Page 105 of A House of Gold
Focus. Get home.Home?
Nothing happens when I try to move through it. Shit. He gave the mirror to me but didn’ really tell me how to use it.
I force my legs to work, stumbling down the hallway. The house's corridors are blessedly empty, everyone else is at the party, and I'm grateful for the solitude. I can barely think through the wanting, the needing, the desperate hunger for everything I see.
There, the tapestry. Narcissus staring at his reflection in a pool of water.
Behind it, the door. I push through into the storage room.
My ritual supplies are exactly where Croesus said they'd be. I sink to the floor beside them, hands trembling as I reach for the bag.
The door opens.
I look up, and Croesus is there, black suit, no mask now, moving toward me with familiar grace.
He doesn't say anything. Just closes the door quietly behind him and moves to the wall, settling against it. Watching me.
Relief floods through me. He's here. Guarding the door like he promised.
I nod at him gratefully and turn back to the ritual supplies.
I begin the ritual.
Salt in a circle around me since I don’t have an established circle. Herbs crushed and scattered, wormwood for banishing, rue for protection. Candles lit at the cardinal points. Seven white. Seven black. Seven red. The familiar motions, the familiar preparations.
I've done this dozens of times. But it never gets easier.
I take up the small knife from my supplies, press it to my forearm, and cut. Quick and clean. Blood wells up, dark and red.
The pain cuts through the envy's hold just enough for me to think clearly. To remember the words.
I begin in Latin, voice steady despite the trembling in my hands:
"Ex carne mea, te expello." From my flesh, I cast you out.
The envy fights me, clawing at my insides. Tries to make me want the blade, the blood, the pain itself. Tries to convince me I should covet even this, this ritual, this power, this ability that makes me special.
"Ex anima mea, te solvo." From my soul, I release you.
Blood drips into the small bowl I've placed in the center of the salt circle. More than usual, the envy made me cut deeper, wanting to possess even the act of purging itself.
"Non sum invidia." I am not envy.
The sin writhes in fury at being named.
"Non sum cupiditas." I am not covetousness.
My voice shakes now. The envy is stronger than the others I've purged, Idris's curse woven through Helena's contract, three months of accumulated wanting compressed into a single moment.
"Redi ad originem tuam." Return to your origin.
I pour my blood onto the floor. It hits the salt and herbs and ignites, not with normal fire, but with cold, green light that makes my skin crawl. Wrong. This is wrong. Envy burns cold, not hot. Burns with hunger that can never be satisfied.
"Redi ad dominum tuum." Return to your master.
The envy screams.
It pours out of me like freezing water, sharp and brutal and agonizing. I can feel it tearing its way up my throat, leaving frost in its wake. Everything I want, everything I wish I had,everything I covet, it all comes spilling out in a rush of green-tinged smoke and desperate hunger.
