Page 44 of Redline Communion

“You’ll feel it.”

Also not an answer.

Earlier this afternoon, Talia cut a line on the bathroom counter while I complained about having to walk into this place in a white dress and pretend that wasn’t a threat. I did it. I took another bump before Helena came for me because the first had already worn down to nerves again.

The coke is still in me now. I can taste the drip when I swallow, and my heart has been going too fast since before the woman handed me the cup. The flower doesn’t cancel it out. It slips underneath, so one pulls me forward while the other leaves the room half a step behind, and my body keeps trying to follow both.

I press my thumbnail into my palm. The pressure reaches me late.

Somewhere beyond the door, chanting begins, and I count the voices to keep myself upright. Seven. Eleven. Sixteen.

I lose track at twenty-three.

The room they lead me into is circular and crowded with household members, branch elders, people I recognize from church dinners, and people I have never seen before. They line the walls in dark formal clothes, watching me enter like they paid for seats.

A silver cup travels hand to hand along the wall, each person drinking and passing it on. It reaches Cassian and Rafe beneath the candles as I enter, and both take their measure without looking at each other. Rafe’s mouth twists at the bitterness. Cassian swallows with the same composure he brings to everything.

Theirs is a sip.

Mine was the whole cup.

Alistair stands near the edge instead of the center, but that does nothing to make him less noticeable. Every person in the room still seems arranged in relation to him.

Cassian and Rafe wait beneath the central ring of candles, both masked. Cassian’s disguise lasts less than a second because nobody else holds themselves that still, and even his hands look instructed. Rafe is easier. His shoulders are too tight, and one fist keeps closing at his side before he forces it open again.

I search the wall behind them.

No Ash.

Alistair begins to speak.

“The vessel does not choose the altar.”

His voice travels cleanly through the room.

So that’s what I am tonight. Not Lorelei, and not even a girl stupid enough to drink something handed to her by a stranger because everyone around her made refusal feel embarrassing.

A vessel.

It’s a neat way to turn me into an object before anybody touches me.

“The altar is chosen for the vessel,” Alistair continues, “by the hand that built it, for a purpose the vessel is not required to understand. Only to complete.”

Cassian’s head lifts slightly, so small a movement I might have imagined it.

“Come forward,” Alistair says.

My right foot moves before the rest of me decides to follow. Nobody reaches for me because nobody has to. The room waits, and the open space between us has been arranged so completely that standing still feels like the only disruption anyone would notice.

So I walk.

Cassian takes my hand first. His grip is warm and steady, and the chanting shifts around us, every face along the wall seeming to lean closer without anyone moving. Rafe reaches for my other hand, his thumb passing once over my knuckles.

Standing between them, I can feel the heat of both bodies through the thin sleeves of my dress.

Fear should be clean.

Want should probably be clean too.