36. Kit
Kit
There was cool stone beneath my knees, but warmth on my face that felt out of place in the chill of the caves. I opened my eyes and blinked against the brightness of the fire in the hearth before me, disoriented until my gaze swept over the familiar bookcase to my right.
I was home.
The realization hit me a moment before I registered the quiet humming coming from the kitchen.
It was a tune I couldn’t quite place, something I knew I’d heard before, but didn’t know where.
A song that often drifted through my mind as I slept and soothed me out of nightmares.
And the voice that then put words to the tune over the clattering of a pan on the stovetop stole my breath.
I turned and was halfway to my feet when the sight of the figure standing to my left drew me up short.
Warm autumn sunlight poured in from the window beside the fireplace and painted him in golden hues to match the glow of his eyes.
If not for that, I might have thought I was looking at my own reflection.
I looked past him, to the kitchen where Penny appeared very much alive while he stirred something on the stove.
Penny didn’t seem to notice me, or the god wearing my face.
I wanted to call out to him, to pretend for a moment that this was real, that we’d made it home after all, but then Eeus spoke with a voice that wasn’t quite my own.
“Thank you,” he said, dipping his head. “You are a man of great faith.”
A harsh laugh barked out of me as I gave up my attempted pursuit of my intended and settled back to my knees. “That’s the first time anyone’s accused me of that.”
Eeus smiled gently, and the expression was unnerving.
I wondered if this was how Penny saw me when I smiled at him.
Then I wondered if this was what Penny meant when he said he would wait for me.
Maybe this was the afterlife, and we’d get to spend our last conscious moments together before it all ended.
“Am I dead?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Simple. Matter of fact. There was no arguing that.
“Then it’s over?”
Eeus tilted his head and pressed his lips into a thin line. “It will be. There’s a bit more work for us to do.”
I bristled. “Haven’t I done enough?” I snapped. I gestured to the kitchen, to Penny. “Haven’t we all done enough? I’ve given everything, and still, you want more?”
The god across from me didn’t so much as flinch. His gaze followed my prompting, and for quiet moment, I watched him watching Penny, his expression unreadable.
“You say I’m a man of great faith,” I continued, “but I’m not. Penny believed all the things the Symbiarch said you were, that you don’t actually bring suffering and famine and death, that you bring people together during those times to help them through it.”
My breath stuttered in my lungs, and I briefly wondered why a dead man should breathe at all.
And I was dead. So was Penny. Our story was over, but there were still people I loved out there in that cavern, and I needed theirs to go on. Somehow, some way.
“All I’ve known is loss,” I said, the edge of anger in my voice replaced with pain. “My mother, my innocence, my father…”
Too many people to count.
Every home I had ever known.
The only man I ever loved.
I shook myself. I had too many questions to be lost to despair in the only moments I had left to ask them.
“If you’re supposed to be the balance, why didn’t you stop anything? You sat by and watched all of it happen and did nothing. How could anyone have faith in a god like that?”
What balance did it bring to take us both and leave Penny’s family—our family—in Merrick’s hands?
To leave their livelihood to someone who wanted nothing more than to strip it from them?
Even if he left the farm alone, with Penny and me both lost, there was only Warren to run it, and this was a burden we’d never wanted to leave him.
It wasn’t fair that they would all have to go on without us, without ever knowing what happened or what we died for.
And the Olivers would be right to curse my name because I’d promised to protect Penny, and I failed.
Eeus stood, impassive as ever, expression infuriatingly neutral as he watched me fight to control my emotions.
“You are much like I am,” he said after several silent moments.
As much as I wanted to rail against the comparison, the softness of his voice soothed me. It was the same tone Delmer used to use when he reminded me how glad he was that I came to live with him. When he told me he was proud of me. The quiet approval of a father that I craved, even now.
“You draw those together who need companionship in the face of loss,” he went on. “You give them a place to belong. You are a shield to shelter behind while they heal and recover. And when you are in need of a shield yourself…”
A flicker of darkness in the fire caught my eye. When I focused on the flames, a blurry image came into focus as Eeus continued to speak.
Levitt holding eight-year-old me while I cried after my father killed Clover.
Letting Nora Halmer wipe my tears at twelve after I told her everything, and she offered me refuge rather than condemnation.
Delmer’s patient smile as he taught seventeen-year-old me that it was safe to let down my defenses with him, and then loving me the way a father should love his son.
Forstford welcoming me at twenty-eight, and rallying to protect me from the people who came to harm me.
Penny showing up on my doorstep last autumn and bringing light into my darkness. He reminded me that I was worthy of love, of happiness, of having a life and a family.
“…I have always brought you into community to help you through,” Eeus finished.
Tears blurred my eyes again as the memories faded and the fire returned to normal.
“You have been the answer to the suffering of others, too. Most recently, Thoma and Penny.”
Penny had said something similar once, that after he lost his father, he found me. I’d been a blessing to him, but also his undoing.
“Then you took that all away,” I muttered, too wrung out to be angry anymore. Too grieved by the very real sound of Penny’s quiet singing from the kitchen that I’d never actually hear again.
“Humans took those things away,” Eeus said. “Took Penny away. But that last one, at least, we intend to give back.”
Hope flared in my chest, but I didn’t dare feed it without some sort of confirmation.
Penny was dead. How could he be given back? And even if he was, I was dead, too.
Without waiting for the question building in my throat, Eeus gestured toward me.
“A willing vessel is always returned. Him to you, and you to him. The two of you belong together.”
Relief made my shoulders slump, and it was all I could do to murmur, “I love him.”
Eeus’s smile was gentle. “I know the feeling.”
Quiet stretched between us as I tried to wrap my mind around the concept of a future. Being able to hold Penny again, to go back to Eastcliff, to Forstford, to live out the rest of our lives in this very house…
But Eeus had said there was more work for us to do.
“What happens now?” I asked. “How are we going to fix things?”
Eeus and my den faded away as the real world around me slowly came back into view, fuzzy and hazy as if I were looking at it from a great distance.
I could hear nothing, but saw Merrick struggling against the hands that pinned him, and several people had taken up tools in an attempt to destroy the now-frozen Vessel.
Paneus knelt beside us, still wearing my sweetheart’s face, still holding me and waiting like he promised he would.
Eeus’s voice echoed in my head.
“Judgment must be passed, and balance restored for all the lives taken to build that monstrosity. This cannot be allowed to happen again. The embers of these false beliefs must be stamped out so they cannot smolder and catch elsewhere.”
I watched our resistance struggling to take control of the situation, fending off the guards attempting to free Merrick, and my stomach churned at the thought of Eeus’s punishment landing on their shoulders. The injustice of it burned up my insides.
“Not everyone here deserves your wrath. Many of them have been misguided, searching for the community you promise. They have nowhere else to go.”
Despite being unable to see him, I sensed Eeus’s soft, knowing smile.
“I see them the same way I’ve seen you. I know whose minds are not lost to the rot.
I have no intention of punishing those who have seen a better way.
There have been enough lives lost already, and I will take no more than necessary. ”
There weren’t many options left to us. Either Eeus delivered his judgment, or we sent for the militia to do it for him.
And waiting for the militia to make it all the way to Ashpoint gave too many opportunities for the zealots to escape and take root elsewhere.
To do this all again in another few years, another decade…
He was right. Every last fanatic needed to be dealt with if we wanted to truly be free of the Bone Men.
Maybe it was time to use a little of my purported faith to let Eeus do what he must.
“Okay,” I conceded. “Thank you. For sparing my family.”
“Would you like to mete out the punishment, or shall I?”
The swell of nausea returned, and I hissed out a breath.
“I have more than enough death on my conscience,” I whispered. “Please don’t make me do that.”
A comforting warmth enveloped me, and the light faded.
“You have done enough. It’s time to rest now.”
Darkness surrounded me, and Eeus’s voice echoed in the black as consciousness slipped away.
“You have done well, Kit. Your mother would be proud.”