Chapter 30 Kit
Kit
For the next day and a half, I hardly left Penny’s side.
Even had I not been afraid that he’d slip away when I wasn’t there, I couldn’t help but remember how afraid he’d been at the prospect of being abandoned at the mission.
No matter what, I needed to be there when he woke. I needed him to know he wasn’t alone.
I only slept a few hours here and there, and always woke up in a panic worried that he’d stopped breathing.
My nightmares were full of gruesome images of carving the flesh from his bones while Sayla and his mother stood by and watched, blaming me for his death.
I was exhausted and worn thin, but that was enough to put me off sleep as much as I could manage.
Little by little, Penny’s color returned, though his breathing remained labored.
By midday on the second day when his fingers twitched and he let out a soft groan, I dared to let myself hope that he was through the worst of it.
It was the most he’d stirred since his seizure after Harlan and I had gotten him into bed.
All I needed was for him to open his eyes.
As long as he woke up, I knew he would be okay.
It was a few more hours—spent pressed as close to him as I could get with my arm resting across his torso so I could feel the rise and fall of his breaths—before he moved again.
He groped out with one hand, his brow furrowing until he found mine where it lay on his chest. He sighed, and his expression smoothed.
My breath caught, and I wound our fingers together. When he didn’t give any other sign of waking, I leaned up on my elbow. “Pen?”
Green eyes cracked open. He blinked a few times against the afternoon sunlight slanting in the window, then rolled his head to the side to face me. His tired smile was like a balm to my lingering worry.
“You’re okay,” he said, squeezing my hand with what little strength he had.
I felt far from okay.
I felt destroyed, like I’d stared death in the face for days, and it had taken every ounce of my resolve not to be the first to look away. But somehow, I won. We won. We lived. Relief brought tears to my eyes.
I leaned in to slide my arms around Penny and crush him in a desperate embrace.
“Me?” I murmured with my face buried in his hair. “You nearly died, and you’re worried about me?”
His arms crept around me. “You were so sick…” He clutched the fabric of my shirt. “I thought you were dying. But you’re alive. We made it.”
“We made it,” I echoed. That was enough for now.
I could have stayed there for the rest of the day and fallen asleep in the comfort of his embrace, but Penny’s arms trembled with the effort of holding on, so I pulled back. I cupped his face in my hands to convince myself he was really awake, really okay, then leaned in for a gentle kiss.
“You must be hungry,” I said as I straightened. “I’ll go make you something.”
Even with him awake, I was reluctant to leave the room. Fear lurked in the back of my mind that I’d return and find that, in my exhaustion, I’d imagined this. Or worse, that I was dreaming, and a new kind of nightmare would come upon waking.
Before he could protest or insist on accompanying me, I climbed out of the bed and shuffled to the kitchen.
After several days of not making it to the market for fresh ingredients, my options were limited.
But there was plenty of oatmeal, some honey, dried strawberries, and a handful of pecans in the pantry to round it out.
Stirring the oatmeal on the stove was almost hypnotic, lulling me into a place of peace I hadn’t seen in days.
It gave me a chance to let my mind go blank and my thoughts quiet as I swirled the fruit and honey in and watched it turn faintly pink.
By the time it was done, I was drowsy and unsure how much longer I could stay awake.
I loaded the oatmeal into two bowls and topped them with crushed pecans. With a glass of water tucked in the crook of my arm, I returned to the bedroom and set everything on top of the dresser.
“Let’s get you propped up,” I said, turning to find Penny picking at the bandages around his left elbow.
“What’s this from?” he asked.
I didn’t want to keep things from him, but it didn’t feel like the right time to tell him I’d sought outside help.
“You needed fluids.” I helped him to sit and piled a folded blanket and a pillow behind him to give him something to lean against.
He looked at me, his eyes ringed in shadows of exhaustion. “Isn’t that against the rules?”
I managed a tired smile. “Yes, but so is charcoal.”
“Oh,” he said, settling back. “Fair point.”
I offered the water first, which he guzzled down, then I pressed a bowl into his hands. “Eat as much as you can handle. You’ll need the fuel to recover.”
He picked at it, taking a few experimental bites before digging in.
I mostly poked at my own, finding my stomach still queasy and not wanting to revisit the violent vomiting fits of a few days prior.
Penny cleaned his bowl in no time and, after heated protest that I needed to eat more, he finished mine, as well.
Full and warm with the addition of another blanket over his feet, he was dozing before I even left the room. I ferried our dirty dishes to the kitchen and returned the pillows to the couch, then rejoined Penny under the covers.
“I thought this bed was too small,” he murmured.
He draped an arm around my shoulders as I settled in with my head on his chest. The steady beat of his heart beneath my ear helped me breathe easier.
“It’s much too small.” I stretched my own arm across his waist so I could take his other hand and wind our fingers together. “I’m still worried I’m going to crush you. But this is exactly where I belong, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his sleepy voice. “Me neither.”
He drifted off and slept the remainder of the afternoon. I caught a few minutes of rest here and there, but never managed to fully fall asleep before jerking awake to be sure he was still breathing.
The sun was halfway below the horizon when a knock at the front door startled me out of a light doze. Penny started to rouse, but I combed my fingers through his hair to soothe him back to sleep.
The visitor knocked again as I was halfway down the hall.
“Give me a minute,” I muttered, kicking aside my still-damp cloak as I passed into the living room. By the time I reached the entryway, whoever was on the other side was rattling the knob.
I unlocked and yanked the door open, surprised to find one of the faceless messengers on the steps.
Over his shoulder, I caught sight of a wooden handcart on the walkway, and my stomach lurched.
A man, white as the snow but for the brown blood crusted around his nose and gaping mouth, was sprawled inside.
His dead eyes bored into me. It took me a moment, but I recognized him, and my stomach rolled with renewed nausea.
It was Reimond.
“Good evening, recruit,” the messenger said, breaking me out of my horror.
I couldn’t stomach whatever ceremonial bullshit he was about to spout, so I cut in before he could continue.
“We survived. Piss off.”
He didn’t have time to protest before I slammed the door in his face. I leaned heavily against it until I heard the crunch of the snow under the handcart’s wheels retreating down the walk.
When I turned back toward the living room, Penny appeared in the doorway, bracing on the wall to keep himself upright.
“Who was that?” he asked.
I swallowed hard and blinked away threatening tears. Everything felt raw, and overwhelming, and the last thing I wanted was to pile grief on Penny’s shoulders when he was still so weak.
But I’d promised to stop keeping things from him. He would find out about Reimond soon enough. Better he hear it from me.
My legs quivered as I crossed to him and slid my arm around his shoulders. “Let’s get you back in bed, and I’ll tell you.”
The time it took us to get settled, face to face and tangled together under the blankets, wasn’t nearly enough for me to get my thoughts in order.
It was hard to breathe through the sudden tightness in my throat when I realized that it had almost been Penny on that cart, tossed away like his life hadn’t mattered, like he was garbage to be hauled off.
Even knowing he was alive and arguably well, pressed up against me just waiting for me to explain my sudden anguish, the prospect of handing his body over as another piece for Eeus’s Vessel was horrifying.
“It was one of the messengers,” I finally managed to say. “Checking to see who survived and collecting the bodies of those who didn’t.”
It took him a moment, but he caught my meaning and swallowed audibly before speaking. “Not everybody did.”
I shook my head. “He had Reimond.” My voice broke, and Penny’s arms tightened around me.
“What about Thoma?” he whispered as tears welled up in his eyes, too. “What’s going to happen to him?”
I wanted to tell him that I couldn’t bear to imagine it, not when I’d come so close to losing him the same way, but my voice failed me.
I didn’t have the words to verbalize the agony it had been to watch him fade and wonder if he’d be gone by morning.
To admit that I didn’t want to exist in a world without him, because what would be the point if my heart died with him?
“I don’t know,” I murmured.
“They were going to get married when Reimond finished his Oaths.” A tear escaped the corner of Penny’s eye and dripped onto the pillowcase. “Now that’ll never happen…”
His breath caught with a sob that sparked a coughing fit and left him gasping. It brought back too-fresh memories of watching him struggle for air as he laid unresponsive on the kitchen floor.
I rubbed his back until he calmed, then mopped the tracks of tears from his cheeks with the corner of the blanket.
He pressed in closer, looking exhausted again. There was still a dry rattle in his lungs, but it wasn’t the shallow panting that would haunt my nightmares for weeks.
I cupped his face in my hands and searched his pale green eyes. Their spark was back, there was color in his cheeks, and his skin warmed my palms.
“You’re fine with me, right?” I asked softly.
He gave a drowsy nod. “Mmhmm.”
I rolled onto my back and pulled him with me. He draped over my chest, and something about his weight pressing me into the mattress was deeply settling. His breathing slowed, my eyelids grew heavy, and I let exhaustion chase away all other worries until my head was blessedly blank.
Penny was okay. That was the last thought wisping through my mind before sleep caught up to us both.