Chapter 178: The Million Dollar Question

Chapter 178: Chapter 178: The Million Dollar Question

Knock knock.

Killian walked toward the door, already aware that Penelope was the one knocking. Who else could it be but her? She was the only one who’d come looking for him these past few weeks without a reason attached to a supply run first.

"Penelope. What can I help you with?" Killian asked, a slight smile tugging at his mouth. He noticed her cheeks were red, probably from the stairs, or something she wasn’t saying yet.

"Hi. How are you doing today?" Penelope asked, awkward. She realized how absurd the question sounded the moment it left her mouth and cleared her throat instead. "Scratch that. May I come in?"

Killian smiled and stepped back, gesturing for her to enter. "What brings you to my humble abode?"

"Would you like some coffee?" Penelope blurted out, her face turning an even lighter shade of red. Killian couldn’t help but think she resembled a bright, overripe peach right now, and immediately filed the thought away as one he had no business having.

"You came over to offer me my own coffee?" he asked.

"Well, you happen to have a great selection of coffee beans." Penelope said, clearly trying to ease the awkwardness of her own remark.

"Ah, yes. I’ll humbly accept a cup of coffee made by the great barista Penny."

A few minutes later, she brewed two cups and crossed to hand him one, settling nearby, glancing around the apartment like she needed somewhere else to look.

"So," Killian said, "what brought you here?"

"What do you mean? Can’t I just see how my friend is doing?"

Killian raised an eyebrow at the word friend. "So, we’re friends now?"

He knew she was on tenterhooks when it came to him. Some days she leaned on him without hesitation, and other days she kept a careful distance he couldn’t always account for.

"Aren’t we?" Penelope asked, tilting her head slightly, already second-guessing whether coming here tonight had been the right call.

Killian’s grip on his own coffee tightened, some quiet part of him rejecting the word friend even as he nodded. "Yes, friend. We are." He lowered his gaze, having just concluded, internally, an answer he’d been circling for weeks. She wanted to be friends. He wanted considerably more than that, and had stopped being able to pretend otherwise, at least to himself.

"So. I wanted to talk to you about something important." Penelope set her mug down on the coffee table.

Killian mirrored the gesture, straightening. "Go on."

"So," she said, nervous. "You know how I have a space power?"

"Mmhmm." Killian’s eyes narrowed slightly. He’d had his suspicions about her space for a while now, wondering if it might resemble something closer to his own than a simple storage ability.

"Well, my space isn’t like others. It’s different."

He stayed quiet, waiting.

"Let’s say — it’s a special dimension." Her voice dropped, careful. Killian’s mind went briefly, uselessly blank, some part of him wondering if she was about to say something else entirely.

His hand shot out to cover her mouth before he’d fully thought it through. "Careful what you say," he said, half-laughing, nerves threading through the words. "The walls can hear now."

He was thinking of Ethan — the boy who’d developed heightened hearing and vision as his ability, and the very real possibility that sound carried further through this building than any of them fully accounted for.

Penelope blinked up at him, and he realized, a beat too late, that his hand was still pressed against her mouth. Something warm and impulsive rose in her before she could stop it, and she tasted salt against her own tongue before her brain caught up with what her body had just done.

Her eyes went wide. She pulled his hand down instantly, face flooding red. "I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that."

Killian’s brain simply stopped working for a moment, the sensation of her tongue against his palm registering somewhere far more immediate than his usual composure could account for.

Penelope cleared her throat, desperate to move past it. "So — you’re saying you didn’t soundproof your apartment?"

"Are you kidding?" he managed, voice rougher than he intended. "I was the CEO of Remington Enterprises. Of course my walls are soundproof."

"Then why did you cover my mouth?"

"Good question." He cleared his own throat this time. "I suppose the apocalypse has me on edge. You never know who you can trust, who’s listening, who’s plotting."

"Who hurt you," Penelope said, half a joke, though something genuinely curious sat underneath it. He was a little too careful, even by the standards of a world that had earned every bit of that caution.

Killian didn’t answer that directly. "So. About this space."

"Right." Penelope straightened, gathering her nerve again. "It’s — special. It allows me to bring living beings into it."

"Oh." Something careful entered his voice. "And you’re sharing this with me because of our friendship?"

"Yes. Ben and Aunt Lucy know too."

"Ben and Aunt Lucy know." Something flickered behind his composed expression, quick and unmistakable. "Does that mean Erik, Kai, and Aunt Mary know as well?"

"Well, yeah. They’re my family. Of course they know."

"Then why tell me?"

"That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it." Penelope took a breath, deciding the band-aid was already half-off, so she might as well finish pulling it. "I can offer you entry into my space. But it comes with a requirement. Your life, essentially."

"Come again?"

"You’d have to put your life on the line, as a guarantee you’d never betray or harm me. The space won’t let anyone in without a spiritual contract first." She held his gaze, steady despite the nerves clearly still running underneath her voice. "I’d need your legal name, your date of birth, and you’d sign it in your own blood."

"And you want to offer this to me?"

"Yes. I would. It means that if you’re ever in danger, you’d have somewhere to go until it’s safe to come back out."

Killian studied her for a long moment, and took a slow breath. She’d been sincere enough with him tonight that it felt wrong to offer anything less in return — especially now, with the feelings he’d spent weeks quietly refusing to name finally sitting too close to the surface to keep denying.

"To be honest," he said, "I have a space of my own. I can enter it. I just can’t bring anyone else in with me."

He watched her amber eyes widen and found himself taking a second look at her he hadn’t fully permitted himself before — not because he hadn’t already known she was beautiful, but because he was only now admitting, plainly, to himself, that the beauty was the least of what had caught him. It was everything underneath it. The steadiness. The way she carried this entire family without once asking anyone to notice the weight of it.

"You have a special space?" she asked, quiet.

"I do." He held her gaze, something hopeful sitting just beneath his composure now. "So I’m not sure if you’d still want to offer me a contract, knowing I already have somewhere of my own to retreat to."

"Does it matter?" Penelope asked, something soft in her voice now. "It’s not really about needing somewhere else to go, Killian. It’s about wanting you protected the same way everyone I trust already is."

Something in his chest tightened at the word trust, even used the way she’d meant it — plain, sincere, not yet what he wanted it to mean, though he let himself hold onto the shape of it a moment longer than was strictly wise.

"Then I accept," he said, steady. "Whatever it requires."

"You’re sure? Once it’s done, there’s no undoing it."

"I’ve never been more sure of anything," Killian said, and meant it in a way that reached considerably further than the contract itself.

Penelope smiled, something bright and a little breathless crossing her face, and reached toward her own space, drawing out the small ceremonial needle, the golden pen, the waiting scroll, setting them carefully on the table between them.

"Full legal name," she said. "And your date of birth. The system needs it exactly right."

"Killian Remington," he said, without hesitation. "Born the twenty-fourth of August."

She wrote it carefully, the golden ink catching the lantern light as it settled into the parchment, and when she finished, she looked up at him one final time.

"Last chance to change your mind."

"I won’t," Killian said, and he didn’t so much as flinch when she pricked his finger a moment later, watching the single drop of blood gather and vanish into the waiting scroll with the same quiet, steady focus he gave everything that actually mattered to him.

Warmth spread through the room, soft and unmistakable, and Penelope let out a slow breath as the bond settled into place.

"It’s done," she said. "You’re protected now. Really protected."

Killian flexed his hand slowly, though nothing visible had changed at all, and looked up at her with something warm and entirely unguarded finally allowed to show.

"Thank you, Penny."

"Thank you for trusting me with it," she said softly.

Neither of them moved to break the quiet that settled between them afterward — two secrets finally out in the open at once, and something else, unspoken but plainly present now, sitting comfortably in the space where distance used to be.