Page 62 of Last Rites

I couldn’t stand to look at Kit anymore, not with his face so hollow, so stricken. My legs moved again, carrying me away, this time toward the hall to the bedrooms. “I’m going to my room.”

“Your room?” His confusion scraped against my nerves.

“My old room,” I corrected without turning back.

I half-expected him to follow, but he stayed rooted where he was, lost in whatever storm still held him.

Barging into the tiny bedroom and swinging the door shut behind me, I confronted the makeshift altar and offerings scattered across the floor. The sight made me scowl. I wanted to make a mess of it. Topple the unlit candles, stomp the bits of nature until they were reduced to dust. I wanted to scream, but with Kit in the next room, separated only by thin walls, I didn’t dare.

Instead, I loomed over it all, hands curling until my fingernails cut crescents into my palms.

When I spoke—because I never had much knack for silence—it was a whisper through clenched teeth.

“You know what I think? I think the Symbiarch was wrong about you. I think the reason she thought we were alike was because you’re as useless as I am. You couldn’t stop this, and neither can I. It’s just all so damn…”

Foolish.

Because I was a fool. And soon, I’d be a dead one.

Then Merrick would be happy.

And Kit would be gone. Lost in his own head if he was left alive at all.

I wanted to kick the offerings. Light the fireplace and pitch them into it. Get rid of every trace and banish it from my mind. But I did nothing before the door swung inward and Kit poked his head in.

“Pen…?”

I whirled around to see him staring, dark eyes round as they flicked from one item to another, articles of damning evidence.

Pushing the door open the rest of the way, Kit stepped over the threshold.

He hated this room. He hated this house, the same way I was learning to. And it was only a matter of seconds before it was obvious that he hated what the litter on the floor meant just as much.

He looked at everything. The leaves and dried bugs, pressed flowers, a handful of shiny rocks. Treasured things. Gifts for a god I’d come here to spite.

Then, he looked at me.

“What is this?”

Any relief I might have felt at seeing him shaken from his stupor was scrubbed away by the gravel in his tone. He knew what it was; he just wanted me to admit it.

“I’ve been praying.” The last word snagged in my throat. I felt sheepish, like a child caught red-handed.

“Why? To whom?”

“Eeus.”

His jaw clenched. “Why?”

I dropped my gaze before mumbling, “You already asked that.”

“You didn’t answer.”

Heat surged into my face. I nudged the toe of my boot into one of the piles of pressed flowers. “I thought it would help.”

“Why?”

Exasperation boiled over. “Kit!”