Page 50 of Ignition Rites

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.