Chapter 36
Kit
Penny and I finished breakfast and headed outside before everyone else. Warren spent the entire meal with half an eye on me, so I figured he was due some time with Sayla and his family without the burden of my presence. I tried not to be bothered by his newfound wariness, but it was hard not to be.
The weather had improved overnight, and the hazy morning sun was burning away the last faint clouds and chasing the chill from the air. The dampness had abated as well, which was as much a boon for Penny as everything else.
Unfortunately, the ground was still a quagmire. That much couldn’t be helped by a few hours without rain.
I fetched the horse from the paddock while Penny retrieved the harness from the barn, and we met at the edge of the field to get the mare hitched up. Penny hardly spoke as he fastened buckles and straps, then untangled the reins. I could tell that Amelina’s absence at breakfast weighed on him.
His act may have fooled Warren and his family, but I saw through his pasted-on smile and halfhearted conversation.
It was yet another problem I couldn’t fix.
Another thing he’d tell me not to blame myself for, but how could I not?
His mother had been skeptical of me before she knew I’d not done everything in my power to keep Penny from attempting the Oaths. Now she refused to speak to any of us.
“It’ll be good to have the extra help,” I said once the harness was secured and Penny handed me the reins.
He shrugged. “I’m a little overwhelmed, to be honest. It was hard enough to find something for just Warren to do, and now there’s four of them.”
I stepped in and tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. “We have a plan, remember? And with more hands, we can plant more fields. Set us up real nice for a good harvest. No fields left untouched this year. As long as the growing season cooperates, we'll bring in a banner crop for the Oliver farm.”
The back door opened, and the other four men filed out. Warren hung back as they approached, but his father and brothers looked ready to go. They gathered around Penny and me awaiting instructions.
“Thank you for coming to help.” I directed that to all of them, but most pointedly at Warren.
He took a deep breath, set his shoulders back, and met my eyes. His nod was as good a declaration of a sort of truce as anything.
“I know this isn’t your usual work, but we can still put you to use.
For now, I’d like you to focus on moving the livestock from their current pasture to one of the fallow fields.
There are three,” I glanced over at Penny to confirm, and continued when he nodded assent.
“Pick whichever is the most overgrown. Walk the fence to make sure there are no breaks, and once the animals are all moved, walk their pasture and clear any debris or larger plant growth to prepare it for plowing.
“If you finish in time, move on to the next field and clear out any vegetation. They’ve been fallow for a few seasons, but it’s time to put them to work now that we have the hands to make that possible.
” I gestured to Penny. “We’ll handle plowing at least the rest of the first field, and we’ll reassess when we break for lunch. Sound good?”
All four heads bobbed.
Penny piped up from behind me. “Warren can show you the tools in the barn, and he’s familiar with the livestock. He should be able to help with them if you need it.”
Warren blushed at the acknowledgement, and the lot of them dispersed back to the barn to begin their assigned tasks.
I led the horse out into the field and backed her up to the plow. Penny slogged through the muck and took his position between the handles. I let him stay there until I had the mare secured, then held the reins out to him.
“You belong up here,” I said.
His face scrunched, but he came around and took the reins from me anyway. I took the opportunity to tug him in by the collar of his shirt and steal a soft kiss. He leaned into the attention, and I obliged by giving him several more before taking my place behind the plow.
Penny led the horse, and we worked in silence for a full row before he spoke up again.
“How do you know so much about farming? You said you stayed with a farmer for a while…” He glanced back at me. “But you know too well what to do here for me to believe it was just for a while.”
A small smile crept across my lips. “‘A while’ might have been understating it,” I admitted. “I was with him for six years after I left the Bone Men.”
That memory was bittersweet.
It was my first taste of what it was like to have a family and a home that weren’t based on stripping away everything that made me who I was. But it ended far too soon, and with the reminder that not everyone was so willing to abide a former cultist in their midst.
With a full day of work ahead, I had ample time to answer Penny's questions about my life, and no reason not to share.
I started at the beginning, with my arrival at the mission outside Emberstead after my first branding.
The Symbiarch, Nora, took me in, tended to my wounds, and left me to recover while she found a new place for me.
For two days, I sat in my assigned bed, the only soul in the sprawling infirmary, tucked away in the room as far from the entrance of the mission as they could put me.
Pain throbbed and scorching heat licked across my skin every time the bandages taped to my chest scraped over the fresh brand beneath them.
It was all I could do to keep my mind away from the memory of darkness and fire that had haunted my sleep for days, and I fixed my attention on picking at the fraying hem on the cuff of my left sleeve.
The door to my room stood open at my request, allowing me to watch any comings and goings. No matter how clean I thought I made my escape, I couldn’t shake the fear of my father bursting through the double doors at the other end of the hall, his face aflame with hatred and fury.
If he found me, if he tracked me there, I doubted I’d live to see Ashpoint again. He’d make good on his threat to sacrifice me to Eeus, and that would be that.
But when the doors finally swung open in the afternoon on the second day, it wasn’t my father keeping stride with the head Symbiarch of the mission.
The man beside Nora Halmer towered over her.
Every part of him was broad and muscular, and he clutched a straw hat in one large hand.
His overalls were smudged with dirt and grass stains, and every strike of his boots left clods of black earth on the stone floor.
Coppery hair sprouted above bushy brows that were drawn low over his eyes as he spoke to Nora in hushed tones.
They were too far away for me to hear their conversation, but I shrunk against the pillows when Nora motioned to me and the strange man looked my way.
He hung back a bit when she reached the door to my room, letting her enter first while he lingered outside.
Nora rested a hand on my right shoulder to try to draw my attention, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the large man.
“Kit, this is Delmer Blake.” She waved him forward. “He’s agreed look after you while you get on your feet.”
He ducked into the room, and his brows pinched when I flinched away from him. “Hope you like animals,” he said, his deep voice low and gentle. “I keep a bit of a menagerie. When you’re all healed up, maybe you can help me look after them.”
Since Clover, I’d avoided anything I might get attached to. Yet there was a part of me that wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around something soft and bury my face in fur. No judgment or condescension, just quiet support.
But there had to be a catch.
There always was.
He wanted something from me. Maybe it would be enough to be useful to him. I would do almost anything if it meant going somewhere the Bone Men couldn’t find me.
When I didn’t respond, Nora squeezed my shoulder.
“Delmer owns a farm out in Oakshire.” She moved to face me, half-blocking the farmer from my view.
“He’s a good man, and he’ll take good care of you.
You have my word.” Her kind smile eased the tension in my shoulders.
“Everything is ready for you to go tonight, if you’re all right with that.
Get you someplace more comfortable to recover.
And I’ll be coming by a few times a week to make sure you’re healing all right. ”
That assurance was all I needed. If things at the farm weren’t as rosy as she described, I could return with her when she came to check on me. Not that there was much stopping me from running away again if it came to that. I would not let myself be crushed under another cruel man’s thumb.
“Okay,” I said finally.
Over Nora’s shoulder, I watched a smile stretch across Delmer’s face. He looked so earnest, like an overgrown dog who’d just been told he was a good boy, that a little more of my unease dissipated.
“I’ll be glad for the company,” he said. “I hope you’ll like it there.”
I had.
His home was filled with the kind of warmth I barely remembered from when my mother was alive, and Delmer was as ready with praise as my father had been with disparagement. I settled in quicker than I expected to, and for six years, Delmer treated me like I was where I’d always belonged.
I was too old to be adopted, but he made it clear that I was his son in all but blood and name.
He shielded me from the scorn of the citizens of Oakshire, often to his own detriment.
No matter how much I insisted that it didn’t bother me—though it did—and that he shouldn’t let it affect his relationships with the townsfolk, he demanded their tolerance and would not accept any less.
He taught me how to run the farm, care for the livestock, and maintain the small house we shared. And when his health failed him far too soon, he assured me it would all be mine upon his passing, that he hoped the land would take care of me like he’d tried to.
It might have, if I’d been allowed to keep it.
Delmer was barely on the pyre before the town’s elders darkened my doorstep, making claims and casting judgment they never would have dared to say were he still around.
The townsfolk wouldn’t stand for me taking over the farm, and I found Oakshire entirely inhospitable.
The shops were closed to me; no one would work for or with me.
As such, I had two choices: let them buy the farm from me for half of what it was worth, or watch it fall to ruin because I was unable to run it alone.
That land had been Delmer’s pride and joy, and as much as I didn’t want to leave, I accepted their terms of sale and handed over the deed. The money set me up well when I settled in Forstford, and I acknowledged that, in a way, Delmer was still taking care of me now.
As I finished my story, Penny jerked the horse to a stop and nearly slipped in his haste to come around the back of the plow. He flung his arms around me and squeezed so tightly I swore my ribs creaked.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asked, his words muffled against my shoulder.
I leaned my head against his and looped my own arms around his waist. “It hurts to talk about,” I admitted. “Just another good thing that the Bone Men took from me.”
“I’m sorry. He sounds like he was something special.
” He pulled back and slid a hand up to rest against my cheek.
His pained expression smoothed when I leaned into his palm.
“I’m glad, though, after all the terrible things I’ve heard about your father, that you had someone who did love you and treat you the way a son should be treated. ”
I made a small noise of assent.
“Did you ever go back to see how the farm was doing?”
I shook my head. “Either it would be thriving, and I’d be bitter about it, or it would be in disarray, and I’d be angry about it. It wasn’t worth the anguish either way.”
Penny’s brows drew down again. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to take it over. You’d have done a fine job with it.”
It was my turn to bring a hand up to trace my fingers over his cheek.
“It was a bit of a relief to lose it, honestly. The farm was Delmer’s dream, and I was honored to be entrusted with it, but I was almost glad for having that choice taken from me.
It freed me to settle somewhere I wasn’t hated, where I could be useful and do what I wanted to do. ”
Penny was quiet a moment, then said in a very small voice, “That would be nice.”
“What would?”
He shrugged, but I could tell this was more significant to him than he was letting on. I had a feeling I knew what he meant before he confirmed it.
“Being able to do what I want. Being free.”
For as much as this farm was Penny's home, I knew it was a burden he didn’t feel capable of shouldering.
Given the choice, I was certain he’d do anything but this.
But he had a family to look after, and he would never walk away from them.
Even with Sayla set to marry Warren, there was still Amelina to consider.
Penny wasn’t a farmer. He would grudgingly carry on as he was, but he would always dream of something different.
Of a life liberated from the expectations that he should be happy with the lot he was given and dismiss what he really wanted.
It was a life I wanted to give him. I just didn’t see a way forward that didn’t include his responsibilities here.
He was quiet for several moments before he continued softly. “I never asked, but I assumed that you would come back here with me when all of this is over. I want you to be somewhere you’re happy and feel needed.” He smiled, but it was clearly forced. “You’re needed here. I need you.”
I hoped my smile was more believable than his. I tilted my chin up so I could press a kiss to his forehead.
“If that’s what you really want, I could be happy here.”
“But it’s not what you want,” he concluded. “It’s not what I really want either.”
“We have plenty of time to figure it out.” I pulled him back in and squeezed him to within an inch of his life.
He grunted in satisfaction, and some of the tension left him.
“It’s been a long couple of days, and now isn’t the time to be making decisions anyway. Let’s focus on what's to be done now, and the rest will work itself out.”
Penny pulled back and gave a determined nod. “It’ll work out,” he agreed.
And we got back to plowing.