With me taken care of, I glanced back at the second charcoal water waiting on the table.
“Are you ready to—” Another cough interrupted my question.
Kit’s head whipped aside, his expression rife with simultaneous concern and discomfort. He opened his mouth to speak, but fell forward before any words came out, vomiting again. His arms bent and he slumped, draping into the basin. Relentless dry heaves wrung his body out, leaving him strangling and gasping.
I laid the rag over the back of his neck, rubbing my hand across his shoulders and feeling helpless standing by while that too-familiar tightness wound around my chest.
By the time I realized I was struggling to breathe, Kit wasn’t breathing at all. The last in a series of unproductive retches held him in place, tendons throbbing up the sides of his throat and his dark hair dripping with sweat.
“Kit?” I gripped his shoulder too tight in my desperation, but he gave no response.
He sagged and slid down the cabinet fronts, nearly dragging his face along before I lunged forward and caught him to ease him to the floor. His eyes were closed as I rolled him onto his back.
Another cough turned into a fit that landed me on my backside next to Kit’s sprawled form. His chest rose and fell, but every other part of him was still.
“Kit?” I prompted, choked by tears along with the poison.
When he didn’t rouse or respond, I looked again at the charcoal water. Drawing a wheezing breath, I stood and started toward the table. If I was careful, I might be able to get enough of it in him to relieve his symptoms. We’d missed two opportunities to fight the hemlock’s effects. Kit couldn’t afford to miss the third.
I made it only a pair of stumbling steps before the room spun around me. The air was thin, and my chest felt like someone had piled sacks of grain on top of it. Giving my head a stubborn shake, I focused on my goal again. The kitchen was small. Only a few feet stretched between me and the table, but the wave of dizziness toppled me over. I crashed to the ground, landing on my hands and knees on the wood floor.
Tears sprung to my eyes, and I blinked furiously against them. I remembered this feeling from the graveyard. Weak and woozy, with darkness creeping in. Then, Kit had saved me. He took me to the mission. He got help.
If I passed out now, there would be no help.
If I passed out now, I might never wake again.
“Kit?” I whispered, willing my body to crawl toward him.
Slumped against the cabinets, he looked so weak. So absent in his unconscious state, and Ineededhim.
I’d never considered he might not survive this; the thought never crossed my mind. Seeing him lying limp and pale overwhelmed me with panic.
I said his name again. Bawled it. It took every bit of air I had to voice that single syllable. I drew up beside him, and my fingers trembled as I brushed them down his face. I would have begged him to wake if I could have spoken at all. I would have asked him to hold me and tell me again that he wouldn't let anything happen to me. Convince me that I wouldn’t die like this: alone and far from home and so very afraid.
Everything felt heavy, like the grain bags were piling higher atop every part of me and pressing me toward the floor. Air trickled into my starving lungs, and shadows crowded the corners of my vision. Lying down felt too much like giving up, so I dragged myself over to the cabinets and sat with my back against them. I pulled Kit’s head to rest in my lap, thumbing through his sweat-damp curls.
I’d prepared for this. I’d given Kit the rights to my farm and my family. But if we both died, what would happen then?
Who would tell my mother and Sayla that I hadn’t abandoned them? How would they get on without me?
“You’re a fool, Penwell.”
Merrick’s voice chastised me, as if I needed the reminder. I knew it as well as I knew better than to think I could defy a god. All of this because I believed I could spare my family the curse I’d brought on them when I refused to burn my father’s body.
I thought I was the curse—the family failure, more liability than asset. But my death might be thefinal nail in the coffin, forfeiting a hopeful future for my mother and sister.
My lungs refused to fill, and I gaped like a dying fish.
My fingers tangling in Kit’s hair became the only thing tethering me to consciousness. I had so much to tell him, and Mother, and Sayla. Most of all, I wanted the chance to say goodbye, but it was too late for that. All I had now was silence and the darkness that closed in until it swallowed everything.
29
Kit
Everything ached. My limbs felt full of iron, and my throat was on fire. Despite being thoroughly emptied, my stomach roiled with nausea. And between the cold seeping in all down my back and the sweat slicking my body, I was shivering. But warmth radiated from Penny’s hand where it rested on my shoulder, and I used that like a tether to pull myself back to consciousness.
It was an effort to drag my eyes open. The kitchen was dark with the stove fire reduced to scarce embers. I didn’t remember how I got there, sprawled on the floor with my head in Penny’s lap, and how he’d fallen asleep slumped against the cabinets was beyond me.
