Page 21 of Ignition Rites

Somewhere in this house, two floors up, she’s sleeping — or not sleeping, more likely — replaying the same hour I am, perhaps wondering whether what happened in that room belonged to us at all.

I think of the car instead — eleven minutes of her beside me, Lorelei asking why I refuse to call her Lo. The name your mother gave you, I told her, as though that explained anything.

It still doesn’t.

I don’t make it out of the room before the door opens behind me.

“Didn’t peg you for the praying type,” Ash says from the doorway, still in his circuit clothes, arms crossed, doing a poor job of pretending he wasn’t looking for me on purpose. “Or is that a new thing?”

“It’s not new.”

“Could’ve fooled me. Six years living in this house, I think I’ve seen you in here twice.”

I don’t answer that. I straighten my jacket instead, buy myself a second, decide how much of my voice I’m willing to let him hear.

“You look like hell,” he says, less like an insult and more like an actual observation. “Rough night at the opener?”

“Long night.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I’m aware.”

He studies me with his arms crossed and his jaw tight, deciding whether tonight is a fight he wants to have. I know that look. I’ve been on the other side of it since we were children.

“You disappeared during heat two,” he says. “A runner came looking for you because your box needed covering and nobody could find you.”

“I had somewhere to be.”

“Where.”

“Somewhere,” I say, and I let it sit there, flat, closed, the way I close every door in this house that Ash would very much like to open.

He glances past me to the altar, where the small black lace mask rests against cold stone, and his attention catches.

“That hers?” he asks, his voice quieter now.

“Whose.”

“Cassian.” His voice drops instead of sharpening. “I’m not stupid. I know what that box is used for on opener night. The runner said you’d disappeared into the private one.”

“Then you already know more than you’re asking me to confirm.”

So Alistair will know. If he doesn’t already.

“I’m asking you to be honest with me. Once. That’s all.”

I look at him — really look, the way I don’t usually let myself with anyone in this house — and for one unguarded second I consider it. Telling him the truth. All of it. What I felt, what I did, what I can’t stop feeling even now, standing here, having already prayed and failed to be forgiven for it.

I don’t.

“Go to bed, Ash.”

His mouth tightens. He already knew what answer he was going to get. I can see that much.

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

He leaves without slamming the door, which somehow lands harder than if he had.