Page 54 of Redline Communion

Lorelei stares at him long enough that I wonder whether the second dose has reached her faster than expected. Then she whispers, “Marcus?”

He looks at her, which is all the humanity the rite permits them.

My father speaks before either can add to it. “Marcus Deering entered covenant by substitution. His petition was accepted and witnessed by the house.”

Substitution is one of the house’s oldest loopholes: a life offered in place of a household’s standing, which the ledger would otherwise have taken in full. Marcus put his in place of his mother’s. He is all she has, which is exactly why the house accepted the trade.

Lorelei’s fingers close around Rafe’s arm.

“What the fuck does that even mean? Everyone thought you were fucking dead.”

Marcus does not answer. The witnesses do.

“What is offered freely cannot be returned.”

Her attention crosses the room too slowly now, from Marcus to my father and finally to me. Then Helena opens the black case. The latch is quiet, and the blade rests inside against dark velvet, polished carefully enough to make inheritance out of evidence.

My hand knows its balance before I touch it, and familiarity is the first thing I hate. I know how the handle sits in my palm. I know why the sponsor’s hand closes over the initiate’s, and exactly what the house intends to place on record when two people perform one irreversible act together. My father calls it shared consequence. A prosecutor would call it something else.

Helena offers me the case, and I take the blade.

Lorelei whispers no. The second dose has softened her voice but not the intention behind it, and Rafe shifts toward her, but Alistair continues as though nobody moved.

“The first altar receives. The second binds in blood.”

There it is, the place she gave me when she chose Rafe. I have spent the last hour resenting her for putting him first because I wanted the public claim, the precedence, the satisfaction of being the man she reached for before anyone else, and that resentment survives approximately one second with the blade in my hand before another truth replaces it. I wanted Rafe to hold this. I wanted him carrying the blood while I remained clean enough to pretend the distinction was incidental. Lorelei chose the first claim for him and left me the second, and the thought is beneath me, but it remains true that I have it.

My father continues the liturgy while I move toward her. The second claim has already begun. There is no Communion followed by my claim, no neat division where the house stores violence before permitting desire to resume; the blood belongs inside it. That is the obscenity of the rite, not an interruption of it.

Lorelei looks at the blade, then at me.

“Cassian.”

The way she says my name stops me harder than Rafe’s hand ever could. Help me. I know the sound, and I keep moving.

“The sponsor bears the hand.”

I place the handle into Lorelei’s palm. Her fingers remain open, and I close them, the tremor beginning in her thumb and reaching me through the metal.

“The initiate bears the consequence.”

She tries to release it, and my hand closes over hers before the blade can fall. That is my choice. Everything else can be blamed on Alistair, tradition, Marcus’s petition, the room, the witnesses, even the doctrine I helped preserve, but her hand tries to open beneath mine and mine refuses. That part belongs to me.

Rafe says her name behind us, low and steady. “Lo.”

She turns toward him, the motion pulling weakly against my grip, and for one selfish second I am grateful she is not looking at Marcus. Then I understand why. I do not want to see my own hand reflected in her face when she realizes what I am making it do.

My father reaches the final line.

“The house receives what cannot be returned.”

“What is given remains,” the witnesses answer.

Marcus lowers his head. Lorelei’s resistance sharpens too late, her shoulder jerking backward, her fingers straining beneath mine while Rafe braces her at the waist without helping me. I know exactly how much pressure is required to keep her hand where the rite needs it, and my body supplies it without instruction. That competence horrifies me more than hesitation would have.

Lorelei looks at me once, completely clear, and then my hand guides hers through the Communion.

Her scream tears through the chanting, and the chanting continues. Warmth floods across our joined hands before I can create distance from what it is, blood slick between my fingers and hers so that my grip adjusts automatically, my thumb shifting higher, my fingers tightening. Even now I am performing correctly, and the thought nearly makes me sick.