Chapter 32 Penny #2
It must have taken two hours. It would have been longer for Rosie, who looked about to faint by the time Anders finished and took over for her.
When he was done, Reimond and Tessa had been reduced to piles of parts.
Their organs laid in heaps and their skin was stacked in blood-pinked slabs.
Fluids dripped off the tables to puddle on the ground.
I found myself deaf to Matina’s parting words that signaled the crowd to disperse.
Kit and I stayed seated, anchored in place by some mix of exhaustion and horror.
It wasn’t until the last of the onlookers were departing that I noticed Rosie and her parents standing aside, tucked into a close circle as they wiped the blood from her hands and forearms.
“I’m going to check on her,” I said, sliding out from under the cover of Kit’s cloak. Halfway to standing, I scanned the few still gathered. “Have you seen Thoma?”
Kit glanced around as he rose beside me. “Not yet. I almost hope he found a way to miss it.”
“Is that allowed?” I asked.
His lips bent in a frown. “You know how I feel about what’s allowed.”
I would have given anything to be able to cozy up to him then, but I settled for drawing near to ask in a low voice, “In general, or when it comes to me?”
He fought a smile, just a hint of one, but it was enough to ease some of the oppressive heaviness that had settled on me. It felt worthy of celebration all over again that we had survived. We were together and alive and, I hoped, through the worst of what the Bone Men had to offer.
Before we pulled apart, Kit caught my hand for a squeeze. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
I made my way quickly toward Rosie and her family where they stood near the corner of the Ossuary.
The hurry rushed blood to my face and strained my lungs and, just as I reached them, a coughing fit overtook me.
I bent, bracing my hands on my thighs and hacking until the lack of oxygen dizzied me.
Rosie’s mother laid a hand on my back and gave it a pat.
With a residual wheeze, I straightened and nodded. “Thank you.”
My eyes were watery when I glanced at Rosie. Her clothes were smeared with gore, and her face was ashen. It was like her blood had run out along with Tessa’s, leaving her empty and weak.
I needed to start with apologies. For Tessa, or for what Rosie had to do to Tessa, but I owed her more for spoiling our friendship with my ignorance. It was strange with her mother and father looking on, but I started anyway.
“Rosie, I’m sorry,” I blurted.
Her brows pinched together. “For what, Penny? I know you didn’t like her.”
“I didn’t wish her dead!”
Rosie’s parents watched me. Her father especially looked ready to shoo me away for causing additional distress. She’d been through enough.
“I…” I worried my lip between my teeth, feeling the need to rush through it before I was dismissed. “I’m glad it wasn’t you.”
Rosie’s features relaxed, and she cupped her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. Then, she crashed into me, almost taking us both to the ground with the force of her sorrow. Her arms bound me up, and I supported her, trying not to mind the blood being smeared across my chest and back.
Over her shoulder, her father nodded.
“Gods, Penny,” she gasped. “I’m glad it wasn’t you, too.”
“Kit took care of me,” I replied, then immediately regretted it. It seemed the wrong thing to say, as though Rosie didn’t do her best for Tessa.
She sniffled, getting tears and snot on my shirt along with the blood, then pulled back and met me with wet eyes. “Kit,” she said, smiling. “Of course.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
Rosie’s chin wobbled as she nodded. “Thank you.”
Her mother closed in to take Rosie’s shoulder and tug her back. “Yes, thank you, Penny.” She pulled Rosie under her arm, and Rosie fell to pieces all over again. Watching the older woman coo and coddle her daughter stirred up feelings of homesickness.
“We’re going to take Rose home to get cleaned up,” her mother told me. “She’ll need some time. You understand.”
“I understand,” I repeated, though I didn’t entirely. The whole situation was unfathomable, starting with eight people willingly drinking deadly poison and ending with watching humans be carved up like fatted cows.
Rosie’s father tipped his chin to me. I returned the gesture, then stood as they walked away, feeling better but far from well.
I still hadn’t budged when I heard raised voices in the near distance.
The commotion made me turn and scan the area until I spotted Anders and Thoma squared off on the other side of the Ossuary.
Anders towered over him by a full head and nearly doubled him in breadth.
The size disparity was jarring enough without the realization that Kit stood between them with his arms outstretched, barring them apart.
Cold clenched my lungs as I raced toward the confrontation, arriving in time to see Anders retreat from where Kit had held him at bay.
The lumberman clutched something dark red and glistening that he held aloft.
Pure wickedness glinted in his eyes as he offered the thing toward Thoma.
Blood dripped from it onto the stark white snow.
“Saved this for you,” Anders chortled. With Kit still positioned between him and the smaller man, he tossed the lump of what must have been flesh to land on the ground at Thoma’s feet.
I gasped when I recognized it as a human heart.
Kit stared, slack-jawed and stricken, and his arms fell limply to his sides.
Thoma surged past him, launching himself at Anders with a ferocity that managed to tip the big man over. The two fell into a tangle of flailing arms and legs—mostly Thoma’s—while Anders roared with laughter.
I gaped until Kit broke into motion. He went toward the skirmish, and I followed suit, both of us diving into the mix.
I grabbed Thoma’s elbow and hauled him backward while Kit stepped over to put his feet on either side of Anders, ensuring he stayed on the ground until I’d moved Thoma a good distance away.
Thoma’s face was streaked with tears, and his dark eyes were bloodshot. He looked almost crazed, veins pulsing in his neck and his arms bowed with meager muscles as he thrashed against me to get back to Anders.
“Have some respect!” Kit snarled at the downed man. “You dishonor his sacrifice with your cruelty.”
Anders shook his bushy head. “Nonsense,” he scoffed. “It was a gift. Eeus doesn’t need it, so I thought the little lover would like to have it.”
Thoma clawed at where my arms restrained him, and it took all my effort to keep him from launching himself at the other man again.
When he found he couldn’t shake me, he let out a sound that was halfway between a wail and a roar, and something inside me broke.
Shattered. It must have been my heart, beating hard and wild unlike that dead thing in the snow.
I rounded on Anders, barely holding Thoma who had gone from struggling to sagging in my grasp.
“You bastard!” I shouted through the strangle of sudden tears.
“Did you even try to save him? Did you care?” The words ripped up my throat, chased by one cough, then another.
I drew a tight breath to rage on. “It should have been you who died. Who would you leave behind? Would anyone even notice? I think not, because no one loves you, you awful man. You monster!” Air thinned along with my thoughts.
I gasped for half-breaths that barely filled my lungs, and my head felt as light as if it could lift into the sky and leave the rest of my body behind.
Somewhere near but somehow far away, Anders laughed, Thoma sobbed, and Kit shouted in a voice that was full of panic.
I collapsed, coughing out what little air I could grab while Thoma draped against me. Kit joined us, wrapping strong, warm arms around us both. I smiled weakly and leaned toward him as he gathered me into a careful embrace.
“Breathe, Pen,” he murmured, trying to sound soothing, but I could tell he was scared. “Breathe for me.”
It hurt as I willed my body to settle and my lungs to fill.
But Kit was insistent, holding my gaze and talking me through each raspy inhale.
Beside us, Thoma huddled in a sniveling heap and, several feet away, Anders had been caught by an irate Levitt who was giving a lengthy speech about propriety.
When I finally had enough air in me to turn into words, I glanced up at Kit. “Can we go home?”
He nodded and tugged both Thoma and me to our feet. I pressed into Kit immediately, burrowing into his cloak for warmth and a brief but soothing embrace. Thoma stood aside, still looking small, almost shriveled in his misery.
“We’ll take you home, as well,” Kit told him, but Thoma shook his head.
“I can’t go there,” he said between wet sniffles. “Not now. Not alone.”
I remembered the days after my father died when our little farmhouse felt somehow cavernous.
We were still crowded in there, Mother, Sayla, Merrick, and me divided between two tiny bedrooms, but the void my father left was like a pit we had to tiptoe around to avoid falling into.
Little wonder Thoma wasn’t ready to face that absence when it was so fresh.
“You can stay with us,” I offered, my voice ragged.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t… impose. I think Reimond’s family may need me.” He nibbled on his lip and cast his gaze aside before mumbling, “I may need them.”
Levitt had broken away from his conversation with Anders and stood near enough to make it clear he wanted our notice. Kit turned toward him while keeping me closely alongside. He gathered Thoma in, too, and together we must have been quite a sorry sight.
“If you have time,” Levitt began, then trailed off. “Perhaps this afternoon,” he attempted again, but didn’t get the whole statement out before Kit nodded curtly.
“Let me attend to my business, then I’ll assist you with yours.”
With a gentle nudge, Kit goaded us into motion, headed for the edge of the square.
As we departed, Thoma cast a fleeting glance at Reimond’s heart discarded in the snow.
He let out another broken wail and turned into Kit’s side, opposite me.
Sorrow made my chest tight all over again, and I forced my breaths to stay even as I glimpsed Kit’s face in stony profile.
I love you. I silently willed the words into his brain. Don’t leave me.
Shuffling through the snow, I tried not to see the cheery faces of people resuming business at the nearby stalls. It was too normal, too mundane in the wake of what had just occurred. I felt like I’d been cut open, too, only to leak tears instead of blood.
After dropping Thoma off at Reimond’s family’s home, we returned to our cottage. Kit opened the door and ushered me inside, pausing to kiss my cheek before pulling his cloak from overtop us both.
“Let’s get you into something clean.” His eyes flicked toward my shirt smeared with browning splotches of Tessa’s blood.
I shuddered at the reminder, then nodded, making slow progress to my bedroom.
Once there, Kit knelt beside the hearth to build a fire.
Stripping down to my undergarments exposed me to the chill in the house, and my teeth chattered while I rifled the dresser drawers for the warmest clothes I could find.
The fire caught with a quiet crackle and hiss, and orange light filled the room.
I didn’t feel it yet, but my bare back warmed as Kit crowded in behind me, wrapping his arms around my torso and hanging his head over my shoulder.
His face was beside mine then, his stubbled jaw slightly scratchy as he nuzzled against my ear.
I remembered my parting thoughts in the square, and I’d hardly forgotten Thoma’s grief in the face of such a devastating loss. I stopped my search and grabbed Kit’s arms, hanging onto him as we stood in quiet for a long moment.
“I’m here, sweetheart,” he murmured, then kissed my cheek again. “We’re okay.”
A smile ghosted across my lips. “Sweetheart?”
“Darling?”
I nodded and grinned a little wider. “You are my darling, Kit.”
Another kiss, then Kit reached past me for a wool tunic in the corner of the drawer I’d left open. He pulled away from me, and I turned, then raised my arms to let him pull the garment on over my head.
I grabbed some fresh trousers and stepped into them, a bit wobbly until Kit steadied me with a guiding hand on my shoulder.
The bed beckoned as I became aware of how tired I was.
It shouldn’t have been possible after having spent so much of the past few days asleep, but my body was still weak, and now my heart was heavy, too.
All of it dragged me down as Kit led me to the bed.
Tugging back the blankets, he eased me to sitting. “I need to visit with Levitt,” he said.
“Can’t it wait?” I asked, but what I meant was please, stay.
The plea resounded, though I didn’t speak it aloud. I’d seen too much loss and felt too much grief for one day. I didn’t want to endure it alone.
Kit stood beside me, considering. He didn’t think long before his head dipped in a nod. “For a while.” He motioned for me to lie back and scoot against the wall so he could climb in behind.
With the covers tugged up over us both, I sighed contentedly. I shifted and snugged my body against Kit’s, relishing the rush of his breath on the nape of my neck and his arms catching me up and cradling me to his chest. I took one of his hands and brought it to my lips to kiss his knuckles.
“I’ll stay until you fall asleep, and be back before you wake,” he murmured. Already, his voice sounded drowsy.
The fire cast the chill from the room, and Kit’s breathing grew deeper, slower. He relaxed into me, succumbing to sleep and leaving me to revel in the knowledge that I was his sweetheart, and he was my darling, and we were here together. We were okay.