Chapter 16
Penny
“Kit, slow down…”
My tongue felt as numb as my face, hands, and feet. The scarf and mittens provided some relief, but they weren't fit to withstand two full days of trudging along snow-packed roads as the temperature continued to plummet.
Home before dark, Kit had promised, but the sun was already halfway below the horizon.
That was why he was rushing. But as eager as I was to reach the warmth of our little cottage, I couldn't make my legs move any faster or force my lungs to swell enough to draw a full breath.
Wheezing and dizzied and bone cold, I kept falling behind.
Kit was a few paces ahead, and he turned to my request. He looked haggard, his pale face chapped and his lips dry and cracked. But his eyes were soft, always soft for me, and he hurried to close the gap between us.
He opened his patched cloak and slung it around my shoulders, drawing us close for added warmth. It made for slower progress, but a pace I could manage as I leaned heavily against him.
“Sorry.” The word whooshed out on a short breath. I’d all but given up talking as it was apt to spur a coughing fit that made my raw throat burn.
I was tired. Tired of being sick and weak, tired of walking, tired of the cold and the wet and the wind that whipped around me and slipped through every seam in my borrowed clothing.
But Kit was tired, too, and it did no good to complain.
So, I kept quiet, focused on those fluttering little gasps that were enough to keep me conscious, and I moved.
“Don’t apologize.” Kit hugged his arm around my shoulders. “Won’t do me any good to get there without you.”
I nodded, still clinging to the hope of home where I might actually be relieved to see a fire if it meant taking the chill out of my fingers.
“We’re close.” I flicked my gaze ahead toward Ashpoint’s hidden encampment. I was finally becoming familiar enough with the area to recognize the landscape. “I can walk on my own. Don’t want to give anyone ideas.”
Righting myself, I started to slide away from him, but Kit shifted his hand down to my side and squeezed.
“Let them have their ideas,” he murmured.
I smiled weakly and tucked back into him, going so far as to tip my head onto his shoulder. The warmth of his neck was like a kiss to my skin. I wanted to nuzzle into it, bury myself in it, close my eyes and—
“Halt!”
Kit drew us to an abrupt stop, and I perked up to peer at the flock of men who had emerged seemingly from nowhere.
They wore heavy wool clothing to combat the snow, and masks that covered most of their faces, presumably for the same reason, but it made them look ominous.
After living in Ashpoint for months, I was able to recognize most of its citizens, but the masks made these people strangers to me, even if they weren’t.
Three of them surrounded Kit and I in a half circle, I thought, until I glanced over my shoulder and found two more taking positions behind us. A couple had crossbows drawn and aimed, and I shrunk from the sight.
Kit released me to raise his hands in surrender. “It’s Kit Koesters and Penwell Oliver. We’ve just returned from our Oath.”
“We know who you are,” one of the men called back.
No mouths to see moving meant no way to know who had spoken. But it sounded like someone in front of us.
A frown twisted Kit’s features. “Then what’s the problem?” he asked.
“You’ve been reported lost,” the voice boomed back. “Captured by the militia.”
“Reported?” I squeaked, too quietly for anyone but Kit to hear. “By who?”
No sooner had I spoken than did the answer become clear. Anders, of course, covering his crime with an excuse as to why we hadn’t returned. Clearly, he hoped we never would.
Kit’s arms dropped, and his hands fisted at his sides. “Well, that’s obviously not true—”
“You’ll be taken in for questioning,” the voice said.
“About what?” Kit snapped. His head whipped around those who encircled us, his eyes narrow.
“No one escapes the militia,” the voice growled. “You know that as well as I do. So, you can come quietly, or we will use force.”
I remembered our first arrival in Ashpoint—rather our first approach. We’d been tackled to the ground and tied up, then dragged to the Ossuary and treated like criminals. I was eager to avoid the same treatment now.
Stepping forward, I broke away from Kit and held up my hands. Kit must have done the same because, within seconds, we were being led quickly toward the city gate. With a man on each of our elbows and one masked fellow leading the charge, we cut a wide path along the snowy road.
I stumbled once, then twice, and was jerked upright roughly enough that Kit snapped.
“By the gods, it isn’t a race.”
Our escorts didn’t slow or stop yanking me to my feet after every misstep all the way through the front gate and to the Ossuary in the center of town.
The building seemed to soar into the darkening gray sky, and I strained to see if I could spot the window of Merrick’s chambers.
Specifically, I wondered if I would see him there, looking out, terribly amused by this whole thing.
I didn’t spot him or much of anything before we were led through the wide wooden doors and into the atrium.
Regardless of the reason for our visit to this building, I was grateful for a reprieve from the cutting wind and to be walking on something besides powder and ice.
Still, my boots were caked with the stuff, and I slipped on the steps as we were hurried toward the second level.
I went down on both knees and hissed at the jarring pain.
The man on my left hauled me up and pulled me to his face as he shouted, “Look here, you—”
Kit surged up from behind me and knocked the man’s hand off my arm.
“If you won’t help him, let me,” he said and squeezed in next to me.
I shook my head. The motion made my whole body wobble. “I-I don’t need help, Kit. I just…”
“Up the stairs, but no further,” another one of the men said. “Can’t have you two scheming and collaborating to deceive us.”
Kit grumbled as he looped his arm around me. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. “We’ll talk to Levitt and get this cleared up. I’ll have you home and in bed tonight. I swear it.”
The mention of the Right Hand and the slow, arduous climb made me assume we were headed to Levitt’s chambers.
We’d come peacefully, after all and, as well as I likely knew these men, they knew me.
They knew Kit. There was no reason for harsh treatment or punishment, or for them to grab us and pry us apart the moment we set foot on the second floor.
“Where are you taking us?” Kit demanded.
“For questioning,” one of the men holding me replied.
We went down a hall lined with barred doors.
Glancing into the rooms beyond found them mostly empty, and each sparsely furnished with a mat on the floor and a wooden bucket in the corner.
They were prison cells. Our proximity to them, and the way our escorts stopped in the middle of the hall, made my heart race.
I had been panting all day, but my rasping breaths came quicker now. Fast enough that they caught in my throat and drove out a cough, then two, and more after that until I was doubled over and hacking until my eyes watered.
“Where’s Levitt?” I heard Kit bark. “I want to speak with him!”
The hands on my arms pulled, then pushed, propelling me toward something I hadn’t fully seen but could imagine. I skidded toward one of the barred doors, open and ready to admit me to the cell inside.
The men holding me marched through, dragging me as I set my heels and let my weight settle. They were content to let me fall this time, dropping me on the scuffed wood floor and making a hasty exit from the tiny block of a room.
I barely had enough air in me to yelp, and I scrambled on hands and knees to see Kit still in the hall, held by a guard on each side. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t call for him with my chest empty and aching.
Fortunately, he did the shouting for me.
“Penny!”
My name echoed off the walls as Kit called out again. He swung one arm, then the other, shirking the guards who attempted to restrain him and forging toward the one who stood in the cell doorway with his back to me.
“Gods, no,” Kit declared, then stabbed a finger at me. “If he’s going in there, I’ll be with him. And I will be talking to Levitt. Immediately.”
He cut an imposing figure despite his obvious weariness from our journey here. Maybe that was why they didn’t grab him again. Or maybe it was his father’s legacy. The weight of Vaughn Koester’s influence hung heavy in this place, making Kit a man of import by heritage alone.
They didn’t seize him, but the man in the doorway didn’t relent. He was as tall as Kit and a bit broader—though most of the added size was in his gut. He set his stance and repeated a variation of what we’d already been told.
“You are to be separated for questioning.”
Kit reached toward the knife at his hip. Ready to fight for me.
His hand was within striking distance, fingers open and ready to loose the weapon from its sheath before the men behind him seized him around the arms and shoulders to restrain him. Another guard plucked the knife from its sheath and retreated to keep it well out of reach.
“We’ll answer no questions if not from the Right Hand himself,” Kit snarled. “And we won’t be separated for any reason. Do I make myself clear?”
I knelt on the floor, shivering and awestruck.
The man who once said he wasn’t sure he could love me—love anyone—was now the man who leaped at the chance to call me his husband, who kept me warm when the fire was too much, who bandaged my hands and bought me mittens so my fingers wouldn’t ache.
And here he stood in the center of a crowd of five other men, demanding to be near me.
The others weren’t as impressed as I was, because the man blocking the cell door stepped forward and swung the bars shut behind him. The lock engaged, closing me in with a clang that reverberated through my bones.
“You are in no position to be making demands here.” He gestured farther down the hall. “Take him to Matina.”
“No!” Kit struggled against the men holding him. Panic must have given him a rush of strength because he almost broke free.
The man standing in front of my cell door stepped forward and swung a balled fist that cracked against Kit’s cheek and rocked his head to the side. The fight went out of him, and he slumped, dazed, in the grip of the guards.
My yelp of protest tore out of me, too jagged to shape into words, and useless besides.
They wouldn’t have listened. Not the brutes dragging my darling down the hall until he vanished from my sight.
The scrape of Kit’s boots against stone echoed long after he was gone, grinding into me until it was all I could hear.
That and the wet, broken sounds I couldn’t quite swallow back.
Silence followed. Heavy. Suffocating.
I’d never see him again.
Never see home again.
They had already decided what we were. Traitors. And everyone knew the punishment for that.
Death.
My fingers curled against the floor, nails biting into grit as if I could anchor myself to something solid, something real. Because it wasn’t true. None of it was. Anders was the traitor here, not us. And we wouldn’t go out like that.
I’d been weak at the mission, frozen by the same fear that crept in now. And I’d been ashamed of that. I’d fallen short of my own expectations of the kind of man I wanted to be. The kind of husband I wanted to be if and when I got the chance.
The panic didn’t fade, but it shifted—sharpened. Turned outward instead of in. I gathered every splinter of it and forged it into something mean. Something that bit back. I let it bristle under my skin, let it stiffen my spine and bare its teeth for me.
Let them come.
Let them try to name me a traitor. Let them try to break me for it.
I hunched low where they’d left me, body coiled tight. My breath came slow and steady despite the ache clawing at my ribs.
When the cell door creaked open again, I didn’t look away.
I hoped—I might have even prayed—my thorns were sharp enough to draw blood.