pace, but I barely registered her presence.
Rosie screamed again, her voice cracking with panic. “Let him go!”
We broke through the last line of trees into a clearing bathed in cold moonlight, and the sight that met us was a living nightmare.
On the far side of the grass, Anders had his arm locked tight around Penny’s throat, hauling him backward like a rag doll.
Penny’s legs kicked uselessly several inches above the ground, his face mottled red and gasping.
Rosie stood a few feet away, her knife raised in a trembling hand.
Her shirt clung to her in damp patches, soaked with something dark that caught the moonlight—blood, though I couldn’t tell whose.
Anders’s machete lay discarded behind her, splattered with yet more blood, and the grass around their feet glittered where droplets had fallen.
Anders stumbled—his right hand pressed hard against his side where blood bloomed from beneath his fingers—and I didn’t hesitate. I charged across the clearing and slammed into him from the side, driving all three of us to the ground in a tangle of limbs.
Penny dropped first, sprawling and choking as he hit the grass. His coughing was ragged, punctuated by wheezing inhales. I didn’t stop to check on him. I rolled, pinning Anders beneath me, knees braced on either side of his torso, and seized him by the throat.
He thrashed. I squeezed tighter.
My vision narrowed until all I could see was Anders’s face. Penny’s haggard breaths, the crunch of dead leaves, and the shrill chirp of crickets all faded into a vast, echoing quiet like there was no one left in the clearing but me and the man beneath me.
Every awful comment Anders had ever made raced through my head along with every terrible thing he’d done.
Spilling leather dye on Penny’s sketchbook; treating gentle, soft-spoken Reimond like he was beneath him; carving out the poor man’s heart and offering it to Thoma like a gruesome prize; the constant digs at our private lives; harassing Penny about his art; setting fire to the mission in Wendwood with us inside…
It was always going to be either us or him, and I wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction of ending any of us.
Anders writhed beneath me, clawing at my wrists with blood-slicked fingers that couldn’t find purchase. I held fast. His movements slowed, grew feebler. His eyes fluttered, then began to roll back, white and unfocused. Still, I didn’t let go. Not even when his arms dropped, useless, to the earth.
Awareness slowly returned when a hand gripped my shoulder and soft words I didn’t quite hear whispered near my ear.
I tore my eyes away from Anders and looked up to find Isla standing beside me, the lumberman’s abandoned machete held in her other hand down at her side.
Her gaze met mine, and she repeated herself.
“Kit, he’s out. You can let go now,” she said as all the sound crashed back in all at once.
Penny was still coughing and wheezing, and that was enough to spur me to move. I swung off of Anders’s unconscious body and knelt beside Penny. Rosie had her arm around his shoulders, and she sat back on her heels to let me take her place and cradle Penny against my chest.
He pressed in as close as he could get, fingers clutching at my shirt as I ran my hands over his arms and back to check for injuries. I was relieved to find none.
I leaned back so I could cup his face in my hands and meet his frantic eyes. Tears streaked his cheeks, and I wiped them away with the pads of my thumbs.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Not hurt anywhere but here?” I dropped a hand to gingerly brush over the redness on his neck.
Penny flinched but nodded, and I turned my attention to Rosie. “You hurt?”
She shook her head. “I got him,” she said.
She raised a trembling hand to indicate the knife clutched tightly in her fist. I’d made the weapon months ago in case she needed to protect herself from Otis during the fourth Oath. Penny hadn’t thought she had it in her to use it. I was thankful that he’d been wrong.
“Good,” I said, though the word came out hoarse. As I eased back from Penny, my limbs felt distant, almost numb, like they weren’t fully mine. “You and Isla get Penny back to the cart. I’m right behind you.”
Penny tightened his grip on the front of my shirt and tried to pull himself back in. “No,” he rasped, barely above a whisper. “Not without you.”
I pried his hands free, then pressed his knuckles to my lips.
“Go, sweetheart,” I murmured. “I’ll be right there.”
He didn’t want to let go, but Rosie and Isla moved in quickly, each taking one of his arms. He was still coughing, still struggling, but they got him upright and began the slow, staggering retreat back through the trees. Toward the wagon. Toward safety.
I stood frozen in place, chest heaving, watching them go. A bitter taste flooded my mouth, and my heart pounded erratically against my ribs, as if it were trying to outrun what had just happened. What was about to.
I didn’t have much choice anymore.
Once Penny, Rosie, and Isla were out of sight, I turned back to Anders.
His chest rose and fell with slow breaths that labored through the swelling in his neck.
The man had been a dark shadow over us in Ashpoint since we arrived; always watching, always getting in the way, always armed with a snide word or crude suggestion.
He was cruel and more calculating than I originally gave him credit for.
He played dumb so well, and he’d managed to catch us off guard twice now.
There couldn’t be a third time, and there was only one thing I could do to make sure he didn’t get the chance. To make sure he could never do Merrick’s bidding again. To make sure he never got up. To protect Penny.
There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to protect Penny.