32. Bonding Day #2
“I, Carrson Rowe Ashford, solo bond you, Laurel Ann Turner.”
Carr lunges for our joined hands.
Carrson’s free arm closes around my waist, pulling me against him.
“You are my first bond and my last bond. Until my dying day, I will take no second. I will take no third.” His eyes never leave mine. “Only you.”
“No!”
Carr’s shout echoes through the hall. His hand shoots toward Carrson’s wrist, but Carrson closes his other hand over mine, trapping the dagger and our joined blood between us.
Carr wrenches the blade free. Steel tears through the cut in my palm, opening it wider. Pain sears up my arm, but Carrson immediately presses his hand to mine, palm to palm, finger to finger.
Then, in front of everyone, he kisses me.
Just like at the ball, the room dissolves the instant his lips meet mine. Carr’s fury, the watching crowd, the blood sliding between our hands. They’re all still here, but none of them can compete with the answer in Carrson’s kiss.
He wants me.
Only me.
I press my bleeding palm harder against his and kiss him back. When I open my eyes and pull away, the room is in chaos.
The Order wanted witnesses. Now they have them.
The same people who rose, bowed, and recited every response as one now spill into the aisles, shouting over each other. Benches are pushed back so hard that one tips over. Fathers point toward the dais while Sisters clutch their crosses and demand to know whether the bond is valid.
Carr raises both hands and orders everyone back into their seats, but his commands disappear beneath the uproar.
“It is valid,” Thom shouts at a Father beside him. “The right to a solo bond is written into the bylaws. Once spoken in blood, it cannot be revoked. Carrson has spoken the vow. He can bond only her. No one else.”
The Father argues back, but his words vanish into the surrounding noise.
Carr’s voice finally rises above the others. The shouting breaks apart, then dies, leaving the hall in an uneasy silence.
Then Jack rises. “We have not finished the bonding.”
His voice carries clearly from the front row. He looks past Carr and fixes his gaze on me. “Laurel Turner has yet to speak her vow.”
The triumph inside me fades. He’s right. Carrson has bound his entire future to me, but I haven’t spoken a single word in return.
Carr turns toward us. His expression is strained, but when he speaks his voice is once again controlled.
“Laurel, speak your vow.”
Carrson pays no attention to his father. His eyes remain on mine as his grip loosens around my wounded hand, enough that I can pull away.
He’s just rejected every other woman The Order might have chosen for him. Sacrificed the alliances and power those bonds would have brought. He made that choice in front of hundreds of people, knowing there would be no way to take it back, and still, he doesn’t assume I’ll choose him.
The question in his eyes is unmistakable.
Are you sure?
I curl my fingers around his and press our bleeding palms together.
Yes.
“I, Laurel Ann Turner, under the laws of The Order, bond you, Carrson Rowe Ashford. In blood and will, I claim you as mine. I take your house and your purpose as my own. My strength is yours. I accept your power and protection in return. From this moment forward, we stand as one, unbroken, unchallenged, and unending.”
My final words fade away. That’s where the vow is supposed to end, but Carrson went beyond it, so I do too.
“I choose you, Carrson. Not because they brought me here. Not because they cut us open and put words in our mouths.” I hold his hand against mine, letting our blood run together. “Because I love you.”
His composure shatters. His lips part, and the devotion that crosses his face is raw and open, so unlike the future High Father he presented to the room, that my own voice nearly fails me. But I force it loud, making sure he hears the rest.
“Only you.”
Carr lifts his hands before Carrson can kiss me again.
“The bond is complete,” he announces.
Silence answers him.
Carr’s eyes narrow as he looks over the benches. “Bonded…”
The response is delayed, scattered voices gathering strength until the words fill the hall.
“By blood.”
It lacks the perfect unity of their earlier recitations. Some members shout the words as though Carrson’s defiance has given them reason to celebrate. Others barely move their lips. A Father near the aisle refuses to speak at all.
Jack remains standing. “The bond may be complete,” he says, raising his voice, “but the ceremony is not.” His gaze returns to me. “The sealing has yet to be witnessed.”
My palm throbs against Carrson’s, our blood cooling between our joined hands.
Jack turns to Carr. “Unless your son’s singular-bond spectacle was intended to distract us. To make us forget that tonight requires two sacred rites, not one.”
The brief warmth inside me dies.
All the faces turn toward the altar.
The red light of the camera blinks.
Waiting.
**
Carrson looks to his father. “Please,” he says quietly. “Don’t make us do this.”
Carr’s expression changes. His hand lowers, and the High Father disappears. He looks at Carrson with concern, then at me, and hope rises in me.
He’s going to help us. He’s going to tell Jack no.
Then Carr looks past us to the rest of the room. To the people he leads, who now sit separated from their neighbors. Who glare across the aisle at one another in a way they didn’t do before. His shoulders square beneath the gray robe.
“The sealing will proceed.”
My shoulders hunch, even as I understand. Carrson’s solo bond has already cost the Ashfords two future alliances and divided the room. If Carr lets us refuse this too, he’ll appear incapable of controlling his own house.
I believed he would choose his son. Instead, he chooses the only way he knows how to love Carrson, by protecting him and preserving the Ashfords’ future.
Carr avoids our eyes as he lifts the box from the table and returns the blood-coated dagger to it. The glossy lining yields under the blade, allowing it to sink slightly before holding it in place. He fits the lid over the box and snaps it closed, sealing it away.
His hands remain on the lid for an extra beat, then he sets it aside and turns back to us.
“Laurel,” he says, his voice low with weariness. “Please take a seat.”
Carrson is the only thing I let myself see as I lower onto the edge of the altar. I face the crowd, which has gone so silent I can hear the torches hiss.
“Undress her,” Carr tells his son.
Carrson’s hand closes into a fist. His weight shifts forward, the muscles in his legs drawing taut as though he’s preparing to launch himself at his father, at everyone who insists on the sealing.
He can’t fight this entire room, but the look in his eyes tells me he’ll try anyway. I can’t let that happen. The Order may risk his life for their own selfish gain, but I never will.
I place my bloody hand on his arm. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” He shakes his head.
“I can do this. Let me,” I tell him. I don’t know whether it’s true, if I can go through with it. I only know what he might do if he believes it isn’t.
Carrson lowers his head. His eyes close, but not before the candlelight catches the wetness gathering along his lashes. He swallows, his throat working against whatever he wants to say.
“Okay,” he says, low enough that only I can hear. When he looks at me again, his eyes hold mine with painful intensity. “I’ll stop if you tell me to. At any point.”
“I know you will.” I try to smile, to reassure him, but my lips won’t cooperate. They tremble instead.
Carrson’s hands move to the belt at my waist. He works the knot loose with the concentration of someone disarming a bomb, then places his hands on my shoulders.
Before he can slide the robe away, a voice rings out.
“Stop!”
Sam stands in front of the benches with her hood shoved off her head and one arm extended toward the crowd.
Jack rises to face her. “Stand down, Samantha. This is no business of yours. Let the adults make the decisions.”
“No,” she snaps back, “not when you make decisions like this.” She turns to the rest of the room, searching the rows of cream and gray robes. “Stop this. This isn’t power. It’s perversion!”
No one answers her call. They stare at their feet or sullenly glare back.
Her expression moves from desperate to disbelieving as the silence holds.
“Please? Someone?” My heart breaks, watching as Sam realizes she’s alone.
“Mother?” she says finally.
Rebecca stands, her eyes bouncing between Sam and me. The apology on her face tells me what her answer will be before she gives it.
“You should sit down, Samantha.”
The calculation is clear. Rebecca has spent years preparing to destroy The Order, and whatever plan she has isn’t ready. Defying them tonight could expose her, endanger everyone working with her, and destroy her only chance to bring them down.
Understanding her choice does nothing to dull the betrayal.
Angry tears glimmer in Sam’s eyes, but she refuses to let them go.
“Fine.” Her voice trembles with fury. “You leave me no choice.” She points toward the watching crowd. “You brought this on yourselves.”
Then she looks up at me, raises one fist above her head, and shouts, “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum!”
She races from the hall. Two robed figures push through the crowd and follow her, their hoods falling back long enough for me to recognize Abbie and Cicley.
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum?” I know that phrase from somewhere, but I can’t place it.
“Enough of these theatrics,” Jack says from the front row. “Let’s get on with it.”
It.
With one word, he reduces the most private thing Carrson and I share to a task on his agenda, a spectacle this room believes it is owed.
My bloody hand curls around Carrson’s as I turn toward Jack, no longer afraid of the room, only furious that it believes it owns us. Carrson is already looking at him. I recognize the expression on his face. It’s the one he wore before he killed a man.
Carr sighs and signals for us to continue.