Penny’s quiet unsettled me, and I found myself missing his endless prattle. When it became clear that I’d lost him to his own internal musings, I spoke again. “Why don’t you get unpacked? I’ll go fetch something from the market to make for dinner.”
He whipped his head around, and I got the distinct feeling that he didn’t want to be left alone.
“We have some jerky in our bags,” he said hurriedly. “And we should clean this place before we bring in any other food. There’s years of dust built up in here.”
To be fair, I didn’t particularly want to leave Penny here alone, either. Violette was relatively harmless unless you crossed her, but there were plenty of other people here I didn’t know and didn’t trust. My would-be recruit was my responsibility, and I would do whatever I could to keep him alive and safe. The less we were apart, the easier that would be.
I replaced the frying pan on its hook. “All right. But Ithink we’ve done enough for today. We can clean tomorrow. Tonight, we need sleep.”
We returned to the living room and our dropped bags by the door. I built a fire in the hearth while Penny retrieved the jerky and a bit of stale bread from his pack, then we ate side by side on the couch.
Penny chattered about all the things he wanted to do to make the bleak house homier as if he would be here long enough to care. He effused about a garden out back and detailed his plans to find curtains for the windows, a new pillow for the couch, and a dozen other things.
I tuned out a few minutes in, and let the rhythmic cadence of his voice become a distantly soothing drone as darkness fell outside.
Yawning, he stood and stretched before announcing it was time for bed. I watched him disappear down the hall and waited for the bedroom door to close before rising from the couch myself.
After scavenging a handful of fat tallow candles from beneath the kitchen sink, I brought them to the living room. I intended to sprawl out on the couch and follow Penny to sleep, but something on the bookshelf beside the fireplace caught my eye.
Lined up one after another were eight leather bound tomes alarmingly similar to the six journals stashed in the bottom of my pack. I’d burned the other half of the twelve I’d stolen on the night of my escape, when that had been all there was. It made sense that a man as meticulous and self-important as my father would have continued his writing habit after I’d gone.
I could practically feel the loathing and disdain dripping from the pages as I pulled the books from the shelf and stacked them on the coffee table. The last thing I wanted was to dive back into his twisted mind, but thoughI had a vague idea of the last three Oaths, I had no hard proof that I remembered them correctly. If he wrote about them in those books, I could prepare myself for what was to come.
That didn’t make any of this easier.
I arranged the candles around the outer edge of the table. Between their meager flames and the light from the fireplace, it was bright enough to see the pages. So, I sank down on the couch, pulled the first of the journals to me, and started to read.
And then I couldn’t stop.
15
Penny
Morning came more quickly than I would have liked. I rolled out of bed sleep-drunk and stumbled from Kit’s childhood room into the hall. Thoughts of coffee lured me, and I might have made a beeline straight to the kitchen if the scene in the living area hadn’t stopped me in my tracks.
Kit sat in the middle of the floor surrounded by open books and puddles of yellowish wax that had once been candles. Every page I saw was scrawled in the same slanting script used in the journals Kit had shown me in his home. There were more, now. Many more. A cursory glance counted fourteen volumes. The few familiar ones were badly worn, their pages torn with curling edges, but others appeared near pristine.
My gaze traveled from the sprawl of books and candles to the shelves on the wall. They had clearly been rifled, the bottom one bare but for two small tomes left behind. I glanced back at Kit, who sat cross-legged with his head in his hands and a tin cup of coffee by his foot.
He looked exhausted in his rumpled, road-wornclothes, and the soft curls of his black hair were worried into tangles. His shoulders were hunched, and his head hung low. I didn’t know it was possible for him to look so small.
I wasn’t sure if he saw me. He neither stirred to my arrival nor looked my way until, finally, he spoke.
“He kept writing,” Kit mumbled, the words almost lost to the palms of his hands. “Of course he kept writing.”
He peeled his hands away from his face to reveal eyes ringed in shadows and lingering redness from what must have been tears. His gaze roamed across the sea of books containing hundreds upon hundreds of pages.
“He didn’t even mention my name. Not once. Not a word about me leaving, nothing. Sure talked about his new protege, though. Certainly seemed more proud of whoever this ‘O’ is than he ever was of me.”
He stared ahead into the cold, dark fireplace, his expression vacant. No, not vacant,sad. A kind of sorrow felt so deeply that it needed time to work its way out.
I stood by until Kit hummed a low note. He let one hand fall atop the journal nearest him, where it struck the page with a thump.
“Thiswas his legacy, after all.” He glared at it. “This place and whatever unfortunate soul came after me. I was only ever a disappointment.”
My focus drifted to the cup beside his foot, and I motioned toward it.“Do you want some more coffee?”
“I want nothing if it’s not whiskey,” Kit grumbled.
