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Ezra rolls me onto my side as I cough hard enough to make my ribs scream. His hand braces the back of my neck while I claw at the dirt, fighting to breathe around whatever the fuck is lodged in my throat.

Then it comes loose.

Something tiny hits the black soil in front of my face.

Wet.

Red.

I stare at it.

Nobody moves.

Nobody speaks.

My brain refuses to recognize it at first.

Then Rhett whispers, “What the fuck?”

A corn kernel.

Deep red and glistening with my saliva.

“What in the actual fuck?”

Another catches in my throat.

I barely have time to inhale before I’m coughing again. Ezra holds me while my body convulses, and a second kernel shoots from my mouth.

It lands beside the first.

“No,” Malakai whispers.

A third rises.

I feel this one coming.

Feel it scrape its way up my throat.

I spit it onto the ground.

Three red kernels sit in the dirt.

One for each of them.

The silence around us changes.

Hundreds of feet shift at once.

I look up.

Every Witness surrounding the Communion field lowers to their knees.

Not one by one.

Together.

Mariah grabs Ali’s hand, both of them staring at me in horror as the crowd bows their heads.