11. The Offering Pt. I
Chapter eleven
The Offering Pt. I
Lorelei
The annex sits behind the church proper, close enough to share its foundation but far enough away that the church can pretend not to know what happens here. No pews, no stained glass, no hymnals, no cameras. Rafe told me that once, weeks ago, before I understood why it mattered.
The stone floor has been worn smooth by people whose Sunday clothes probably never came anywhere near this room. Upstairs, thousands of people sing about salvation under stage lights.
Down here, nobody is singing yet.
Helena dresses me in the room off the entrance, her hands steady at my back as she fastens hooks I can’t reach. White, like Cassian told me in the garden. Under the candles, the fabric looks almost luminous, which seems excessive for something nobody will explain.
“Where’s Ash?”
Helena’s fingers stop on the last hook.
“He isn’t part of tonight.”
“Why not?”
“That isn’t mine to explain.”
I look at her in the mirror. “Does anyone in this family have a job that includes explaining things?”
She checks the line of my shoulder instead of answering.
Of course.
I glance toward the door anyway, half expecting Ash to appear late and angry, already looking for whoever needs to be blamed.
He doesn’t, and the relief comes before I can stop it.
If Ash isn’t here, I don’t have to watch his face while this happens or see him standing there with all that guilt and nowhere useful to put it.
I hate the relief.
A woman I don’t recognize brings an ornate chalice to me after Helena leaves. She’s older, with careful hands and a voice that sounds built for ceremonies instead of conversations. Pale gold liquid fills the bottom, bruised petals settled beneath it.
“What is that?”
“A special flower.”
“That didn’t answer the question.”
“It eases the transition. Everyone takes it tonight.”
She lifts a smaller cup from the tray at her side and drinks from it first, one swallow before setting it down.
“The house does not ask of the vessel what it does not ask of itself. You’ll understand shortly.”
I look past her toward the door, where two people I don’t know are standing in the hall. Nobody says I have to drink it, but the woman keeps holding the chalice out while everybody waits, and I notice that hers was a sip.
Mine goes to the bottom.
I take it.
The liquid tastes floral at first. The bitterness arrives after I swallow, and the woman retrieves the empty cup before I can set it down.
“How long does it take?”
“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.
Neither one is.
“Tonight, she chooses no one,” Alistair says to the room. “Tonight, the choosing is not hers to make. The house chooses what the house requires.”
My body leans toward the warmth on either side of me before I notice. I straighten, and the hooks at the back of the dress dig into my skin while the chanting grows louder.
Cassian’s fingers tighten around mine.
“Lorelei.”
His voice is low enough that the room can’t hear.
I turn toward him.
“Are you here?”
I don’t know what he means. I’m standing directly in front of him. He can see that.
“Yes,” I say anyway.
The answer sounds steadier than I feel.
His eyes search mine through the mask, and whatever he is looking for, he decides he has found enough of it.
Rafe bends toward me and presses his mouth to my temple.
“You don’t have to be scared.”
Cassian says my name again, and this time it isn’t a question. His hand comes up to my jaw, and I feel the tremor he hasn’t managed to keep out of it tonight.
Then he reaches for the edge of his mask.
The chanting falters before I understand why.
“Cassian.” Rafe’s voice is low and sharp.
A warning.
Cassian removes the mask anyway.
For one second, nothing happens, which might be the strangest part. Nobody gasps. Alistair doesn’t reprimand him. The chanting resumes, but the rhythm has gone subtly wrong, enough that I know Cassian has done something he wasn’t supposed to do.
His face looks different without the mask.
Not unfamiliar.
Worse.
Too familiar.
I know that mouth. I know the line between his brows when he’s irritated and the tiny pull at one corner when he’s trying not to laugh at me. I know exactly how much easier it was to stand here wanting to kiss him while he was just another piece of the ritual dressed in black.
“You weren’t supposed to do that.”
“No.”
“Very rebellious.”
“Don’t make too much of it.”
“Too late.”
His thumb touches my jaw again, and this time I know exactly whose hand it is.
Alistair continues as though his son hasn’t just broken whatever rule made Rafe warn him.
“The face is known. The body is presented. What enters the house enters without concealment.”
“Nothing hidden. Nothing withheld,” the room answers.
Bullshit.
I almost say it.
Then Rafe reaches for his own mask.
Cassian turns toward him. “Rafael.”
“What?”
“You know what.”
“Yeah.”
He removes it anyway.
The first thing I notice is how angry he looks, and not at me, which would be simpler.
His jaw is tight enough that I can see the muscle moving beneath the skin, and when he looks toward Alistair, something passes across his face that makes me wonder exactly how much of tonight he knew before he walked into this room.
Then he looks back at me, and that part I recognize.
Worry.
“Better?” he asks.
“A little.”
It’s true, which irritates me too.
Dominic steps forward carrying a shallow silver bowl.
Oil.
Of course.
Because apparently getting half-drugged and presented to a circle of masked relatives wasn’t ceremonial enough.
Cassian releases my hand and moves behind me, his fingers finding the fastenings at the back of my dress. He doesn’t ask, and neither does anybody else. One hook releases, then another, and cold air finds the strip of skin between my shoulder blades.
That is when I hear the first buckle.
I glance toward the wall and find one of the men nearest us removing his belt, not seductively but normally.
Beside him, a woman slips her robe from one shoulder without missing the response to Dominic’s next line.
Farther down, somebody removes a shoe and places it neatly beside the other before starting on their clothes.
Nobody announces anything.
Nobody looks surprised.
They simply know.
The realization runs colder through me than the air against my bare back. Everyone in this room arrived knowing what happened after the masks came off except me.
“Of course,” I mutter.
Rafe turns his head. “What?”
“Nothing. I missed the group email.”
His mouth almost moves, but the last fastening comes free before whatever answer he might have made reaches it.