Page 37 of Last Rites

Nausea assaulted me, burning up my sore throat, but I swallowed it down. I hugged onto Kit, letting the water on his clothes leech into mine. Taking it from him however I could. When I dared to glance up, his face was fixed forward and so stony. Vacant. Gone.

The wagon turned onto the rocky dirt path, but not the way we’d come. We were headed the opposite direction. Farther from Ashpoint. And wasn’t Ashpoint home?

“Kit, you’re going the wrong way,” Isla volunteered from the back, voice uncertain though we all knew she was right.

Kit clicked his tongue again, encouraging the mare along. “I’m done going back to that place,” he said. He still sounded strange. Too far removed, but remarkably composed as he explained. “Anders was willing to attack Penny in front of Rosie, which means he intended to kill them both. He must have been prepared to kill all of us. We can’t go back to Ashpoint. And we can’t explain this in a way that won’t give Merrick the excuse he needs to start executing resistance members.”

Everyone was silent for a beat, then Rosie asked, “Where are we going, then?”

“Eastcliff,” Kit replied, and my heart warmed.

Eastcliff was home.

Forstford was home.

Kit was home, and I would follow him. Anywhere.

“Penny and I have family there,” Kit continued while I nuzzled into him, finally beginning to settle. “We’ll pick them up and take them with us to my house in Forstford. We have enough of a head start that hopefully we won’t be caught.”

While I calmed, Rosie panicked. She stood up in the bed of the wagon and leaned toward the bench, close enough her voice was loud as she grabbed Kit’s arm and gave it a shake.

“What about my family?” she demanded. I didn’t need to see her to imagine her face flushed with indignation. “They’re still in Ashpoint. I can’t abandon them. They’re part of the resistance, too. If we don’t go back, it will raise suspicion. They could be blamed.”

It used to be easier to be brave. Before Levitt was killed. Before Merrick made it clear he wanted me to be next. Before Anders’s hulking arm pinched down on my windpipe and I faced what I thought might be my final moments.

Now, I was afraid and ready to run. Too willing to hide my face in Kit’s shoulder and let him take us away. Shame niggled in the back of my mind, but it was a dying thing, and I was alive. Alive and grateful to be so. Too grateful to argue when Kit replied to Rosie with gravel in his tone.

“People keep telling me I’m not responsible for everyone. So, you three will have to do.”

Rosie collapsed to her knees and cried.

She might have cried all the way to Eastcliff.

Isla was quiet, and so was I. She sat in the back and I hugged onto Kit, keeping my eyes closed and wishing I was somewhere else.

At some point, what felt like days later, I was.

We didn’t stop. Kit kept us on course the whole night, and all through the next day. I must have dozed off sometime after sunset, because it was light again the next time I opened my eyes. The sun peeked over the distant horizon and cast warm, welcoming beams across the vast expanse of green. Eastcliff in spring was a beautiful place. Warm and wonderful, it soothed the parts of me Kit hadn’t. He was still holding on, though a bit looser now. Exhaustion made him slump, and his head bounced with every bump in the road, very nearly nodding off.

Pressing closer, I nosed up into his jaw, planting a few kisses amidst the three-day beard there. It seemed the gentlest way to rouse him. I did the same when he was caught in a fitful nightmare: held on and kissed his cheeks, sometimes whispered so he knew I was there, knew he was there, too, not in whatever dark place his mind had taken him.

But this was all brightness and dawn and new beginnings, and I spotted the farm ahead on the left. I remembered the last time I brought Kit here, when I’d been too eager to ride in the wagon and had leaped out instead and dashed up the lane. Today, I was too weary to run, but I leaned forward, feeling the air and the warmth of day and the smile slowly curving my lips.

Suddenly, we drew to a halt.

Kit pulled the mare up short, and the girls stirred from their drowsy state in the back.

“What is it?” Isla asked, her voice thick with sleep. “Why have we stopped?”

If kisses and sweet whispers were the kind way to rouse Kit from his near-slumber, this must have been the cruel way. Hard lines cut across his face, drawing first a frown, then a scowl as he glared at the cozy farmhouse ahead.

“Kit?” I croaked, tracking his gaze past the trees and the bend in the road that partially blocked our view until I saw what he must have. Not the building or the budding fields stretching out around it. The people.

A dozen, at least, hard to discern at this distance, but not impossible.

I strained, squinting my aching eyes until I could get an idea of who these strangers were marching around my family’s farm. Not quite strangers, though. I knew them, just like I knew they didn’t belong here.

“What is this?” Rosie asked, her voice frayed from hours of sobbing.