Kit used his grip around my shoulders to turn me till we were face to face. His eyes were dark, deep, and wholly earnest. “We can prepare for all of that. We have time.”
“How much time?”
“We promised your mother and Sayla you’d be back for spring planting,” Kit replied as though nothing had changed. But this changed everything.
I shook my head. “That’s not long enough. Violette said it takes nine months to finish the Oaths. You told me it took your father years.”
“You're right,” Kit admitted and seemed to sink further into the corner of the couch. His gaze roamed toward the dark fireplace, then through it, fixing on a distant nothing.
I looked with him, squirming in the uncomfortable silence until he spoke again. “But my father became a Sentinel early on, long before he finished his Oaths.” The revelation was more for himself than me, but I made sense enough of it.
Pulling his arm away, Kit stood and dodged the coffee table on his way to the hearth. He crouched beside it where I'd stashed his father's collection of journals on the bottom shelf. Scooping a few of the older ones into his arms, Kit turned toward me.
“If there’s a precedent, we may have a case to make to Levitt.” His expression was near a smile. Relieved. Hopeful. He didn't look that way often. I was glad enough to see it that I managed not to grumble as he heaped the leather-bound tomes on the table before me.
“I'll put some coffee on,” he said once they were all in neat piles. “You can finish up the bread, then we can eat and get into these. They may have the proof we need.”
Better coffee than whiskey,I thought as he bustled to the kitchen.
But that would come, along with a somber mood. He broke his own heart every time he looked at those books, and I couldn’t stand to see him hurt. I ached for my home and wanted to return more than ever, but I couldn’t leave Kit alone here. Imagining him ascending the Bone Men’s ranks made me wonder if my attempt to retrieve my father’s remains was turning into another kind of rescue mission entirely.
39
Kit
With no moon outside to judge the time, I didn’t know how many hours passed digging through my father’s journals before my eyelids started to droop. Penny had reclaimed his discarded shirt in the face of the night’s chill and was asleep, his head pillowed on my thigh and one of the books open on his chest.
I could hardly blame him. It had been an eventful day all around. I was still trying to rein in my scattered thoughts and figure out how I’d ended up here. Not that I minded what “here” currently entailed.
It was a wonder I hadn’t woken Penny with how often I brushed his hair back from his forehead or traced my fingertips along the line of his jaw. I’d gone so long without any sort of physical contact that it seemed I’d built up a deficit. I could no longer resist the urge to slide my fingers between his or pull him in so his head rested on my shoulder. The memory of his lips on mine, hungry and insistent, stirred a desire I’d never felt before. It would be too easy to give in to it in the moment, to let Penny have all of mebefore I was ready. I would have to be more careful next time.
But I was looking forward to next time.
Despite the second Oath looming two weeks away, for the first time in years I felt at peace. There was so much to do, so much that was uncertain, and so many ways all of this could go wrong, but with Penny by my side, I felt like I could face anything. Regardless of my past, maybe I really could be a good man, the kind who could live up to Penny’s idealized version of me. Someone he deserved.
Though, I still wasn’t sure whatIdeserved. Years of my father declaring I wasn’t worth the time he wasted on me had taken their toll. They overshadowed any reassurance I’d received in the years following my escape, and it was a constant battle to take anyone at their word in their positive judgments of me. All I saw when I looked in the mirror were flaws and mistakes.
But when I looked in Penny’s eyes, I could see the reflection of whathesaw. Kindness. Gentleness. Care. All the things my father did his best to strip out of me, Penny was bringing to the surface. I liked myself better when he was around.
If my father had been buried, he would be turning in his grave if he knew about any of this. He never would have approved of me coming back to Ashpoint, let alone bringing along a farm boy he’d have seen as too inferior for the Bone Men’s ranks. Yet here we were, living together in my father’s house, closer than friends. No doubt he’d have devised some horrific punishment for my crime of becoming attached. He’d have used Penny as a sacrifice and made me strip the bones.
The mental image made my stomach flip, and I stroked my fingers over Penny’s cheek in an attempt to redirect my thoughts.
“He would have hated you,” I whispered, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear. “He hated anything that made me happy.”
And Iwashappy. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this way. This man came in and turned my entire life upside down, and I was better for it no matter how hard I resisted it at first.
A jaw-creaking yawn was my cue that it was time for bed. I stacked my journal on top of Penny’s and shifted them to the coffee table before easing his head off my leg. There wasn’t room for both of us to sleep on the couch, but I didn’t have the heart to wake him, which meant I’d need to carry him to his own bed. At least this time he wasn’t drunk on half a bottle of whiskey, so there was little risk of him throwing up on me again.
I knelt next to the couch to slide my arms under his shoulders and knees and pull him to my chest. My breath hissed out as his body brushed against the brand beneath my shirt, but no amount of adjusting found a position where that could be avoided. Standing, I lifted him off the couch, letting him settle against me and gritting my teeth at the throb of pain.
He was heavier than I expected, and it took me a moment to find my balance. But then he mumbled something in his sleep, and his arms came up to loop around my neck as he tucked his head under my chin. That alone made all the pain in the world worth it.
His long legs made navigating the hallway and the door difficult, and I cringed as I knocked his ankles on the doorframe. To my relief, he only tightened his hold on me and didn’t wake.
My arms were shaking by the time I eased him down onto the straw mattress. Untangling myself from his gripwas a feat, and it roused him enough that his eyes cracked open. I smoothed my fingers down his cheek.
“You’re fine. Go back to sleep.”
