Page 70 of Redline Communion

I type four names.

Rafe. Ash. Cassian. Nico.

For a few seconds I consider numbering them.

Then I don’t.

The names look better without hierarchy attached to them. Four separate truths in the same note, none required to erase the others just because the house would find that arrangement untidy.

I close the note.

The messages remain unanswered, and that feels fine for tonight. Ash can survive not knowing whether I’m impressed that he managed to make driving past my building sound both romantic and mildly threatening. Rafe will probably ask if I’m good again tomorrow. Cassian can continue his personal war against initiating text conversations.

I turn the phone over one last time.

Nico’s message is still there.

Ask me one sometime.

I stare at it until the screen goes dark.

Chapter seventeen

The Altar Keeps Score

Cassian

The first discrepancy arrives as a question.

Alistair is reviewing the household notes while I stand across from his desk with the Offering ledger open beneath my hand. I was summoned because he wants an amendment to the language surrounding external claimants, and until he speaks, that is the only reason I believe I’m here.

“Has the cocaine affected her schedule?”

I look up. He turns a page without doing the same.

For half a second, I assume I misunderstood him. There is no mention of cocaine in the household reports, no incident attached to Lorelei’s name, nothing in the medical notes I reviewed before the Offering.

“What cocaine?”

My father finally looks at me. The silence that follows is brief and does not need to last long; Alistair has made entire rooms feel incompetent with less.

“You weren’t aware.”

It isn’t a question.

I close the ledger. “No.”

His expression remains still, but the quality of that stillness changes. Something has been confirmed for him, and whatever it is leaves me standing on the wrong side of the confirmation.

“How often are you reviewing Rafael’s reports?” he asks.

“Every submission.”

“And Dominic?”

“He receives the same material.”

“Apparently not the same information.”