Page 64 of Last Rites

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.

24

Kit

Iwent through a bottle of whiskey a night just to scrape together a couple hours of sleep. The only thing that stopped me from drinking a second was the man at the tavern who, out of well-founded concern, refused to sell me more than a bottle at a time. And I wasn’t about to ask Penny to get me another.

My days, on the other hand, were spent confined to my office nursing hangovers that did nothing to improve my foul mood. I was lucky, Merrick said, that he was still allowing me free range around town outside of working hours. But damned if he was going to let me out of his sight in the Ossuary where there was damage I could do.

So, we sat in clear view of each other—doors open by his mandate—while the caverns were cleared out over the next week and work on the Vessel resumed.

Well, he sat, glowering at me between brief hushed meetings with the Death Watch, but I couldn’t bear to be still. I was well on my way to wearing a track into the floorboards with as much time as I spent pacing while my mind unraveled.

Philippa was dead. Dead to save Penny, who apparently had his own plans to die anyway. Die to save everyone because nothing I did worked. All I’d managed to do was make everything worse.

No matter where I went or what I did, I couldn’t escape this cycle. I knew when I left Ashpoint the first time, and after Delmer died, that it was a bad idea to let anyone get close. Historically, anyone I loved or who showed even the smallest level of affection toward me, met a premature end, usually as a direct result of choices I made. And every time I lost someone, it was harder to recover.

If I lost Penny, there would be nothing left to recover.

The time since we argued had been a small taste of what that would be like. The house was tense and quiet. I couldn’t remember a time I’d felt so achingly lonely when there was someone else a room away.

We hadn’t spoken since that night.

Merrick kept me at the Ossuary until he left each evening, which was both curse for trapping me under his scrutiny, and blessing because it meant less time at home facing Penny’s prickly demeanor. I got home well after dark, after dinner had gone cold, and once even after Penny had gone to bed. His bed, since apparently the room at the end of the hall was just mine now.

To say that hurt would be an understatement. I’d have given anything to hold him, or for him to hold me, because I was drowning and I didn’t even know which way was up anymore.