“You do,” I told him, then blushed a bit myself. “You're beautiful, too.”
Kit passed the reins to one hand so he could wrap his other arm around me. I leaned into his side and tipped my head onto his shoulder.
My fingers traced the draping branches of the willow tree carved on my sketchbook cover until I mustered the courage to speak again. “Do you want to see it? It's hardly fair that Anders has and you haven't.”
I didn't need to explain what “it” was. Kit understood and, after a moment's hesitation, he nodded.
I swallowed hard and opened the book to leaf through it. There was more than one picture of Kit. More than two or three. I'd traced the shape of his hands and done a short study of thecontrolled chaos of his dark curls. But there was no mistaking which one Anders had seen, so I turned to it first.
Since I'd never asked Kit to pose for me, the rendering was taken from my imagination, a scene I played out in my mind countless times before I put it on paper. Kit was stretched out on our bed, bare from head to toe with one arm behind his head, looking at me with the gentlest smile. Seeing it now, with Kit looking on, my stomach fluttered because hewasbeautiful. Hewasart. On and off the page.
He was also silent for several seconds, and the quiet gnawed at me until he said, “That really is a lot of me.”
My face stung with embarrassment, and I shrunk in the folds of my cloak. “Only the best parts,” I murmured.
Kit hummed softly, and I wrestled the impulse to snap the book shut until he finally returned his attention to the road. His arm stayed curved around me, keeping me close as we jostled along.
“Are you mad?” I asked.
“Why would I be mad?”
I gathered the sketchbook to my chest. “It's personal,” I said. “Private.”
A soft smile curled the corner of his lips. “It's shared. With you.”
His fingers pressed a reassuring squeeze into my bicep, and I relaxed.
“And Anders,” I muttered.
Kit groaned, and we fell into laughter.
The cart rolled on another mile or two. I was snug in my cloak with the hood tugged up and ready to doze, but my mind circled back to the idea of our destination and the crate of rodents squeaking and squirming behind us.
I heaved a mournful sigh and snuggled against Kit’s shoulder, and he gave me a squeeze.
“I meant to tell you,” he said, almost as if he’d heard my thoughts. “Keep an eye out for somewhere to dump those rats.”
“What do you mean?” I straightened and peered over at him without bothering to mask my concern. Surely he didn’t meanIhad to pick the farm. I couldn’t possibly. We could drive off the edge of forever, and I’d never choose. I couldn’t bring that kind of ruin on someone. I wasn’t sure how I would bear it.
Kit waved his hand toward the woods growing thicker all around us. “Somewhere they'll be able to spread out and find food that isn't stored in someone's barn.”
I gawked at him, confused but hopeful.
He shrugged at my unasked question. “There's no one to say we didn't leave them on a farm, just as there's no one to say we did. This Oath is about faith in Eeus, and the Bone Men believe that we initiates are accountable to Eeus alone.” He carried on casually, and with a bit of cheer that made sense the longer he spoke. “So, if we don’t complete it, Eeus will be the one to punish us. And I'd rather not complete it if it's all the same to you.”
He shot me a sly grin, and I knew I was beaming. I wasn’t even worried about Eeus’s punishment because I didn’t believe there would be one. I’d learned differently from the Symbiarch in Wendwood, and I no longer saw the god as the malevolent being I’d been warned about in my youth.
Drowsy as I’d been before, now I felt alert and eager to scan the trees and fields for an open space that might make a fine home for a few dozen rats. It didn’t take long to find one. We pulled off to the side of the road, and I clambered into the back of the cart to heft out the crate.
Kit laughed as I struggled to carry the rodents into a clearing beyond the tree line, then opened the wooden box. They scattered in a mass exodus, cutting trails through the snow and carrying away the sense of foreboding that had plagued me since the messenger gave us our instructions.
Kit stepped around me and picked up the empty crate, then took my hand and led me back to the cart. I climbed onto the bench and settled in my cloak like a bird in its nest. I didn’t ask Kit where we were headed next. It didn’t matter.
We’d avoided the worst, and I couldn’t imagine things getting any better even when Kit returned to his seat beside me and whispered, “I have another surprise for you.”
Anticipation should have kept me awake, but fatigue from my sleepless night got the better of me long before dusk.
I was relieved when we stopped for the night at a rural inn. It was small with only four guest rooms and ours was outfitted with a bed no bigger than our living room couch. It was still a sight more comfortable than sleeping sitting up on the hard wooden cart seat, and I stayed awake long enough to eat dinner before dozing off again draped atop Kit with a patched quilt covering us both.
