23. Penny
Penny
Ididn’t make it home.
Not without pulling away from Kit and retching into the grass.
Not without collapsing next to the puddle of vomit and burying my face in my hands.
Not without flinching when Kit reached for me, fighting when he tried to pull me up, causing a scene for everyone within eye and earshot.
My wrists hurt, my head ached, and my stomach burned with acid that I spat up until I was wrung out and wiped my sleeve across my snotty, bloody, tear-streaked cheeks.
And Kit stood there in silence with his back to the sun and his face cast in shadow.
People were staring. Whispering. He must have hated that. He didn’t like drawing attention, and certainly not this kind. Creating the sort of spectacle that got the rumor mill running.
I couldn’t bring myself to care or move or wonder if it would be better if Kit collapsed beside me, or if realizing he was as beaten as I was in that moment would break me once and for all.
Merrick would have killed me. Without poison. Without proxy. He held the knife, and he would have ended my life with it.
And he wasn’t sad. Not the least bit remorseful.
More than that, he hadn’t even looked at me while he was preparing to do it.
Hadn’t said a word. Like I was so unimportant I didn’t even merit a parting comment.
No goodbye or good riddance. He was more concerned with spiting Kit than he was with ending my existence.
I’d become a pawn, less than a person. The liability that Kit always believed I would be.
A tool being implemented against my will.
I hated it.
The shift from wretched sorrow to anger finally got me moving. I was still teary and sniffling, still cringing through the throb in my skull with every sob. But I finally accepted Kit’s hand up, and I walked.
Kit followed, as quiet as before, and vacant. He did that sometimes: retreated into his mind and got lost there. He left me alone, and I knew he didn’t mean to. I was just one more thing he couldn’t handle right then. Not in the wake of so much tragedy.
So, I kept walking.
Up the hill and back to our little house, I returned to the place that had once been so cozy and filled with love. Now it felt like a cage. A pen for animals awaiting slaughter. And I entered willingly into it because I had nowhere else to go.
Kit came in behind me. He pushed the door shut, then leaned against it while I kept moving, though with the walls now boxing me in, my purposeful strides took the shape of a circle, round and round the room as though I could stir up the very air.
After several minutes, though, all I’d stirred up was dust and—
“Penny?” Kit’s voice cut through the clutter in my head.
I froze mid-step, irritation burning through me. “What is it, Kit?”
His eyes were red but not wet. Like he’d wrung himself dry long ago and had nothing left. When he spoke, his voice came quiet, hoarse. “Was it worth it? If we die?”
I wanted to snap at him. To tell him not to ask me that, not when I could feel the answer pressing against my ribs like a knife. Instead, I grunted, “I don’t know.”
But I did know.
No.
It wasn’t worth it to come here and find out all the ugly truths about Merrick and what he’d done to my father, to my mother and sister, what he was willing to do to me.
It wasn’t worth it to suffer and ultimately fail.
Merrick said it. He’d bragged. We hadn’t stopped anything—only stalled it.
And it wasn’t worth it at all.
I couldn’t stand to look at Kit anymore, not with his face so hollow, so stricken. My legs moved again, carrying me away, this time toward the hall to the bedrooms. “I’m going to my room.”
“Your room?” His confusion scraped against my nerves.
“My old room,” I corrected without turning back.
I half-expected him to follow, but he stayed rooted where he was, lost in whatever storm still held him.
Barging into the tiny bedroom and swinging the door shut behind me, I confronted the makeshift altar and offerings scattered across the floor.
The sight made me scowl. I wanted to make a mess of it.
Topple the unlit candles, stomp the bits of nature until they were reduced to dust. I wanted to scream, but with Kit in the next room, separated only by thin walls, I didn’t dare.
Instead, I loomed over it all, hands curling until my fingernails cut crescents into my palms.
When I spoke—because I never had much knack for silence—it was a whisper through clenched teeth.
“You know what I think? I think the Symbiarch was wrong about you. I think the reason she thought we were alike was because you’re as useless as I am. You couldn’t stop this, and neither can I. It’s just all so damn…”
Foolish.
Because I was a fool. And soon, I’d be a dead one.
Then Merrick would be happy.
And Kit would be gone. Lost in his own head if he was left alive at all.
I wanted to kick the offerings. Light the fireplace and pitch them into it. Get rid of every trace and banish it from my mind. But I did nothing before the door swung inward and Kit poked his head in.
“Pen…?”
I whirled around to see him staring, dark eyes round as they flicked from one item to another, articles of damning evidence.
Pushing the door open the rest of the way, Kit stepped over the threshold.
He hated this room. He hated this house, the same way I was learning to. And it was only a matter of seconds before it was obvious that he hated what the litter on the floor meant just as much.
He looked at everything. The leaves and dried bugs, pressed flowers, a handful of shiny rocks. Treasured things. Gifts for a god I’d come here to spite.
Then, he looked at me.
“What is this?”
Any relief I might have felt at seeing him shaken from his stupor was scrubbed away by the gravel in his tone. He knew what it was; he just wanted me to admit it.
“I’ve been praying.” The last word snagged in my throat. I felt sheepish, like a child caught red-handed.
“Why? To whom?”
“Eeus.”
His jaw clenched. “Why?”
I dropped my gaze before mumbling, “You already asked that.”
“You didn’t answer.”
Heat surged into my face. I nudged the toe of my boot into one of the piles of pressed flowers. “I thought it would help.”
“Why?”
Exasperation boiled over. “Kit!”
“No, Penny.” His voice rose, but it remained ragged. “I need an answer here. You aren’t devout. Everything you know about Eeus, you learned from me. And what about anything I’ve ever said would make you want to pray?”
I huffed, arms crossing tight over my chest. “I learned other things. Not just from you.”
“Like what?”
“I told you. The Symbiarch said we were wrong. They’re wrong.
About him. And I thought…” My lungs burned with the breath I dragged in.
“In case we fail. If all we did was slow them down, and the resistance isn’t enough.
If they succeed in calling Eeus down, I thought he could—maybe—inhabit me instead so they can’t control him. ”
Kit’s expression went blank, unreadable.
“Are you going to say something?” I pressed.
“Why?”
I groaned, rubbing at my eyes. “Gods, Kit…”
He shook his head. “Did you—” His voice cracked before flattening into steel. “Did you, in all your consideration, also consider that to be inhabited by a god, to become a vessel, you would have to be dead?”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach and left me feeling abruptly ill. “What?”
“Dead, Pen.” His tone was flat, merciless. “You’d have to be dead.”
The talk with Sybil replayed in my head. My brow furrowed, and sweat dampened my hairline. “That’s not what… She said…”
Kit moved closer until his shadow swallowed mine. Fleetingly, I hoped he was going to offer comfort, but that thought wisped away as he spoke over me, low and steady. “What do you think Merrick’s monstrosity is made of?”
My eyes cut aside. “I know what it’s made of,” I muttered.
He waited. Silent. A weight pressing me down.
I sighed. “Bones.”
“Bones,” he echoed. “From the dead. Dead parts from dead people.”
The words rattled in my head, echoing over and over until I thought I’d go deaf from it.
“Do you want to die?” His voice trembled, but still, he didn’t reach for me.
“Because I feel like that’s something we should have discussed before I did…
gods, I have done everything to keep you safe.
Not just me. Levitt’s gone. Philippa sacrificed herself.
I—” He hesitated, swallowing hard. “I killed a man. To save you. And now you’re going to do this? ”
I shrank back. He hadn’t talked about what happened with Anders. Neither of us had. The subject felt forbidden and still too fresh, even weeks later.
He was pale, and I knew the admission weighed on him. I also knew he was right about the things and people who had been lost for my sake. I didn’t want to diminish or dismiss them, so I tried to downplay my own actions instead.
“Well,” I said, “I haven’t done it yet…”
“What have you done?”
“I prayed.” My hand swept toward the makeshift altar around me. “I made this. I completed… some rites.”
Kit dragged a hand over his face, fingers digging into his skin like he could claw the situation away.
His dismissal cut deeper than he knew, and my frustration surged to the surface.
“I’m tired of being helpless. Useless. Foolish.
This gave me—” I shook my head, choking on the words.
“I felt like I was doing something besides waiting on you. Needing you. Relying on you. I want you to rely on me, Kit. And I’d like to think…
I’d like to prove I can rely on myself, too. ”
The silence after that built like a wall between us.
Finally, Kit asked again, “Do you want to die?”
“Of course not!” I snapped, adamant, almost desperate. “I want to get married, Kit! I want to have a normal life! I want to go home!”
The words rang in the air, too loud for such a small room.
Please hold me, I thought, regretting so much. Since I’d been attacked by the Sentinels and dragged across town to what I fully believed would be my end, I’d wished only for a modicum of comfort. Reassurance. Warmth.
He advanced, but rather than toward me, he skirted around while grumbling under his breath.
“You want to get married? You want to have a normal life? Then none of this. This is how you die, and we’re getting rid of it.
” He stooped and began picking up the items, the same ones I’d thought about destroying myself.
Seeing them gathered into his hands, bound to be discarded or burned to ash, spurred me to leap forward. “Don’t!” I yelped while making a grab for the objects he hadn’t already collected.
I swept them out of his reach, then placed myself between Kit and my offerings. I was nearly on the floor, halfway to collapse while making my body a blockade.
Tears welled anew, and I blinked furiously, wishing I could be as stoic as he was. As severe. If I was serious, then maybe he would take me seriously and not think me such a child. Or a fool.
Was it the items I was so determined to protect? Or the ideals? That tenuous connection to hope?
Regardless of the reason, it gave Kit pause. He looked at the desiccated bugs piled in his palms—precious little things—then at me.
“Penny,” he began, then fell quiet again.
At least it wasn’t “Why?”
“Tell me you won't do this,” he continued at last. “That you won’t do any more of it. Prayers, rites, trying to…” He blinked, fast and hard. “I do rely on you. I rely on you so damn much that it scares me. And all this does, all this is doing, is showing me I can't. Or I shouldn't.”
I recoiled as though struck, but Kit barreled on.
“Because if you leave me, if you die and make me explain to your mother and sister where you've gone, if I have to go back to the life I had before I knew you…
it will be worse than if I'd never known you at all.” His fingers twitched around the bugs like he was fighting the impulse to crush them.
“It's not worth it, Pen. That's the answer, isn't it?”
He’d known it all along.
It wasn't worth it to suffer and fail. To fall in love only to lose it. To see the dreams that had become so real in such a short time slip through our grasp.
It wouldn't help to answer him. It wouldn't fix the problems that had grown so tall they left us in the cold dark of their shadow.
So, I knelt there, on the altar I built, until Kit upended his hand and let the bugs scatter to the floor.
Then he walked out, and I sat there like I had on the roadside, feeling just as sick and even emptier.
I sat long enough to hear Kit rifling through the kitchen cabinets and to see him pass by the bedroom’s open doorway with a bottle of whiskey in his hand.
He went into the room that was ours and made it his, since I'd called this one mine. He closed me out, and I kept sitting. Long after my legs went numb.