Page 39 of Last Rites

“And then at the very least, Rosie, Isla, and I would be arrested for being Bone Men. Probably you, too, your personal connections here be damned.” He looked defeated, hollowed out so there was nothing left of whatever courage he had back in the clearing outside Millfield. And his voice was quiet when he said, “We need to go back to Ashpoint.”

I snorted, swelling up with hot air and indignation. “That’s just running from our troubles.”

Kit’s jaw tensed. “Which is how we got here in the first place. We should have gone back.”

“But then we wouldn’t have known⁠—”

“And what good has it done us to know?” He glowered at me with such intensity my mouth snapped shut. “Except that now he has even more leverage to use against us.”

I looked back toward the house, my throat burning. The Bone Men still prowled the yard. Still watched the windows. Still answered to the monster who’d wrecked our lives.

Kit was quiet for a long moment. Then he handed me the knife. “I should have known better than to try to run again. Running has never gotten us anything but trouble when I try, and maybe it’s time to stop. We should have gone back after Millfield.”

Tears welled while I stared at the weapon. Not given to me to use, but to hold. For now.

I still wanted so desperately to help. I wanted to tear through that door, scoop Sayla into my arms, and tell my mother she didn’t have to be scared. That was what a brave man would do.

But maybe help didn’t look like that.

Maybe it didn’t look like a grand rescue or a bloody showdown in front of my childhood home.

Maybe it looked like crawling back into the maw of the beast and letting it consume us because only then could we reach the gut of it. Only then could we drive our knives deep and carve out its heart from the inside.

That was always the plan, wasn’t it? Destroy the Bone Men from within.

I clenched the hilt tighter and let the thought settle.

“All right,” I murmured. “We’ll go back.”

Kit glanced over, wary.

“We’ll start now,” I said, turning toward the wagon. “But I’m driving. You need rest.”

His mouth twitched like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t. He just climbed onto the bench beside me and leaned back with a groan.

I took up the reins, gaze sweeping once more toward the house on the hill. I saw movement behind the curtains, and I imagined Sayla watching. Praying.

Hold on, I thought. I’ll make this right.

And I would.

Even if it meant walking willingly into the dark.

14

Kit

The rest of the journey back to Ashpoint was torturous. I was relegated to being a passenger, and without the focus of keeping the horse on the road, there was nothing for me to do but try to sleep.

But every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was blood. Every time I managed to drift off for more than a few minutes at a time, my dreams were full of Anders’s dead-eyed stare boring into me. A conviction I couldn’t escape. Guilt that burned up my insides until it was all I could do to swallow it down and not lean over the side of the wagon to retch.

I didn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time before the nightmares became too much.

It was only marginally better when we made camp during the nights. With Penny squeezed close, his face buried in my hair while I pressed my own into his chest to blot out the rest of the world, I slept more soundly. He roused me from nightmares before they could consume me, and did what he could to soothe me back to sleep. Unfortunately, that meant that both of us woke up tired in the morning.

It was a relief when Ashpoint’s gates rose ahead of us on the fourth day. If I didn’t think too hard about how Merrick would react to the story we’d concocted on the way, I could almost convince myself I was glad to be back. I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, and seeing our friends, and pretending like what happened outside of Millfield never happened at all.

Still, while I thought we could sell our story to the townsfolk, the Right Hand wouldn’t buy it so easily, especially if he’d been the one to give Anders his murderous orders. But all other avenues were closed to us. There was no escaping the consequences of what I’d done. I only hoped Merrick went the way of Levitt and that, without substantial proof, he would have to let me live.