Page 35 of Redline Communion

“No,” I say. “It isn’t.”

The room settles around us. Downstairs, somebody closes a door hard enough to shake the glass in the cabinet. Nico glances toward the sound, then back at me.

His attention doesn’t feel like Cassian’s silence, waiting for me to incriminate myself, or like Ash watching for the next thing he needs to protect me from, or like Rafe wanting something he’s trying not to ask for.

Nico listens like he expects the answer to change what he does next.

That should not work on me as well as it does.

It works anyway.

“Why are you here?” I ask. “Really.”

“My father asked me to see how the preparation was progressing before anything was decided that couldn’t be undone.”

“Preparation for what?”

His mouth tightens slightly.

“You know he didn’t send me here expecting me to explain that.”

“Then you should also know how much I hate that sentence.”

“I do.”

At least he has the decency to look faintly ashamed of it.

“Is that all?” I ask. “You flew here to check a box for Dominic?”

“No.” His thumb passes once over the edge of his cuff. “That’s why he asked me to come. It isn’t why I agreed.”

“Why did you agree?”

“I wanted to meet you.”

“That sounds worse when you say it like that.”

“I could lie, if you’d prefer.”

“Everybody else does.”

“Then it seems unnecessary for me to compete.”

He says it lightly, but his eyes don’t match. There’s something else behind them, not softness exactly, something tired enough that I recognize it without knowing why.

“You talk like you know this house,” I say.

“I know houses like it.”

The answer is quiet enough to make me sit a little straighter.

“Are there many?”

“More than there should be.”

A chill moves over my arms. Nico looks toward the unlit fireplace.

“Marazul behaves as if it invented all of this,” he says. “The rules. The ceremonies. The language people use when they want obedience to sound sacred.”