Chapter 2 Things I don’t say out loud

(Kai’s POV)

I’ve done this eleven times before. Eleven bonding ceremonies, eleven Claimed brought in front of the House to be marked, sworn, tied to me until graduation like a debt neither of us asked to owe. I know exactly how it goes. I know how bored I’m supposed to look doing it.

I did not expect to be nervous.

I want to be clear that “nervous” is not a word I use about myself, ever, and I’m only using it now because there’s no one in my head to lie to. Nervous. Standing in my own ceremonial hall, in front of my own House, about to do something I’ve done eleven times, and my hands would not stop wanting to move.

She walked in wearing borrowed formalwear that didn’t fit her right — too long in the sleeve, a size that assumed a body different from hers — and I watched her clock every single person staring at her and decide, visibly, not to care. That’s the part I keep turning over. Not the sarcasm from this afternoon. This. The way she squared her shoulders like she was walking into a fight she’d already decided to win, when I knew for a fact she hadn’t slept and was, statistically, terrified.

I don’t know why that undid something in me. It shouldn’t have. I’ve watched braver people than her walk into worse rooms.

“You’re staring,” she said, low enough that only I could hear it, once she reached the dais.

“I’m required to look at you. It’s part of the ceremony.”

“Sure it is.”

I almost smiled. I caught it before it happened, but I felt it happening, which was its own small disaster, because the last thing I need — the very last thing, with a fiancée three floors away who I have never once made smile and a House watching my every move for weakness — is to be a person who almost smiles at his Claimed.

“Kneel,” I said, because it was in the script, and because I needed her to stop looking at me like that.

She knelt. I hated how much I noticed the care she put into not making it look like submission — chin still up, spine straight, like she was choosing to kneel rather than being told to. Small distinction. It shouldn’t have mattered to me. It mattered to me.

The blade is ceremonial, dulled on one edge, sharp on the other. I’ve held it eleven times. My hand was steady when I lifted her wrist — I made sure of that, at least, made sure whatever was happening under my ribs didn’t reach my hands — and I felt her pulse jump under my fingers before I’d even made the cut.

“This is going to feel strange,” I told her, quieter than the script required. “The bond settling. It’s — it’s not painful. Just strange.”

“You’ve done this before,” she said. Not quite a question. Steadying herself with the fact of it.

“Eleven times.”

“Great. So you’re basically an expert at ruining people’s Tuesdays.”

I made the cut before she could see whatever my face was doing in response to that.

Here is the part I haven’t said out loud to anyone, and don’t intend to: drinking from a Claimed for the first time is supposed to be clinical. Mechanical. A transaction the body performs because the bond requires it, nothing more, and for eleven ceremonies that’s exactly what it was — a taste, a settling, done.

It was not like that with her.

I felt her pulse against my mouth before I felt the blood, and something about the way she was breathing — fast, trying to hide it, failing — went through me like a current I hadn’t braced for. I heard myself make a sound I did not authorize. I felt her hand come up, not pushing me away, just resting against my chest, like she needed something to hold onto and I happened to be there, and every single nerve in my body reorganized itself around that one point of contact.

I pulled back before I should have. Before the ceremony called for it. I told myself it was control. I don’t fully believe that.

She was breathing hard, cheeks flushed, staring at me with an expression I couldn’t read — not fear, not quite. Something closer to the same confusion I was drowning in, which was almost worse, because it meant I hadn’t imagined it.

“That’s it?” she said, voice not quite steady.

“That’s it,” I said, and my voice wasn’t steady either, and I hated that she could probably hear it.

The House applauded, because that’s what a House does when its heir completes a ceremony correctly, and I stood there with her blood still warm in my mouth and my own fiancée watching from the front row with an expression I chose not to interpret, and I thought — clearly, distinctly, in a voice that sounded like my own worst judgment — this is going to be a problem.

I found her an hour later on the east balcony, alone, arms wrapped around herself against the cold, still in the ill-fitting formalwear. She hadn’t gone to the reception. Smart. I wouldn’t have gone either, if I’d had the choice.

“Shouldn’t you be in there being congratulated?” she asked, without turning around. “Eleventh successful bonding. Big night for you.”

“I don’t need to be congratulated for something I’ve done eleven times.”

“Right. Very routine. Very boring.” She glanced at me sideways. “You didn’t look bored.”

I didn’t have a good answer for that, so I gave her the true one, which I regretted immediately. “No. I wasn’t.”

She went quiet. The wind moved her hair, and she pulled her arms tighter around herself, and I did something I had absolutely no business doing, which was take off my jacket and put it around her shoulders without asking.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re cold.”

“I’ve been cold for six hours. You didn’t seem to care six hours ago.”

“I noticed six hours ago,” I said, which was true, and which I hadn’t intended to admit. “I just didn’t think it was my job to fix it.”

“And now?”

I looked at her — really looked, the way I hadn’t let myself in the receiving room, in the ceremony, in front of my House — and something about the set of her jaw, stubborn even now, even exhausted, even cold and alone on a balcony on the worst night of her life, made my chest do something I didn’t have a name for.

“Now I don’t know what my job is anymore,” I said, and I meant it as a joke, and it didn’t come out like one.

She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then: “You’re supposed to be marrying someone else. I saw her. Front row. Looked like she wanted to set the balcony on fire with me still standing on it.”

“Selene,” I said. “It’s arranged. It has been since we were children.”

“Does that make it easier?”

“No,” I said, before I could stop myself. “It doesn’t make anything easier.”

The wind picked up. She was still wearing my jacket. I still hadn’t asked for it back, and some part of me understood, with the clarity of a bell ringing, that I wasn’t going to.

“I should go back inside,” I said.

“You should,” she agreed, and neither of us moved.

I don’t know how long we stood there. Long enough that I started memorizing things about her I had no right to be memorizing — the exact place her breath fogged in the cold air, the stubborn line of her mouth, the way she looked at the view instead of at me like she was giving me privacy to have whatever expression was on my face.

“Kai.” My name, from her, for the first time. I felt it land somewhere I wasn’t prepared for.

“Yes.”

“This is a bad idea. Whatever this is.”

“I know,” I said.

Neither of us went back inside for another twenty minutes.