35. Kit
Kit
Behind me, the ground trembled, and the sound of bone grinding against bone filled the air loud enough to drown out my whimpering.
Penny’s last-ditch effort had failed. He was dead, yet still the Vessel was waking.
A ragged sob shook me. It was over. All for nothing. This endeavor had been doomed from the start.
I didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see the monstrous Vessel come to life, but Penny faced his death head-on, so it felt cowardly not to do the same.
The Vessel’s eye sockets filled with a flickering golden glow.
Its head turned this way and that like an owl trying to size up its prey, or a dog trying to understand a new noise.
Its massive hands flexed, and a low sound rumbled from its chest. It was like a groan of pain, and it made every hair on my body stand on end.
Merrick was turned away from me, but I could see enough of his profile to make out the manic glee lighting up his face. He stretched his arms wide, and his voice boomed over the grating noise of the Vessel’s jerky movements.
“Welcome, Eeus. We have been waiting for you for a very long time.” His grin turned sinister. “You will recognize my authority. You have been bound into a Vessel of my making, of which I am a part, and you will do as I command. Now, kneel.”
It was hard to see through the haze of my tears, but the Vessel hesitated, its hands unfurling. It stood defiantly still for several long seconds before it creaked and dropped to one knee, shaking the ground beneath us.
In the same moment, Penny’s hand tightened around mine and then pulled away.
I whipped around and stared in disbelief as Penny snapped the ropes binding him to the altar like they were mere threads. When he sat up with the knife still lodged between his ribs, someone in the crowd screamed.
I shouted his name, but the gag muffled most of the noise. Then Penny turned toward me, and I recoiled. His eyes were a vibrant green, glowing with an unnatural light that looked far too similar to what illuminated the eyes of the Vessel behind me.
He reached for me, and I flinched back. But he didn’t take my hand, instead grabbing the ropes that bound my wrists to the altar. With a single tug, they fell away and freed me to jerk loose the knot in my kerchief gag.
Matina lingered a few steps behind me, and when she reached to restrain me, Penny waved a hand through the air and sent her tumbling backward onto the ground.
Merrick turned toward the commotion just as Penny pulled the knife from his chest and dropped it with a clatter on the altar.
I snatched the blade the moment it settled and turned it toward Merrick.
That weapon would never be used against us again if I had any say in the matter.
The crowd erupted into chaos when Penny stood.
Half of those gathered scrambled to disperse, and Reimond’s family led a small group of resistance members in fighting against the melee to reach us while Rosie’s father worked to untie Isla.
A row of guards closed ranks around the front of the cavern to bar anyone from getting too close.
Standing before the Vessel, which was still kneeling in reluctant submission, Merrick’s face turned purple with fury as he glowered at his half-brother.
“How are you alive?!” he barked, then swept his hand through the air in a pointed dismissal. “No, it doesn’t matter. I won’t let you take this from me, too, Penwell.”
“This one never took anything from you,” Penny said.
But when he spoke, what emerged wasn’t quite him.
It was like two voices speaking at once, almost in unison, but just off enough that the deeper tone resounded like an echo.
“What was lost you forfeited for the sake of jealousy and misplaced bitterness. You robbed yourself of a family and a happy home, and instead of acknowledging your part in that loss, you laid blame where it didn’t belong. ”
I stared at him, my beloved, blood soaked but upright. He was as pale as he had been at the moment of his death, and the wounds in his chest remained. He wasn’t alive, that much I could discern, but the rest…
“I don’t understand,” I said, my own voice hoarse. “If you’re Eeus, what or who is in there?”
Penny’s eyes followed my point at the Vessel, and then swung back to me. “You misunderstand,” he replied in that eerie voice. “My husband was drawn into that abomination, and I was compelled to follow. Where he goes, I go.”
“What are you talking about?” Merrick snapped.
For a moment, I was as confused as he was. But then Penny’s words on the road back from Wendwood filtered into my mind, and I thought I understood. He had been gleeful because we were alike, the gods and us. They were lovers, too.
“Paneus,” I breathed.
Merrick’s jaw clenched, and he curled his lip at the god wearing my intended’s body like it was his own. “I didn’t call for you,” he snarled.
Paneus gestured at himself. At Penny. “This one called for aid, and I answered.”
“Penny?” I broke in. “Penny talked to you?”
“To my husband, as did you.” The corner of his lip curved up in a faint smile, and then it was gone. “Though you were less polite.”
“And this was your answer?!” My words came out as a shout, all my rage and pain bubbling to the surface and erupting out of me like fire. “To let Penny die, and then wear his face like a mask? This isn’t what I asked for! I wanted him to be safe!”
“Enough!” Merrick barked. He turned back to the Vessel. “Eeus, you are bound to my will. I command you to destroy them both!”
Paneus straightened to Penny’s full height, and his voice came out with the same vitriol as my own. “You dare try to turn my husband against me?”
The Vessel rose to its feet and took one thunderous step forward, and then another.
With the line of guards at my back, there was no hope of retreat.
After another halting advance, its hand extended toward me.
I brandished my knife, for what little good that would do against bone, but the Vessel slowed to a stop once more.
The hand outstretched between us opened, nonthreatening.
The golden glow of its eyes bore into me, and I stared right back, unsure what to make of it.
“What are you doing?” Merrick shouted. “Smite him! Strike him down!”
A pale streak broke through the line of guards behind me and darted past. Isla collided with Merrick at full speed, arms around his waist, and took him to the floor. His head impacted the stone with a sickening crack.
With the ranks broken, more people came pouring through. Rosie’s father was first, immediately helping Isla to pin the Right Hand down.
“Kit, do something!” Isla yelled.
Do what?
I stood, suspended between the Vessel and Paneus by my inability to see a way out of this.
Paneus closed the distance between us and gestured to the Vessel.
“You said you were willing,” he said softly in that voice that wasn’t quite Penny’s. “Were you truthful?”
I could hardly bring myself to look at him.
It was the cruelest of fates, to be so close to the man I loved while knowing he was gone.
The thing wearing his skin was not my intended, and I hated how much I still wanted to reach out to him, or to beg him to hold me because I was collapsing in on myself like a dying star.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I rasped.
“He suffers,” Paneus said, and I recognized his pain as akin to my own. Because the man he loved was hurting, and he couldn’t bear to watch it, either. “We are not supposed to inhabit those who are unwilling, and he feels their pain. But you can help. You can end it.”
I didn’t know how, because it was clear I couldn’t do anything but make things worse. I’d proven time and time again how ineffective I was. The chaos around us was proof of that.
“End his suffering?” I asked, finally lifting my eyes to meet Paneus’s.
He swept a hand toward the Vessel, toward Merrick and Matina and Fletcher all pinned under the weight of Penny’s resistance, toward the guards who were now corralling those trying to escape.
“End everything,” he said. “That is what you wanted, is it not?”
Merrick thrashed beneath his captors as he recovered from the shock of hitting the floor.
“How?” I asked. “I failed at everything I tried. I don’t know what to do.”
Paneus closed his fingers around my hand holding the knife and lifted it between us. “You must be a willing sacrifice.”
I jerked and tried to pull away, but Paneus’s grip tightened.
I’d sworn to myself that I would do whatever it took to bring down the Bone Men, but faced with the prospect of giving up everything, I realized I’d been lying to myself.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t relent to the god who had caused so much suffering.
Maybe bearing the pain of every unwilling soul inside that monstrosity was the penance he deserved.
“You want me to—” The words stuck in my throat, and I shook my head. “I can’t.”
The glow faded from Paneus’s eyes, and while he continued to push the knife toward me, his free hand came up to cup my cheek. It was a shock of ice against my skin, and I wanted to pull away. But the touch was so familiar, and I ached for it, and I found myself leaning into it instead.
When he spoke again, there was no echo in his voice. It was just Penny’s.
“Don’t be scared, darling. Trust me.”
Tears poured down my cheeks as I struggled against his hold, but I hurt too much to be angry.
“Don’t use him like that,” I sobbed.
The green glow flared back to life in his eyes, and Paneus shook his head. “This one’s words are his own.”
My breath caught in my chest, and all the fight left me. I searched his face for a trace of the man I loved, for a single bit of familiarity.
“Pen?” I croaked
Merrick’s shout broke the tense hush.
“I ordered you to smite them both!”
The Vessel creaked and groaned and resumed its reach toward me as Isla clamped her hand over Merrick’s mouth.
“There’s no time,” Paneus insisted. “Are you willing?”
Was I?
And even if I wasn’t, was there another option?
“I’m not prepared. I didn’t do the right rituals.” I swallowed against the dryness in my throat, then concluded, “I’m not worthy.”
Paneus dipped his head to meet my eyes. “You have been seen and found worthy, long before now. All that remains is for you to accept it.”
He released my hand, and I stepped back. The Vessel loomed too close for comfort, still offering a hand to me as if asking for help. There wasn’t anything else to do, but I couldn’t raise the knife.
My mind shot back eight months, to the day Penny showed up on my doorstep, to that night, staring at the ladder up to my attic back in Forstford, fearing the memories I’d find at the top of it.
I knew then that there would be no going back if I opened this door again.
I didn’t intend to sell my soul to Eeus, but I realized even then that, if saving the world required it, I had no right to get in the way of that.
If that was the last chance I had to atone for every awful thing I’d done, there was no sacrifice more meaningful.
My hands steadied as I turned the blade toward my chest. My heart’s thunder dulled to a rumble, and I drew several sure, easy breaths before aligning the knife.
I hoped it would be quick, but this was my penance. I deserved for it to hurt.
With one last look at Paneus, I rammed the blade home.
Pain splintered across my skin and ignited my veins with fire, and the sound of screams resounded through the cavern in an endless echo.
I wasn’t sure if it was my own cry or that of the resistance members watching in horror as my knees gave out.
Time slowed as I fell.
Cold hands caught my arms, and Paneus guided me to the floor. He settled us both on our knees as blood oozed out around the knife’s hilt and seeped into my shirt.
As my body went limp, I felt myself being gathered up. It was a tender embrace, and a familiar one. Paneus, or maybe Penny, dragged me to his chest and held me there. It was all I could have asked for. A final moment of peace as darkness clouded the edges of my vision.
Sounds were growing distant, too, but Penny was near, keeping me close as he whispered, “I’ll wait for you.”
And somewhere, far in the back of my mind, a voice called my name.