With a heaved breath, he leaned and reached as far as he was able without forcing me out of his lap. He dug into his pack and fished out the familiar dropper bottle of poison.
My throat tickled at the sight of it, as though it recognized the cause of my days of misery. I bristled.
Kit held up his empty hand. “Not for you,” he said. “I missed last night's dose.”
“Not for you either.” I wanted to make a grab for it. Smash the glass on the ground and get rid of it for good. “Nora said?—”
He sighed. “She saidyou'resensitive to it.I'mmanaging. And I know what I'm doing.”
I watched as he squeezed a few drops of the greenish liquid onto his tongue, then grimaced through a swallow. He tucked the bottle into his sack without so much as a glance at me.
“We’ll take the longer way back.” He stood and hopped down onto the ground. “It means an extra day on the road, but less chance of being recognized or raising suspicion.”
I nodded mutely, my gaze lingering on where the hemlock vial had disappeared into Kit's pack.
After untying the horse and climbing onto the driver’s bench, Kit looked over his shoulder at me and patted the seat beside him.
I pretended not to notice.
13
Kit
Penny’s condition improved over our days of travel back to Ashpoint. Three nights spent curled together under cloaks and furs to stave off the cold meant we both slept better than usual—despite the lack of a comfortable bed—which certainly helped. He only woke himself up coughing a handful of times, and he proved quite adept at soothing me back to sleep after my nightmares that seemed less frequent with him so close.
It was amazing how quickly I'd grown accustomed to his affections and how readily I gave mine. He was everything I'd said. Kind, gentle, and easy to care for. I was fond of him, terribly so, and memories of my life before he came into it were bland and gray.
In our days on the road, especially on the return trip since I was no longer fretting over his health, I'd learned the smell of him and the feel of his body so often pressed against mine. I'd studied the scars on his hands and the freckles on his cheeks. I thought I knew his face as well as I knew my own.
Part of me was afraid of relying on him even more than Ialready did. That didn’t stop me from enjoying it while it lasted.
On the fourth morning, with only a few hours’ travel left ahead of us, we picked away at the last of the jerky while huddling together under our blankets. Penny was back to his usual chattery self, going on about how excited he was to see how big Rosie’s kittens had gotten in the week we were away, and about how glad he’d be to see Thoma and Reimond and to sleep in a real bed again.
But my mind was elsewhere. In a few hours, I’d be face to face with Levitt, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It was easier before I knew he supposedly loved me, before I knew he’d come looking for me but never bothered to find me. Before I had to wonder how he feltnow.
Penny paused in whatever he was saying to take a bite of jerky, and I tipped my head back against my pack to watch the low gray clouds rush by ahead of the chill breeze.
“You asked what Nora told me when she pulled me away,” I said, no surer that I should tell Penny any of this now than I had been at the mission. I felt his eyes on me, but I didn’t wait for him to respond before I continued. “She said you and I seemed close, and that she was glad to see me with someone, but you weren’t who she expected.”
“What do you mean?” he asked as he tucked himself under my arm.
“When I escaped Ashpoint, Levitt showed up at the mission looking for me after I’d already moved on.”
Penny pushed himself up, and his brow furrowed. “What?”
I sighed. “She told him where to find me, but he never came.”
The distance between us continued to growas Penny swiveled to face me directly. “Why would he come after you? He doesn’t strike me as the rebellious sort.”
My stomach churned at the thought of what Nora told me, and attempting to say it out loud proved more difficult than I thought it would be. Quiet stretched for several long moments until I found my voice.
“It had always been the plan to run together if we got the chance, or to meet in Emberstead if we couldn’t both get out at the same time. And… Nora said he told her that he loved me.”
It was Penny’s turn to fall silent. His expression went blank enough that I wasn’t sure he was thinking at all.
“Oh,” he said after several long moments.
I waited for a stronger reaction, but he remained wordless and distant for what felt like an eternity before asking, “Were you two very close?”
