“There’s not much time now that classes have begun,” Jean-Louis says. “You should have your affairs in order. Otherwise, who knows what you might become susceptible to. Or whom. The council won’t wait around forever.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
He’s quiet for a couple of beats. “The longer you refuse to fulfill your role as Incarnate, the more tainted your sister’s soul grows. Death’s Teeth cannot survive without a rightful leader and Maiden.”
I roll my eyes, then dig my thumb and index finger into them, rubbing hard. “You and that goddamn organization. Do you realize how archaic and strange it is to have something that easily dismantled, all because I don’t want to be some slave to death?”
“You would not be aslave,” he replies, pausing at the end to let out a string of thick coughs. When he returns, his voice is slightly weaker than before. “Incarnate is the embodiment of power. The harbinger of order and balance at Avernia—and by extension, Fury Hill. Death would bow toyou.”
“Strictly speaking, maybe. They’d have their prop, but it wouldn’t bring Bellamy back.”
“Death doesn’t erase a person from this earth,” he says. “Dying is an honor. It’s the natural course of life. We are here right now because of those who passed before us.”
I frown. “It almost sounds like you’re trying to convince me what happened to Bellamy was a good thing.”
“Maybe it was. Who gets to decide that?” He pauses. “Well, you would, I suppose, if you’d finish the Incarnate initiation. All you need is a warm body?—”
“I’m not interested in binding myself to another person,” I snap, my chest tightening. “In any way.”
“Fucking Christ, it’s just sex. It means nothing.”
“It’s notjustsex, it’s—” I cut off, choking on the broken shard of a memory as it lodges in my throat.
Commitment. A precedent of understanding and ruling.
Death’s Teeth forces their chosen leader to join with their chosen Maiden and watches as they come together beneath a blood moon. It’s a vow of faith and servitude to death and life, chaos and the eventual order. A lewd creed in the name of our ancestors and their gods.
Life, sex, and death: the three principles that the organization believes are necessary to maintain a balance.
The Incarnate ceremony had been interrupted when I was an undergrad, and instead of becoming their leader in totality, the higher-ranking members of Death’s Teeth used my body for their own pleasure, inducting me as an Elder.
The thought of voluntarily participating now makes me fucking sick.
“Ignore it all you want, Sutton. If you choose not to pick a side, it will be picked for you.”
“Don’t you think it’s time we put it all to rest? You almost got Beckett fucking killed with this shit.”
“Beckett almost got himself killed,” Jean-Louis replies, falling into another coughing fit. This one lasts longer than the previous and sounds like it brings phlegm up with it. “It is not my fault the boy has issues with follow-through.”
“Well, you would know.”
“If that’s supposed to be some sort of slight against me as a parent, I won’t hear it. I’ve done nothing but look out for your best interests your entire life. Death’s Teeth isyourdestiny, Sutton. Whether you want it to be or not.”
Glancing at my hand, I pull my sleeve up a bit. The scarring is faint these days, but I can see it as well as the day I got it.
I hang up, not interested in entertaining more of his delusions. A part of me wishes the illness he’s suffering from would hurry up and take him out, because maybe then I’d be able to move on.
Maybe death would relinquish its claim if I wasn’t Jean-Louis’s son.
Later,I make my way through Avernia’s campus as the clock tower in front of the Obeliskos chimes midnight. I cut to my right, heading toward the staff housing, which is an old conglomerate of apartments wedged past the dorms and the Lyceum.
An email comes through my phone as I let myself inside my unit on the second floor.
FROM:[email protected]
SUBJECT: Late assignment
