Chapter 14 #2
I push the thought away and follow the staff member through corridors that have become familiar, past the library and the gallery and the training hall where I've bled and bruised and learned.
The purification chamber is at the heart of the house, a circular room of white marble and silver light, with a ritual circle inlaid in platinum and pearl.
The candles are already arranged. Seven white for purification. Seven black for protection. Seven red for blood. My athame waits on the low altar at the center, beside a chalice that gleams like captured moonlight.
I step into the circle, and the wards snap into place around me.
The envy surges, hating the containment.
Wanting to spread, to compare, to measure this circle against every other circle I've ever used.
Is this one better? Worse? Why does Seraph have platinum when Croesus has gold?
Is one more valuable than the other? Does it matter?
Why does everything always have to be a competition?
I light the candles with steady hands. The flames catch immediately, white and black and red flickering in patterns that have nothing to do with ordinary fire. They respond to my will, my blood, my desperate need to be free of what I'm carrying.
I take up the athame.
The blade is cool in my palm, familiar as my own heartbeat. I've done this so many times that the motions have become automatic. Cut. Bleed. Speak. Release. But Seraph's voice echoes in my memory: "Ritual is focus, not crutch. The power is in you. The ceremony just helps you access it."
I press the blade to my hand and reopen the wound.
The pain is sharp and immediate and grounding.
Blood wells up dark red and I let it drip it onto the circle, igniting the magic in the room.
The envy screams at the violation, furious that I would damage something as precious as myself, convinced that other sin eaters probably don't have to bleed this much, don't have to suffer this way.
"Ex carne mea, te expello." From my flesh, I cast you out.
The words come easier now. Not because the envy isn't fighting them, but because I've learned to speak around the resistance. To force the syllables past the sin's desperate attempts to silence me.
"Ex anima mea, te solvo." From my soul, I release you.
Blood drips slowly from my hand now. The candle flames stretch higher.
"Non sum invidia." I am not envy.
The sin writhes, named and trapped and furious. It claws at my insides, trying to convince me that I am envy, that I've always been envious, that wanting what others have is the most natural thing in the world.
"Non sum cupiditas aliena." I am not desire for what belongs to another.
My voice shakes, but it doesn't break.
"Redi ad originem tuam." Return to your origin.
I pour more of the blood onto the circle. The pearl inlay catches fire, white flames that burn cold instead of hot, fed by my angel blood and my will and my absolute refusal to let this sin become part of me. This is new. But I don’t fear it. This feels... right.
"Redi ad dominum tuum." Return to your master.
Somewhere, distantly, Idris flinches.
The envy tears itself out of me like something with claws. I taste copper and cold and the bitter dregs of three years of wanting, and then it's gone. Burned away. Purged.
I collapse forward, hands braced against the marble, gasping for breath that doesn't come easily. The circle releases me. The wards fall. The candles gutter and die, smoke spiraling toward a ceiling I can't see through tear-blurred eyes.
It's over.
I'm empty. Hollowed out. Clean.
The new tattoo throbs on my forearm, and I finally look at it. A pair of scales, delicate and silver, perfectly balanced. The mark of envy overcome. Fifty contracts broken, fifty sins purged, fifty times I've survived what should have killed me.
I don't know how long I lie there. Minutes, probably. In my exhaustion, it feels like hours.
Eventually, I push myself upright. My arms shake. My legs don't want to cooperate. But I manage to stand, to gather my athame and chalice, to clean the blood from the circle with the cloths left for exactly this purpose.
When I open the door, Seraph is waiting.
He's leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed over his chest, white shirt pristine, platinum hair perfect. The picture of casual elegance, like he hasn't been standing here for however long it took me to purge three years of supernatural envy.
"You watched," I say. Not accusing. Just acknowledging.
"I observed." He pushes off the wall, and his silver eyes scan me with that clinical attention I've become used to. Looking for cracks, for weaknesses, for signs that the sin left damage behind. "Through the wards. From a distance."
"Same thing."
"Not quite." He falls into step beside me as I start walking back toward his chambers. I need sleep. Food. Water. In that order. "Watching implies passive observation. I was ready to intervene if necessary."
"It wasn't necessary."
"No." And there it is, that note in his voice that I've learned to recognize over the past weeks. Pride, but not the sin. Something warmer. Something almost like admiration. "It wasn't."
We walk in silence for a few moments. The house shifts around us, corridors rearranging themselves to shorten our path. Even the building recognizes when I'm too exhausted to navigate properly.
"You controlled it," Seraph says finally. "From the moment you touched her hands. You controlled the intake, the absorption, the release. No wild moments. No losing yourself in the sin's narrative."
"You taught me how," I whisper. Even I can acknowledge he’s taught me.
"I gave you techniques. You applied them." He stops walking, and I stop with him. We're in one of the mirrored corridors now, our reflections stretching into infinity on both sides. I try not to look at myself. I probably look like straight ass.
Seraph turns to face me, and his expression is unreadable. But his eyes are soft in a way I haven't seen before. In a way that makes my chest tight and my throat close.
"Better," he says quietly. "You're learning."
It shouldn't feel this good. Four words, barely a compliment, from an angel who's spent over a month tearing me down and building me back up in a shape he prefers. I shouldn't feel warmth spreading through my exhausted body, shouldn't feel my lips curving into something that might be a smile.
But I do.
"Thank you," I say again. And then, because the vulnerability of the moment is too much, because I feel the walls I usually keep up trembling: "I'm going to sleep for about twelve hours now."
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. "That would be acceptable. I'll have food sent to the chambers for when you wake."
"You don't have to..."
"I know." He starts walking again, and I follow, because my legs are about to give out and his chambers have the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in. "But you'll be useless for training if you're hungry. Consider it pragmatism."
"Right. Pragmatism."
We don't say anything else until we reach his chambers. He opens the door for me, and I stumble toward the bed without ceremony, collapsing onto silk sheets that smell like lilies and ozone and him.
I feel him watching from the doorway. Feel his attention like weight, like warmth, like something I shouldn't want as much as I do.
"Seraph," I mumble into the pillow.
"Yes?"
"The investigation. Grandmother. You said you'd help."
A pause. Then, soft as snowfall: "We'll dive back in tomorrow. After you've recovered."
"Promise?"
Another pause. Longer this time. I'm too tired to open my eyes, but I can imagine his expression. That careful blankness that hides something complicated underneath.
"I promise," he says.
The door closes.
I sleep.
And for the first time since I arrived at the House of Ruin, I don't dream of Croesus at all.