I sprawled, limp, while Kit tugged on one arm then the other, succeeding only in sliding me across the floor. At last, he sighed and rolled me onto my back. My gut gurgled in protest, driving out a wet belch.
Kit’s nose wrinkled and he straightened, standing overhead with his arms crossed over his chest. “You better warn me if you’re going to be sick.”
I nodded again, scrubbing a hand over my face as Kit crouched beside me. He slipped one arm beneath my knees, the other bracing my back, and the next thing I knew I was pressed against his chest. Heat rushed up my neck, flushing my face at the sheer indignity of being carried like a damsel. But the warmth fled when Kit reached the couch and unceremoniously dropped me onto the cushions.
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll get you some water.”
He was gone and back in the span of a blink, holding a tin cup in one hand while tugging on my shirt collar with the other.
“Come on.” He pulled me into a sitting position.
“Not thirsty,” I protested.
The offered cup remained.
Rather than take it from him, I bent in and sippedwhile it was still in his grasp. The cool water soothed the ache in my throat. I began to slurp greedily, getting more on me than in me while Kit continued to hold the cup aloft.
“I didn't take you for much of a drinker,” he mused once I’d finished it all.
I tested my tongue again, running it along my lips. “I'm not. It just seems the sort of thing men do when they have no other options.”
I’d only seen my father drink twice in my life. He claimed it wasn’t prudent to waste money on alcohol, but he’d made exceptions when Sayla was away being treated for the burns that nearly cost her life, and the night Merrick moved out.
“You don’t think you have options?” Kit lowered himself onto the sofa beside me.
The smell of evergreens wafted from him, and I fought the urge to lean closer and breathe it in. Instead, I masked a long inhale with an equally long sigh.
“Not anymore.” I shook my head. “They know I’m here.Merrickknows I’m here. And why. I told you they’d see through me.”
“I thought you did well, all things considered.”
The thoughts I’d tried to drown began leaking into my mind like water from a faucet. They would fill me up again, I already knew. There were too many of them and not enough of me.
“You were right about Father,” I admitted. “About this being impossible. Iama fool. And a simpleton. And now Merrick hates you, too. Because of me.”
Kit huffed an unhappy laugh. “Merrick hating me has very little to do with you.”
“But the rest?” My sight blurred as I looked at him, and I blinked to try to clear it.
“You’re too hard on yourself, Penny.” He bent forward and set the empty cup on the low table. “No one could have predicted this.”
“You did.”
“Not exactly…”
Another exhale slumped me back. I let my head loll onto the top of the couch cushion. “Well, I’m in it now. I have to stay. And I have to go through the Oaths. They’re going to burn me, too.” I glanced aside, peering at his chest as though I could see through his shirt to the brand seared beneath. My hand followed my gaze, and my fingers brushed the soft linen.
He caught my hand and moved it to rest on my knee. I stared at it, studying the bumps and lines of my scarred skin and misshapen digits. While I lifted each finger in turn, drumming them across my kneecap, Kit responded in a steady voice.
“No, you don’t. No one expects you to.”
“Merrickexpects it,” I mumbled.
My brother practically dared me to go through the Oaths. It was a challenge he fully believed I would fail. Because that’s what I always did.
Kit’s brow furrowed. “He was goading you, Penny. He can’t force you to do anything?—”
“I said I’ll do it.” I sat up straight. Though, not as straight as I meant to, and I found myself tipping sideways toward the coffee table.
