Page 72 of Last Rites

There wasn’t much else to say after that. It was getting late, Penny and I were both exhausted, and I was aching at the prospect of taking him to bed with me for the first time in days. Our bed. In our room.

When the coffee was finished, Rosie and Isla helped cart all the mugs and the kettle back to the kitchen. The three of us washed, dried, and put away the dishes while Penny huddled with Thoma over a page torn out of his sketchbook. He wrote out meticulous directions, then walked Thoma through all of them.

When the women and I passed back through the living room, I detoured to steal a kiss from Penny and admire the map he was drawing. I lingered there, fussing with the tail of his braid and watching his pencil scratch across the page. I could have stayed all night if Rosie hadn’t called a farewell from the doorway.

“Wait, I’ll walk you home,” I said, pressing one last kiss to the top of Penny’s head before I headed for my boots. “I’ll feel better knowing you both got there safe.”

Safe. For what little time was left. So they could say their own goodbyes.

They might not get another chance.

27

Penny

The ride to Forstford was miserable, and the company was even worse. By company, I meant Merrick’s squad of assigned guards—one for each of us, armed with crossbows in case we tried to run—whose constant oversight squashed any chance for conversation. Kit was distant, though thankfully not physically. He liked to keep a hand on me, almost possessive, but I knew it was a message as much as anything. He would stand between any source of harm and me. Unless the source of harm was of my own making.

Determined as he was to serve as our watchman, his lack of sleep caught up to him early that first evening. He dozed off with his head in my lap and an arm stretched across my thighs before it was even full dark. Isla wasn’t far behind, nodding off propped up against the sideboard beside Rosie.

My own eyelids drooped as the guards grumbled and chattered amongst themselves about our progress. They didn’t intend to stop yet, wanting to make it a bit farther from the last village we passed before setting camp along the road for the night. They wanted to be as far from any towns as possible, and farther still from any militia outposts, in case one of us decided to try to run.

Not that we had any intentions of attempting to escape. Kit was right that certain plans had to be abandoned. Some hopes lost.

But I was not willing to bring destruction to Kit’s hometown, and neither was Rosie. She made that much clear when she waited until our overseers were distracted before reaching into the folds of her skirt.

The movement looked almost obscene, and blush burned my cheeks as I jerked my gaze away.

“Pen!” Rosie hissed, and something flat and hard slapped my arm.

I glanced back to find her clothing restored to order and my sheathed dagger in her hand.

My eyes flashed wide as I snatched it from her and tucked it between my thigh and the rough wooden floor of the wagon. Kit shifted at the movement, but didn’t wake.

“What’s this for?” I whispered, tapping the hilt that poked out from beneath my leg.

Rosie’s head whipped around, braids dusting her shoulders as she checked to ensure we weren’t being overheard.

“There’s a bigger town coming up a ways from here,” Rosie replied. “We’ll probably come upon it early tomorrow morning.”

“What of it?”

“We need to stop. If we can get them to pull off the road, we can get word to someone and have them pass it ahead to Forstford.”

I gestured to the pile of supplies shoved in the corner of the cart. We had ample provisions for the journey. At least enough for the guards and the horses. I was sure they wouldn’t mind if we recruits went without.

“Cut a hole!” Rosie whispered. Her dark eyes were emphatic as they darted to the bag of grain. “It will leak out. At the rate we’re moving, they won’t notice until it’s near gone. Then they’ll have to stop if they want the horses to keep going.”

I glanced at the guards currently engaged in conversation. They never talked about anything interesting, so I’d given up actively eavesdropping earlier in the day. They’d stopped paying too much attention to us, too. We’d become little more than cargo, and that had benefits. Namely that I disturbed no one but sleeping Kit as I pulled over my satchel and slipped it under his head as a replacement pillow before creeping toward the burlap sack.

The knife caught the last blush of sunlight as I pulled it from its sheath. It flashed like a warning I feared our captors would see, so I shielded it with my free hand before nicking the bottom corner of the bag. As expected, a thin trail of grain began to spill out.

It ran between the boards of the floor of the wagon and littered the road beneath us.

I sheathed the knife and stashed it, Kit and Isla dozed, and Rosie and I exchanged knowing smiles. And we kept riding.

Judging by the speckle of stars and the deep blue-black of the sky, a few hours passed before the guards decided to stop for the night. They continued to ignore us while tending to the horses, and I watched with bated breath as one of them hefted the grain bag out of the cart and found it lightened.

I had been near giddy watching the sack collapse in on itself as the miles passed, and I had to bite the insides of my cheeks to keep from grinning at the look of shock and dismay on his face.