Chapter 13: The Old Flat

Noah came down two steps and stopped.

"It's true," he said. "All of it. I'll say it plainly, because you've been handed it in pieces."

"Do."

"We knew. I knew from the first day, when you fixed the lyric I'd got wrong."

Thomas made a small sound on the stairs, and Noah went on.

"I told them that night you were the one."

"The night wasn't a lie," Noah said. "The custom is real. The hunger is real."

He swallowed.

"But it was also the Keeping, and I let you think it was only the custom. I wanted one thing Abysis couldn't take."

Lucas heard it, and nothing in him moved.

"You asked if I'd spend the night with you," he said. "You didn't ask if I'd be your lord."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because you would have said no, or you would have said yes for the wrong reason." Noah's voice cracked. "And I couldn't stand either."

Lucas looked at the three of them for a long moment.

Then he went to the hook by the door and took the van keys off it.

"Lucas," Thomas said.

"I'm going to my flat. I'll sleep there. Nobody follows me tonight."

"That's an order?" Luke asked from the top of the stairs.

"Yes."

He saw it land on all three of them, and he hated how well it worked.

He drove across the city with the heater off and the window cracked, because he needed the cold.

The old flat was four floors up over a laundromat, and it smelled like dust and the radiator.

He sat on the edge of the bare mattress in his coat and did not turn on the lamp.

At two in the morning there was a knock.

It was not a loud knock.

He opened the door, and Luke stood on the landing in the stairwell light with his hands at his sides.

"I told you not to follow me."

"You did." Luke's voice was low. "I took the subway. Thomas gave me his card. I'm not coming in."

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