19. Two Days Until Bonding #2
Rebecca crosses to a wooden bench beside the bath. A white robe lies across it with a stack of towels, soap, and a silver bowl. Someone prepared all of this before we arrived.
She picks up the robe and places it within my reach.
“Order girls are brought here when they turn sixteen. Their mothers prepare the water and remain with them while they bathe.”
I look toward the manacles.
Rebecca does too.
“The Sons and Daughters of The Order experience this chamber differently.”
“I’m guessing the boys don’t get flowers.”
“No.” A trace of sadness passes over her face. “At fifteen, the boys cut their palms and add their blood to a ceremonial bowl. They speak The Order vow, then receive the mark on the back of their right shoulder.”
The mark Carrson never chose.
“They call it an initiation into manhood,” she continues. “A lesson in obedience and endurance.”
“It sounds like abuse.”
“Often, tradition is simply abuse that has survived long enough to earn a more respectable name.”
The answer surprises me.
“Then why are you helping them continue it?”
“Because understanding a system and pretending it doesn’t exist are not the same thing.” She lifts one of the towels and places it beside the robe. “I have spent my life learning which traditions can be changed, which can be used, and which ones will crush you if you ignore them.”
“That sounds like something Carr would say.”
“Carr and I learned many of the same lessons. Often side by side. We didn’t always reach the same conclusions.”
“So you were bonded once?”
“Worse,” she says, “we were in love. We still are, but something you’ll realize as you grow older is that love isn’t always enough. Not unless you choose each other above all else.”
Rebecca pulls aside the neckline of her blouse, exposing the brand high on her chest. The cross of The Order. Beside it is another scar, rougher and less precise, shaped like a jagged crescent.
I lean forward. “Is—is that a letter C?”
Color rises into Rebecca’s cheeks, and I don’t think the steam is entirely responsible. “In my defense, Carr has one too. A B, for Becky. That’s the name I used when I was younger.” She pauses. “Can I give you a piece of advice?”
I nod.
“Never give a man anything he wouldn’t give you in return. Always make sure it’s even.”
Before I can respond, she lets her blouse fall into place, then walks to the far side of the chamber and turns away from me. “You may undress. I won’t look.”
I don’t move.
Rebecca waits without turning around.
“What exactly am I washing off?”
“The Order calls it purification. I’ve never cared for that word. It suggests a girl arrives here unclean.” She looks up at the carvings on the wall rather than toward me. “I think of it as crossing a threshold. You enter as a child. You leave knowing what membership requires.”
“What does it require?”
“I’ll explain while you bathe.”
I look at the stairs. I could leave. Rebecca said the choice was mine, and so far, she hasn’t done anything to stop me. Too bad for me, I’ve never been good at walking away from unanswered questions, especially when they concern Carrson Ashford.
I undress.
The chamber air brushes cold across my bare skin.
Rebecca keeps her back to me as promised, her attention fixed on a Latin inscription carved into the wall.
I stare at it too, wishing Carrson were here to translate, although I know what he’d do if he saw me standing here.
He’d demand I leave. Drag me upstairs himself.
I lower myself into the bath.
The water is hotter than I expect. Heat climbs my legs and gathers around my waist as I sit, sending the flowers drifting toward the bronze edges. The bath is deep enough that the water reaches my chest.
Rebecca points to the silver bowl without turning.
“Use that to rinse your hair. The soap contains rose, honeysuckle, and myrrh. Different families add their own ingredients, but those three have been used by the Ashfords for generations. I added magnolia for the Bellefleurs.”
I pick up the soap. It smells much too sweet for a place where blood has been spilled.
“Did Sam do this?”
“Yes.”
“You brought her?”
“I did.” She answers without hesitation.
I rub the soap between my palms and wash my arms. The water clouds where the suds dissolve, sending flower petals drifting across my skin. A few cling to my wrists when I cup my hands and pour water over my closed eyes.
“Was she scared?”
“Terrified.”
I look at Rebecca’s back. “You don’t seem bothered by that.”
“I was bothered every minute she was in this room.” Her shoulders remain straight, but one hand closes around the other at her waist. “Being afraid doesn’t always mean a person should be removed from danger. Sometimes it means they need someone beside them who can guide them through it.”
I wash the back of my neck, thinking of Sam lowering her eyes the instant Rebecca asked whether she was being questioned. Love and control braided together so tightly I’m not sure Rebecca knows where one ends and the other begins.
“Why am I here?”
“You and Carrson can’t bond unless you complete this ritual and become a true Daughter of The Order.”
I had already guessed that, but hearing it here, naked in a bath under Carrson’s ancestral estate, makes the distinction feel less theoretical.
“So this is a requirement.”
“It is.”
“And you waited until I was already in the bath to tell me.”
“I told you the bath was preparation. I haven’t asked you to agree to anything else.”
“You knew I’d come farther if I didn’t know what was waiting.”
“Yes.”
At least she doesn’t insult me by denying it.
I wash the rest of my body under Rebecca’s instructions, passing the cloth over my skin while she explains the words carved into the wall.
They’re the same ones Thomson told me, when Carrson first made me the deal that saved my father and my future.
The one that bound me to him out of necessity rather than love.
We are The Order.
We bond in blood.
We rise in power.
We seek perfection.
The same beliefs shaped into different rituals. Boys bleed. Girls bathe. Both leave branded by the same cross.
“Is this where Louellen prepared you?”
“Eventually.” Rebecca reaches up and trails one finger along the metal edge of a manacle. “But the first time I came into this chamber, I wasn’t invited.”
I look twice, startled by the fondness in the gesture.
“I stole the key and opened the door myself.”
I stop with the silver bowl halfway to my hair. “What happened?”
“Carr found me. He was furious.”
She smiles at the memory, which only confuses me further.
She turns enough for me to see her profile, though her eyes remain directed away from the bath. “I saw parts of Carr down here that no one else was allowed to see. I understood what had been done to him. I also understood what he might become if no one was willing to enter the darkness with him.”
The water moves around me as I lower the bowl. “You thought you could save him.”
“No.”
She crosses to the brazier. I flinch when she strikes a match. She drops it onto a waiting pile of coal and kindling. Flames light immediately, flickering like the tongues of snakes. “Loving someone doesn’t make you their cure. Even I knew that.”
I lift the silver bowl and pour the scented water over my hair. It runs down my face and shoulders.
“So what happened with you two?”
Her sigh lifts her shoulders. “We made mistakes. We chose The Order over ourselves. Over being together.” She watches the fire grow. “I don’t regret all of it. We’ve accomplished incredible things, but we’ve hurt people too.”
She pauses.
“Carrson most of all.” Rebecca crosses her arms over her chest. “If Carr hadn’t spent so many years drinking.
If I hadn’t let my anger keep me at a distance unless business forced us into the same room, maybe I would have seen what was happening to Carrson sooner. Maybe I could have stopped some of it.”
I’ve gone motionless at the sound of his name. “I heard you sent Samantha after him, even when they were young.”
“I did.” Rebecca doesn’t try to soften the admission. “I saw something in Carrson. Gentleness. Kindness. Empathy.” Her voice lightens, warmed by the memory. “When he was eight, I caught him sneaking out to the boathouse. I followed him, and do you know what I found?”
The water goes smooth around me. I don’t move enough to disturb it, suddenly desperate for whatever she can give me. Pieces of Carrson from before I knew him. More ways to know the person he was before The Order taught him to retreat into himself.
“What?”
“He was feeding a nest of baby mice. Their mother had disappeared. He went down there four or five times a day with his pockets stuffed with food he’d pilfered from the kitchen. He was the only reason they were still alive.”
My heart aches at the image. A boy without a mother caring for creatures abandoned by theirs.
“What happened to them?”
I can already tell from the set of Rebecca’s shoulders that the story doesn’t have a happy ending.
“A feral cat from the barn found them.” Her head bows. “Carrson walked in while it was killing them. He tried to stop it, but he was too late.”
The fire shifts behind her, filling the brazier with a deep orange glow.
“That was the last time I saw him cry.”
My own tear slips free and disappears into the bathwater without a sound. More follow as I picture Carrson at eight years old, arriving with his pockets full of food and finding every small life he’d fought to protect already lost.
“That was when I decided Samantha should bond with him,” Rebecca continues. “I thought they might change The Order together. My daughter has a good head on her shoulders. I believed she could protect that part of Carrson. Help him become a man who nurtured rather than destroyed.”
She lets out a humorless laugh.
“I encouraged her. I pushed the idea because I believed I knew what was best for both of them. Samantha took it further. She pursued him and eventually drugged him. When I learned what she’d done, I ordered her to stop, but by then the damage was done. Carrson no longer trusted her.”
“Or you.”