14. Victory Screams, Baby Please
Chapter fourteen
Victory Screams, Baby Please
Lorelei
Everyone here has been waiting for tonight since the season started, and I’ve only been close enough to understand why for a few weeks.
I haven’t spoken to Ash in four days. I haven’t fully sorted out what I feel about Cassian, or what he feels about me, or what any of it means now that Rafe kissed me in front of half the circuit and made sure Alistair’s people had something new to record.
Rafe’s hand is warm around mine at the rail. He should be racing tonight, but instead he’s beside me, benched: Alistair called it a reminder about discretion, and Rafe called it being punished for kissing the wrong girl where the wrong people could see. Neither version fooled either of us.
“You okay?” he asks, close to my ear, the crowd noise swallowing everything but the two of us.
“Ask me after tonight.”
The floodlights are brighter than I’ve ever seen them, the whole strip washed gold-white, banners snapping overhead with the Vale crest stitched large enough to read from the cheap seats.
Alistair stands on the raised platform near the finish line, masked like everyone else, though there’s no version of lace that hides him, not with that posture or the way people reorganize around him without needing to be told.
He lifts one hand, and silver catches the floodlights. It’s a plain band, and my stomach tightens before I understand why.
I’ve seen that ring before, or one exactly like it, on Cassian’s right hand, flashing gold in the box when he touched me.
I’ve watched rings like that cross a communion plate in Alistair’s church often enough that I stopped seeing them as anything except part of the ritual.
Now I look from his hand toward the upper level where Cassian usually stands, and the recognition settles slowly and unpleasantly.
Of course.
Beside Alistair, Helena holds a cream folder with brass corners. I don’t know what’s inside it, but Rafe does, and his fingers tighten around mine.
The final heat lines up at the rail, three bikes and two cars, engines idling in a low collective growl I feel in my teeth before I hear it properly.
None of the riders are anyone I know, which should make it easier and doesn’t.
Rafe’s attention locks onto the track with the absolute concentration of someone mentally riding every line from the wrong side of the barrier.
“You hate this,” I say.
“Pit duty?”
“The watching.”
His mouth pulls sideways. “Watching somebody take a turn wrong when you know exactly how you’d do it better is psychological warfare.”
“That dramatic?”
“I’ve been benched. I’m entitled to theatrics.”
The flag drops, and the sound punches through the crowd as five machines launch almost together. For one terrible second at the first turn, I’m convinced two of them are going to meet in the same piece of road, but the lead bike takes the corner wide, tire smoking, and the crowd erupts instead.
Beside me, Rafe swears quietly. “Too much brake.”
“You can tell that from here?”
He looks offended. “I’m choosing not to answer that.”
The cars close the gap on the final lap, one clipping the rail hard enough that the crowd gasps as one body before the driver corrects and keeps moving.
Then the lead bike crosses first, and the noise is enormous — applause and shouting and engines and people hitting the rail hard enough to make the metal shake under my hands.
For a minute, it really does look like a race.
Then Alistair raises one hand, and the circuit goes quiet so abruptly that the silence frightens me more than the cheering did.
“Season rankings,” he says, his voice carrying easily. “As always, they inform more than placement.”
Helena opens the folder, and Rafe’s hand tightens again.
“Rafe?”
He doesn’t look at me.
“Marcus Deering,” Helena reads.
A young man near the front of the crowd freezes, nineteen or twenty, someone I’ve seen around the garages before, always polite, always moving like he’s hoping somebody important notices how useful he can be.
“Last in standings,” Alistair says. “Again.”
Marcus goes pale.
“The Pits have been patient. Patience is not infinite.”
Until now, the Pits has meant garages, concrete, fuel, the place beneath the spectacle where everyone gets dirty enough to make the pretty parts run. Tonight it sounds like something else.
“What’s happening?” I whisper.
Rafe’s jaw locks. “Lo.”
“What?”
“Just watch.”
Something in his voice makes me turn toward him. “You knew.”
“I knew this could happen.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Two men move through the crowd toward Marcus, and Rafe still doesn’t look at me.
“I’ve seen Reapings before,” he says quietly.
My stomach drops. “How many?”
“Enough.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“What was I supposed to say? Sometimes the last name on a list gets walked out and everybody pretends they don’t hear what happens afterward?”
Marcus sees the men coming and doesn’t run, which might be the worst part.
“Marcus has been informed of the house’s decision,” Alistair says, calm as weather. “His placement and the family’s patience with it are no longer compatible.”
One man takes Marcus by each arm, and they simply walk him out. There’s no struggle, no spectacle, only a path opening through people who already know to move.
“Where are they taking Marcus?” I ask, too loud.
Several heads turn, and Rafe’s grip closes hard around my hand.
“Not here.”
Marcus looks toward the crowd, his eyes landing somewhere near us, and I step away from the rail.
“Lo.”
I take another step, not because I trip but because they’re bringing him this way, nobody else is moving toward him, and nineteen or twenty is too young to look that resigned.
Rafe catches my wrist.
“Don’t.”
“Where are they taking him?”
The men are almost level with us now, Marcus’s face bloodless, and I move directly into the path they’re clearing.
Both men stop, but the circuit doesn’t; noise is already creeping back in around the edges, people congratulating the winner, somebody laughing near the pits, engines turning over again.
Marcus looks at me, and up close he looks younger.
“What happens now?” I ask him.
One of the men steps between us as a quieter voice comes from beside me.
“Lorelei.”
Cassian.
I didn’t see him come down from the platform, and his voice is a warning rather than a command.
I look past him toward Alistair, who is already watching me with no surprise and no irritation, only interest. His gaze moves from me to Marcus, then to Rafe holding my wrist, then to Cassian standing between me and the men, lingering at each point like he’s deciding what the arrangement means.
I pull my hand out of Rafe’s grip.
“Where are they taking him?”
Alistair says nothing.
Helena does.
“Lorelei Vale.”
The name carries cleanly across the space between us, and my skin goes cold, not because of Lorelei, which is mine, but because the surname isn’t.
“That’s not my name.”
It comes out too sharp and too loud, enough to turn more heads.
Alistair’s mouth curves faintly. “Not yet.”
The words hit harder than anything else tonight. Marcus is moved around me, and I follow him with my eyes until the crowd closes behind the men and swallows all three of them.
Rafe comes to stand beside me, and for once he doesn’t touch me.
“That,” he says quietly. “That’s what I was trying to tell you in the garden.”
“You said you’d seen it.”
“Yeah.”
“What happens after they walk them out?”
His attention stays fixed on the place Marcus disappeared. “That part I’ve never seen.”
“Never?”
“Nico and I knew better than to follow when we were younger.”
The way he says it makes me think knew better means somebody taught them, probably the hard way.
“So you know what happens.”
“I know what people say happens.”
“That’s different.”
“I know.”
Across the circuit, Alistair is still watching.
Cassian notices before I do and steps toward me with a folded white cloth.
“For your hands.”
Only then do I realize I’ve dug my nails hard enough into my palms to leave crescents.
I take it, and his fingers brush mine as the silver band on his right hand catches the floodlight. Now that I’ve seen Alistair’s, I can’t unsee the match, and I can’t pretend the gesture is private either — not here, not with Alistair watching.
Cassian knows that.
His eyes hold mine for one beat too long before Alistair’s gaze drops deliberately to the cloth between our hands. Cassian sees him notice and doesn’t take it back.
Cold works its way through my stomach. Beside me, Rafe’s jaw tightens as Cassian steps away without a word.
My mother isn’t here, and the thought arrives suddenly enough to hurt.
She wasn’t at the opener either. I used to think that meant these nights simply weren’t hers, but now, after the garden and after hearing what she ran from before I was born, I wonder if absence is the only boundary she has managed to keep.
I wonder whether she knows what happens at the end of the season, and whether Alistair knows she knows.
“I want to see,” Rafe says.
I turn toward him. “What?”
“What comes after.” His voice is different now, not curious but resolved. “I’ve watched them walk people out before. I’ve never gone farther than that.”
“Why now?”
His eyes meet mine.
“Because I’m tired of knowing just enough to obey.”
That decides it.
“You don’t have to come,” he says.
“I know.”
We go anyway, following the edge of the crowd around behind the garages, past the vending machines and into a service corridor where the circuit noise dulls behind concrete. A door stands partly open at the end of it, and voices carry through.
“Marcus.” A woman’s voice, older and already breaking. “Marcus, baby, look at me.”
My feet stop as my mother’s face flashes through my mind, not here but somewhere else, maybe at home pretending this night doesn’t exist.
“Please,” the woman says. “He’s all we have. Whatever the house requires, we’ll do it. There has to be something.”
Helena answers, “There is nothing to require. The decision has already been made.”
“He’s twenty years old.”
Now I know exactly how old Marcus is.
“Please. I’m begging you.”
Rafe’s hand finds mine, his grip hard. He has seen the public part before, but this is new for him too.
I move toward the door.
A hand closes around my other arm.
“Don’t.”
Ash is still dressed for the circuit, jaw set, breathing harder than he should be for somebody standing still.
I turn toward him. “Ash—”
“No.” His hand stays around my arm, not hurting and not letting go either. “You don’t get to watch this.”
Anger cuts clean through everything else.
“You don’t get to decide that.”
His face changes because he knows exactly what I mean.
“I know,” he says immediately, his grip loosening without disappearing. “I know what I told you.”
“Then let go.”
He does, and the fact that he actually listens surprises me enough that I stay where I am.
Ash looks toward the open door before speaking again. “I’m asking you not to go in.”
“That’s different.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve seen it.”
Rafe looks at him, but Ash doesn’t look back.
“I know what stays with you afterward.”
Behind him, Marcus’s mother starts pleading again, and my stomach turns.
“You can still go,” Ash says. “I won’t stop you, but I’m asking you not to.”
The words cost him. I can hear it.
I look toward the door, then at Rafe, who hasn’t moved.
“I need to know,” he says.
Ash finally looks at him.
Rafe holds his gaze, and whatever they understand in that moment belongs to years I wasn’t there for.
“Then go,” Ash says.
Rafe squeezes my hand once and releases it. I stay with Ash while Rafe steps toward the door, and for one second I can see him through the opening, shoulders squared, every trace of his usual grin gone, before he disappears inside.
Ash stands beside me without touching me while we listen. I hate him a little for being right, and I hate myself more for being relieved I didn’t look.
Behind us, the circuit keeps celebrating. Ahead of us, a mother cries for her son, and somewhere above all of it Alistair has already added my name to something.
Lorelei Vale.
My stomach turns at the memory of his answer.
Not yet.