Last Rites (The Bone Men #4)

1. Penny

Penny

Stretching out in the tiny, straw-filled bed should not have been so easy. After spending the last few weeks wedged in next to Kit every night, it was a novelty to sprawl. I rolled onto my back and flung my arms wide, basking in the beams of light cutting through the cracks in the window shutters.

Planting was done, and it was almost time to return to Ashpoint, a place I had inexplicably grown to miss.

I was looking forward to settling back into our cottage there and reuniting with Rosie and Thoma.

Checking in with the resistance was equal parts exciting and intimidating.

We hadn’t left things on the most stable footing, and they had posed questions and consequences I was reluctant to face.

After arching my back and extending every muscle all the way down to my toes, I finally willed myself out of bed. The smell of sausage frying informed me that breakfast was underway, and Kit would be in the kitchen, nursing his customary mug of coffee.

Throwing on a tunic and lacing up my trousers, I made my way out of the bedroom and into the open area of the farmhouse.

Apparently, it was later than I realized because Mother and Sayla were seated at the table eating. Mother stood and went to the counter to retrieve a platter heaping with entirely too much eggs and sausage for one man to eat.

“Good morning, Pen.” She gave me warm smile. “We saved you a plate.”

There should have been another man. My intended who had first been absent from our bed was missing here, too. Turning a swift circle, I searched the space as though Kit could somehow be hiding in plain sight.

Then I noticed the kettle untouched, the coffee unmade, and I couldn’t help but ask, “Have you seen Kit?”

Blank expressions and shaking heads abounded, and concern sent a shiver through me. I thought back to all that had happened the night before. Kit and I had celebrated, then snuck away to the barn.

We’d enjoyed each other.

Loved each other.

All had been well…

Bypassing the offered plate of food, I went to the window and peered out. The fields were devoid of anything living aside from a few birds, which left only the barn. Kit could have been in there, perhaps doing a final check on the plow or other equipment.

“I’ll be right back,” I called before stepping into my boots and venturing out the back door.

Hours before, Kit and I had looked out from the hay loft at the fruits of our labor, but it looked somehow less fantastic now.

Worry cast a cloud over what should have been a beautiful sight because yes, we had celebrated there in the loft.

But we’d talked, too. Kit had talked about the dangers in Ashpoint and the consequences I would have liked to avoid, my half-brother foremost among them.

Kit promised not to leave me, but he promised to protect me, too. If those aims opposed each other…

Flinging open the barn door, I called inside before bothering to look.

“Kit Mosel, you’d better be here!”

The building was dark, quiet, and empty, but I ventured in anyway.

“Kit! I swear by the gods, if you…”

I stopped, surrounded by piles of hay and hanging equipment and thoroughly, undeniably alone. Tears lined my eyes as I searched the wall and found empty hooks that had once held horse tack. Specifically, the bridle and harness for the horse we’d brought from Ashpoint.

I swore and kicked at a mound of hay, then darted out of the barn. Around the building where the little cart had been parked for the duration of our stay there was now an empty space. It matched the sudden void in me.

He left.

He’d been trying to send me away, get rid of me, leave me behind, for what seemed like always.

I’d fought for him.

For us.

And now, he retreated.

I clasped my hand over the cord knotted around my wrist and tried to breathe through sobs.

Maybe he went into town. He could have gone for supplies for our trip. For our return home together. He was always thinking of those things. Always so prepared.

But he would have told someone if he’d gone to the market.

And there wouldn’t be much open at this hour, anyway.

Which left the alternative I was reluctant to accept.

The truth I should have seen in him the night before.

He’d tried to tell me, and I’d dismissed him.

I hadn’t wanted to hear it because I was tired of being the fragile one. The liability. The problem.

I rushed back across the yard to the farmhouse, barged in the back door and left it standing open in my haste. I went to the bedroom on the hunt for proof of what I already knew.

“Did you find him?” Sayla shouted after me, but I gave no reply.

It was obvious. So very clear that I wasn’t surprised when I entered the room and found every one of Kit’s possessions missing.

The bag, his clothes, his boots… I dropped onto the bed and got a whiff of the piney smell of his soap, but even that was dwindling. It strummed a chord of pain in my heart.

Of course, he’d left my things. Somehow, seeing them here in my childhood room, where they used to belong, made the last six months feel like some kind of fevered dream. Like I’d awoken in a world where there was no Kit and there never had been.

I tugged on my bracelet again as my bleary eyes swept around the room, bypassing familiar trappings in favor of my sketchbook. It was open, and I hadn’t left it that way.

Grabbing it, I pulled it into my lap and stared at the words scrawled in Kit’s hand.

I’m sorry. I’ll come back, but I need you to be safe. Please stay. I love you, and I hope you can forgive me for this when it’s all over.

The note was signed in decisive strokes, and I wondered how he could have been so sure of himself. How he could bear it, because I could not.

I read it three more times before my sister peeked around the doorframe. Her blonde curls spilled down the front of her dress as she leaned in, searching the room and finding only me.

“Penny?” She took a tentative step forward. “What’s wrong?”

I hefted the sketchbook into the air and offered it to her, letting my intended explain himself in his own words. Those four sentences that he felt excused him for abandoning me.

Sayla took the book and sat on the mattress beside me. After she read it, she brought a hand to her mouth to cover a gasp. “Oh, Pen…”

I was feeling sorry enough for myself without her piling on, so I shrugged off her condolences and offered hug. Instead, I huddled with my elbows on my knees and my face in my palms.

He must have left while I was asleep. Snuck out in the night like a thief stealing away with my heart, because it was his. Wherever he went, he took that part of me. Without it, I was bereft.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked my sister as much as myself. “I can’t just sit here for months. He could die, and I’d never know.” I peeled my fingers away from my eyes and looked at her. “He doesn’t have anyone else, Sayla. Just us. Just me.”

“Penny, I’m sure he’ll be all right,” she said softly.

Not what I wanted to hear.

Turning away from her, I found the items Kit left behind. My bag, ready to be packed, and my sketchbook still in Sayla’s grasp. I snatched it from her and snapped it closed as I pushed to stand.

“He was here when I fell asleep,” I muttered. “Can’t be too far ahead.”

Sayla caught me before I stepped away. “At least have breakfast first…”

She knew what I intended, which made me all the more certain it was the right thing to do. The only thing I could do because I’d told her already that languishing here through the seasons and blindly hoping for the best would be impossible.

I tugged my arm free. “I’m not sitting down to eat right now.”

There was a stack of freshly-washed clothes on the floor beside my pack, and I started shoveling them into the bag. Everything I could reach was stuffed in without pause except my sketchbook and roll of coloring pencils, which were dumped into my satchel.

I was still scrabbling when Sayla said quietly, “I’ll let Mother know.”

She left me to my task, which I finished by throwing my cloak across my shoulders and tying it with a hasty knot.

Shouldering my pack and satchel, I exited into the living area. Warren stepped through the front door to greet my mother, who appeared far too placid to have been informed of my plan.

“Warren, what brings you by so early?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I thought I’d come help with the morning chores.”

He didn’t look much like a silversmith anymore, dressed in the same trousers and suspenders he’d worn while working the fields.

As I thought on it, he hadn’t looked like one in weeks.

He enjoyed being out in the air and sunshine rather than tethered to a workbench.

And Sayla wanted to stay here, too. Raise her children. Give the farm the family it deserved.

I turned toward Warren, who dipped his head in a quick hello.

“It’s a good thing you’re here,” I said.

Both bags slid off my shoulder to drop on the floor with a thunk, and I followed them by sinking to my knees. Digging into my satchel, I hauled out my sketchbook and thumbed through the pages while talking and counting on Warren to listen.

“In the excitement of the past month, I realized we never discussed Sayla’s dowry.”

A loose sheet slid out from within the bound parchment.

The makeshift deed I’d made for Kit, once read by candlelight, was now exposed for all to see.

I’d been willing, what seemed like so long ago, to give Kit my entire world.

Everything I had to promise, I promised to him.

Strange to think the farm and its trappings became so inconsequential when weighed against the present I found myself in.

I fished into the roll of coloring pencils and produced one in a shade of bluish purple like the bearded irises that sprouted in the clearing where we buried Father. It reminded me of spring. Of new beginnings.

Flattening the deed across the floorboards, I scribbled out Kit’s name. Mother, Sayla, and Warren formed a circle around me, looking on while holding untold questions. I would soon answer them all.

I wrote Warren and Sayla’s names in the narrow space between lines of text. Legible but cramped. As legal as I could make it. Then I stood, prompting the others to step back as I handed the page to Warren.

“Congratulations,” I told him. I meant it. “You own a farm.”

Sayla gasped again, this time with delight, and she flung her arms around her intended’s waist. Warren gawked, first at the deed, then around at the farmhouse that was now his home.

When he returned to me, his round eyes glittered with joy. “Really?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, and took his hand when he offered it for a shake. “But I’m taking the horse.”

Warren’s delighted expression shifted to a frown. “The horse?”

I crouched and replaced my sketchbook in my satchel and fastened the buckles while Sayla did as she’d promised and told both Mother and Warren what happened. Kit was gone, and I soon would be, too. Leaving the farm in good and capable hands, set to produce a record harvest.

For the first time in my life, I felt proud of what I’d done here. Not as much the plowing and planting, but that I’d finally given my family’s property a chance at success. Thinking of it thriving for generations to come gave me no small measure of peace.

My mother must have felt the same, because when I rose with my pack balanced across my back and my satchel over my shoulder, she was teary, but far from devastated.

Warren shook my hand again, pumping my arm up and down while Sayla went to the kitchen. She returned with a knapsack full of food that she foisted off onto me. I shifted my pack around to add the supplies to it and had barely tied it off when Sayla grabbed my face and pulled me in to kiss my cheek.

“Good luck,” she said, blinking back tears of her own. “And be safe.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

It seemed like I should cry, too, but my emotions were too tangled for any one to stand out. I was happy, sad, and still so scared. For Kit. For myself.

Mother waited until Sayla and Warren moved away before making her approach. She wrung her hands and turned her face aside as though trying to hide her own muddled feelings. When she didn’t reach for me, I went to her instead, folding my arms around her and pulling her close.

This goodbye might have been my last one. Try as I might, I could not shake that possibility. If Merrick had his way—if Ashpoint swallowed Kit and me—these could be my final farewells. My mother could lose another son.

But I hadn’t left the farm to ruin, and I wouldn’t leave Kit to it, either. I refused to let him face the darkness of the world alone.

After a lengthy embrace, Mother pulled back to fix her glistening eyes on mine. “Are you sure you can’t stay?” she whispered.

I kissed her forehead, then rested my hands on her shoulders as I struggled to hold her gaze. “Mother, he needs me. I have to go.”

A moment. A blink. Then she nodded. “I understand.”

She brought her fingers to my cheeks, dragging them through the trails of moisture that proved I was crying after all. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Air went stale in my lungs until I didn’t know if I was too empty or too full.

“I’m proud of you,” she said, drying my face with her thumbs while I studied her features. Memorized them. Just in case. “You’re a good man, and you’ll make a fine husband.”

Mother smiled again, but I barely saw it. I was too busy pressing my face into her neck and feeling her hair against my cheeks. I needed to be small one last time, to collect my bravery before I had to be bigger than I had ever been.

There was nothing else to say, so I pulled back, waved goodbye to all of them, then dashed out the back door. Toward the barn and the horse. Toward Ashpoint.

Toward home.