17. The Altar Keeps Score
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.”
The sentence lands without accusation. Alistair rarely reaches for one before he has decided exactly where to place it.
“Who told you?”
“A concerned member of the household.”
“Who?”
His mouth shifts almost imperceptibly. “That isn’t relevant.”
Which means it is.
Carmen would not bring this to him unless she believed Lorelei was in immediate physical danger. Helena would have documented it through the household system. Dominic would tell me directly, if only because he would want to see what I did with the knowledge.
Ash.
The answer arrives before I finish considering the others. I don’t say his name, but Alistair watches me find it.
“How often?” I ask.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“That is becoming clear.”
The words should irritate me. Instead they expose an omission I should have noticed weeks ago.
Rafe’s reports have become sparse: Lorelei attends class, returns home, spends time with university friends, no notable incidents, no material changes.
I accepted the compression because Rafe has never been good at paperwork and Dominic assured me the surveillance itself remained intact.
I also accepted it because the Offering required preparation, Ash had to be excluded, Talia’s arrangement required adjustment, and every new problem arrived attached to another one.
I told myself I was managing priorities.
This should have surfaced anyway.
“How long have you known?” I ask.
Alistair returns his attention to the page. “Long enough to know your oversight is not new.”
My jaw tightens. He notices, of course, but gives no indication that the reaction interests him.
“Fix it,” he says. “Quietly. And I would begin with whoever is supplying it. If the household is still unaware by the end of the week, I will fix it myself, and I will not ask whether you had a preference about how.”
I understand the sentence before he finishes it. There is only one person in this house who supplies anything to Lorelei, and my father has placed her name inside a threat without speaking it.
“Understood.”
“I am confident you do.”
I leave the study with the ledger beneath one arm and a question I dislike enough to carry personally.
Talia is in the east sitting room. Lorelei is not, a fact I establish before I register anything else.
Talia has one leg folded beneath her on the sofa, reading something on her phone while the television plays silently in front of her, and she looks up when I enter with an expression that begins as casual and disappears as soon as she sees my face.
“How often is Lorelei using cocaine?”
A pause follows. It would mean nothing to most people, but I know her too well for that.
Talia locks her phone and places it facedown beside her. “I don’t keep a calendar.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“It was close.”
“How often?”
She studies me before answering. “You know.”
“I know she uses. I’m asking how often.”
The next pause is longer. She is deciding what I know, where I learned it, and how much truth she can afford to place around either answer.
“You should ask her,” she says.
“I’m asking you.”
“Then you’re already asking the wrong person.”
The phrase catches somewhere unpleasant. I step farther into the room.
“You’ve been spending more time with her.”
“Yes.”
“You have access.”
“So do a lot of people.”
“You have a history of using.”
“So do a lot of people in this house.”
Her voice stays even, but there is a blade beneath it now. I recognize the construction because I taught her how to answer questions without surrendering the shape of the truth.
Apparently she learned too well.
“How often?” I ask again.
Talia leans back against the sofa. “Enough that you’re asking.”
The arrangement between us has always depended on clarity rather than honesty. Those are different things, though I did not understand the full distance between them until recently.
I told her what I needed: keep Ash occupied, keep him soft, distract him from Lorelei long enough for the house to move around him. The rest was left to her judgment because micromanaging attraction defeats the purpose of hiring someone good at producing it.
At some point, Lorelei became part of the equation. I noticed and did not intervene because proximity to Talia made Lorelei easier to observe, or that was the explanation I gave myself at the time.
It feels inadequate now.
“Did you give it to her?”
Talia’s eyes sharpen. “That’s a very specific question.”
“Answer it.”
“She asked.”
It is not a complete answer, but it gives me what I need.
“How many times?”
“You don’t get to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend you suddenly care about the line because you discovered somebody crossed it without filing the paperwork through you first.”
My expression stays still, but inside it something turns.
“This isn’t about paperwork.”
Talia laughs once without humor. “Everything is paperwork with you.”
“That’s convenient.”
“So is acting surprised.”
I take another step toward her. “You were not instructed to facilitate drug use.”
“No.”
“Then why did you?”
“She wanted it.”
“That has never been enough reason for you before.”
The words leave before I consider everything they contain.
Talia goes quiet, and the room changes with her. I hear the sentence again with better ears, and so does she.
“Well,” she says softly. “There he is.”
I don’t answer.
“You hired me to manipulate Ash because you wanted him easier to move around.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“You paid me to become somebody he trusted.”
“That was the arrangement.”
“And now you’re asking why I let Lorelei make a decision you don’t like.”
“She is spiraling.”
“Probably.”
“You say that like it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
“Then stop.”
Her face hardens.
“No.”
The refusal is clean, and I am not accustomed to hearing it from her without qualification.
“Talia.”
“She asks me. I decide whether to say yes based on whether I think she’s about to do something even stupider without me there.”
“That is not judgment I authorized you to exercise.”
“I’m not yours to authorize.”
The room goes still.
I know that.
The arrangement has terms, payment, expectations, and exit clauses, and none of those constitute ownership. Still, the sentence finds something rotten enough inside me to hurt.
“Does Ash know?”
Her jaw shifts before she can prevent it, which is another answer.
“He confronted you.”
She doesn’t confirm it.
She doesn’t need to.
“And?”
“He told me to stay away from her.”
I almost laugh, not because it is funny but because Ash has apparently learned nothing.
Then again, neither have I.
“Did you?”
“Obviously not.”
“Why?”
Talia looks at me for a moment like she is deciding whether I deserve the answer.
“Because somebody has to stop treating every bad decision she makes like proof she needs another person making decisions for her.”
The sentence lands harder than I want it to.
“You think giving her cocaine is respecting her autonomy.”
“No. I think pretending the only choices available are obedience or abandonment is bullshit.” She stands. “You should be asking why everybody around Lorelei keeps deciding what she can handle and then acting shocked when she finds another way to handle it.”
For a moment we are close enough that anyone passing the doorway might mistake the confrontation for something else.
Then Talia walks past me.
My phone vibrates before she reaches the hall.
I glance down.
HOUSEHOLD ADMINISTRATION: Talia Reyes — discretionary stipend suspended pending review. Private-wing access restricted effective immediately.
She hears the vibration and looks back.
I do not need to show her the screen.
Something in my face tells her enough.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
Her laugh is short and ugly. “That’s usually the problem.”
“Talia.”
“What?”
I should tell her my father knows.
I should tell her the restriction will not be the end of it if Lorelei’s cocaine use continues.
Instead I say, “Your access has been restricted.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“And the money?”
“Suspended.”
She nods once, absorbing it much more calmly than I would prefer.
“There’s your paperwork.”
“This wasn’t my decision.”
“No, Cassian.” Her voice stays quiet. “You just built the arrangement that gave him something to take away.”
She leaves before I can answer.
I remain in the sitting room with the muted television reflecting an empty sofa and my own outline standing behind it. My father placed Talia inside a threat, acted before I could decide what I intended to do with that threat, and I still did not warn her.
Perhaps withholding it protected the arrangement.
It certainly did not protect her.
My first instinct is to confront Rafe.
I take out my phone to do exactly that, then stop with his name open beneath my thumb. Talia’s accusation is still too recent, and going directly from her refusal to Rafe’s would make the pattern difficult even for me to deny.
Instead, I open the most recent reporting file.
Rafe’s submission contains four lines.
Subject attended private circuit gathering with university associates.
No notable change in routine.
No security concerns.
Subject returned safely.
I read them twice.
Nothing in the report is obviously false, which bothers me more than a direct lie would. A lie would give me a clean violation to confront. This requires me to establish what he chose not to say and why.
I open the previous submissions: class, home, garage, university, no notable concerns, no unusual behavior. Lorelei’s decline does not appear, and Talia exists only as ordinary household contact.
The reports are not incomplete through carelessness.
They have been curated.
Rafe has removed the parts of Lorelei’s life he believes the house could use, leaving enough truth for the reports to pass while withholding everything that matters.
He has been deciding what we are allowed to know.
The thought should make me angry.
It does, but not cleanly.
I close the reporting file and open the Offering ledger. Ash’s name is still struck through in red. Lorelei’s lineage remains at the top, followed by her assessments and the household’s requirements, and my signature sits beneath Rafe’s, both of us preserved in ink as recognized claimants.
Talia exists nowhere in the document.
Neither does the cocaine.
It was already in Lorelei’s system when I took her hand. She had used that day, then drank the flower because we told her to, and I knew what the flower was designed to do. I used its effects to explain why she seemed so open, so willing to yield after months of fighting me on everything.
I asked whether she was there.
She said yes.
I accepted the answer because I wanted to believe it, then signed an account that contains none of the conditions under which she gave it.
Records are useful because they make events look finished: a signature, a struck-through name, a status entered into the proper field. A person becomes whatever survives the page.
I have spent most of my life believing the record was where disorder ended.
Now, looking at Lorelei’s name above an account that leaves out half of what happened to her, I understand that a record may only mark the place where someone decided to stop writing.
I close the ledger.
For once, I don’t know which missing line frightens me most.