13. Penny #2
My heart was tired. Tired of racing and aching and breaking open over and over again. I just wanted to be happy. I wanted my family to be happy and safe, and instead they’d been dragged into the darkness with me.
“Kit, why are they here?” I asked.
Behind me, Isla pressed in, then gasped. “Is that Otis?”
One of the invaders strayed close enough I could clearly discern his face. Pale in the shadows of a straw hat, Isla’s brother paced the perimeter of my family’s property. My mind reeled anew, and my tender heart thrummed. This time, it felt like a war drum rattling in my chest.
I whirled around to pin Isla with a narrow glare. “You said he was taking over for Harlan!” I barked, fueled by ferocity as my rage built.
Layers of exhaustion peeled away as I stood, leaving me raw. Isla cowered, and the panic in her eyes sent a jolt through me. Gods, I’d been so helpless. Dangling in Anders’s grip. Kicking and thrashing just to steal a breath.
But now I stood over her. Looming. And I felt big.
I remembered the knife at my belt, one I should’ve used so Rosie didn’t have to, and yanked it free. The weight of it felt good in my hand as I leveled the gleaming tip at Isla.
“You knew he was here!” I ground out. “You knew, and you lied!”
“Penny, I didn’t!” she gasped, scrambling back, hands lifted. “I swear it!”
Rosie lunged forward, trying to get between us, while Kit dropped the reins and reached for me.
I twisted away from his grab and vaulted off the wagon.
My boots hit the ground, and my fingers curled around the hilt of the knife, testing it—wondering if the blade would hesitate at the edge of someone’s skin.
Or if I would.
I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Not Isla. Not really. I wanted to help.
My mother and Sayla were in that farmhouse, and they needed me. With the Bone Men prowling the property line like soldiers on patrol, they were being held prisoner, and I knew too well, too recently, how that felt.
“Pen, stop.”
Kit’s voice was low and rough, a sound that scraped down my spine.
I turned to find him standing behind me on the packed earth. Solid, but shaken.
“Why?” I asked, my voice rough and cracking under the weight of everything I couldn’t say. “You expect me to see this and do nothing? He can’t have it, Kit. Merrick can’t have everything. I won’t let him. Take the farm, fine. But not my sister. Not my mother…”
Kit moved forward with slow, dragging steps. Gods, he looked wrecked. Sallow and sad. Eyes rimmed with red and head shaking at me as I bit my lips to pen in a sob.
When he reached me, he held out his hand. “Merrick has no reason to hurt them,” he said quietly.
“And no reason to protect them, either!” I shot back. Tightening my grip on the knife, I pointed the blade toward the house. “What must they be thinking? Surrounded by strangers, wondering what it all means, what will happen when it’s over…”
I could picture my mother at the window, clutching Sayla close. I could feel her fear, her helplessness. Like mine. Like Anders’s hand around my throat.
Kit reached again—not for the knife, but for me. His fingers brushed my wrist.
And I let go.
The knife dropped into his palm, and I pressed my empty fists to my chest, trying to hold myself together. Trying to keep from running full tilt toward the farmhouse and into whatever trap Merrick had waiting.
Kit didn’t move. His hands were still with the knife laying in his open palm, glinting in the sun. “There’s nothing we can do here,” he said.
My head whipped toward him. “You can’t mean that. Of course there is. There has to be!”
“There are too many of them.”
“We could go into town,” I insisted, “rally everyone there. We could outnumber them.”
“And then at the very least, Rosie, Isla, and I would be arrested for being Bone Men. Probably you, too, your personal connections here be damned.” He looked defeated, hollowed out so there was nothing left of whatever courage he had back in the clearing outside Millfield.
And his voice was quiet when he said, “We need to go back to Ashpoint.”
I snorted, swelling up with hot air and indignation. “That’s just running from our troubles.”
Kit’s jaw tensed. “Which is how we got here in the first place. We should have gone back.”
“But then we wouldn’t have known—”
“And what good has it done us to know?” He glowered at me with such intensity my mouth snapped shut. “Except that now he has even more leverage to use against us.”
I looked back toward the house, my throat burning. The Bone Men still prowled the yard. Still watched the windows. Still answered to the monster who’d wrecked our lives.
Kit was quiet for a long moment. Then he handed me the knife. “I should have known better than to try to run again. Running has never gotten us anything but trouble when I try, and maybe it’s time to stop. We should have gone back after Millfield.”
Tears welled while I stared at the weapon. Not given to me to use, but to hold. For now.
I still wanted so desperately to help. I wanted to tear through that door, scoop Sayla into my arms, and tell my mother she didn’t have to be scared. That was what a brave man would do.
But maybe help didn’t look like that.
Maybe it didn’t look like a grand rescue or a bloody showdown in front of my childhood home.
Maybe it looked like crawling back into the maw of the beast and letting it consume us because only then could we reach the gut of it. Only then could we drive our knives deep and carve out its heart from the inside.
That was always the plan, wasn’t it? Destroy the Bone Men from within.
I clenched the hilt tighter and let the thought settle.
“All right,” I murmured. “We’ll go back.”
Kit glanced over, wary.
“We’ll start now,” I said, turning toward the wagon. “But I’m driving. You need rest.”
His mouth twitched like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t. He just climbed onto the bench beside me and leaned back with a groan.
I took up the reins, gaze sweeping once more toward the house on the hill. I saw movement behind the curtains, and I imagined Sayla watching. Praying.
Hold on, I thought. I’ll make this right.
And I would.
Even if it meant walking willingly into the dark.