The Ritual: A Dark College Romance

As they drive to campus, Blakely asks Ryat to see the video of the evening she was drugged. The video arouses her; she hastily departs as soon as it is finished playing. Blakely sits with Sarah in class, where they vaguely allude to enjoying the previous evening’s events. After class, Blakely sees Ryat with Gunner and a blonde woman Matt identifies as Cindy Williams. He reports that the Lords believe Cindy’s older brother will become president of the United States and Ryat “the most ruthless and renowned judge in New York” (141). Cindy is supposed to marry Ryat after graduation. Matt promises retribution after he and Blakely are married, using crude, sexist language.

Meanwhile, Cindy angrily demands to know why Ryat did not “choose” her. Gunner jokes that such a choice would be foolish, as Ryat is already facing the “prison sentence” of marriage to Cindy. Ryat does not look forward to marriage to Cindy, though he sees it as inevitable. He sees Blakely hurrying away and pursues her, confused and irritated when she ignores his call. When she begins crying, he demands to know what is wrong, but she refuses to tell him, arguing that their pact is only sexual and excludes emotional intimacies.

Blakely skips the remainder of her classes and drinks alcohol in her apartment, feeling despair over the future Matt has promised her. She calls Sarah, asking her to meet her for a “girls’ night” without telling Gunner or Ryat. Feeling vengeful over her burnt skirt, Blakely dresses in “the most revealing thing [she] own[s]” and meets Sarah at a club called Blackout (148). Two men offer to buy the women drinks despite their repeated refusals, implying that they can “pay back” the purchase with sex.

Ryat follows Blakely to Blackout but is annoyed because he dislikes clubs. He tells armed security, who know him by name, to stop anyone from touching Sarah or Blakely. He retreats to a side room where he finds a Lord named Ty having sex with a server. When the server leaves, Ryat requests to “use” the club’s basement. Ty grinningly offers to “have them delivered” if Ryat “[points] them out” (151). (In Chapter 44, Ryat reveals that the men offering drinks to Sarah and Blakely intended to drug the women, so he and Gunner killed them, which leads to the attack against Blakely in Chapter 37.)

After several hours at the club, Blakely is intoxicated but still does not wish to discuss her worries over her future. Ryat sends drinks to Blakely and Sarah; Blakely finds it “funny” that Ryat figured out her location. Ryat dances with Blakely. He tells her she is “in so much trouble” (156), which leads her to ask him to “punish” her. They leave the club together, and Blakely asks if her blurry vision is due to Ryat drugging her, which he denies. He handcuffs her and puts her in his car, which leaves her hands crushed behind her uncomfortably.

Ryat ignores Blakely’s complaints about her bound hands. He pulls aside her dress to reveal her breasts and performs manual sex on her. Blakely agrees not to visit clubs without him going forward. They return to Blakely’s apartment, where Ryat finds the broken glass from the liquor bottle Blakely emptied that afternoon. She complains again about the handcuffs, and he says he will remove them if she tells him what upset her. She refuses and he spanks her with his belt and performs manual sex on her, continually stopping before she reaches orgasm. Eventually, Blakely admits that Matt “threatened” her, something she claims “doesn’t matter.” She refuses to “be punished for something [Matt] has done” and admits that she underwent the Ritual because Ryat made her “feel wanted” (163). Angry at Matt, Ryat removes Blakely’s handcuffs and tucks her into bed.

Blakely dreams she is running on a trail in her Texas hometown. She senses something following her but convinces herself this is imagined when nobody responds to her call. Ryat (though she doesn’t recognize him in the dream) suddenly appears and reports that he has been “watching” her. She runs from him and he chases her, roughly knocking her down and groping her, which Blakely finds arousing. Blakely wakes suddenly, confused to find herself home; her last memories of the previous night are from the club. She is surprised to find Ryat in her living room.

Ryat sees physical evidence of Blakely’s dream-prompted arousal and performs manual sex while prompting Blakely to describe her dream. When she is embarrassed about finding the dream arousing, he encourages her not to be ashamed of her fantasies. She confesses that she has had similar dreams before but that Matt shamed her for them.

The novel flashes back to Blakely describing her dream to Matt. Though she explained the difference between a forced-sex fantasy and rape, which she had researched after she started having the dream, Matt rejected this distinction, calling Blakely “fucked up.”

In the narrative present, Blakely finds herself echoing Matt’s insistence that her fantasies are “wrong,” while Ryat counters that they are “just a fantasy. Everyone has those. And that’s normal” (176). Blakely clarifies that her interest in the dream is not related to violence but to the idea that she is irresistibly desirable. He soothes her that her fantasy “makes perfect sense” and offers to recreate the fantasy “along with [her] limits” (177). She promises to consider this.

Ryat finds Blakely’s fantasies arousing. Though he allows that he’s “no sex psychologist” he wonders if Matt’s continual rejection led Blakely to “force herself to enjoy what her body craved” (178). Though Ryat recognizes the difference between forced-sex fantasies and rape, he wonders at the disparity between Matt attempting to rape the assignment’s wife and his shaming of Blakely. He considers no kink shameful if “all parties are consenting” and anticipates fulfilling Blakely’s fantasies (179).

As Blakely prepares for class, Ryat enters the room, and she blurts that she wants to enact her forced-sex fantasy. He asks if she is certain and when she confirms this, he inquires about her limits. She requests no anal sex during the fantasy. When he asks if she wants to know when the fantasy will occur, she says she wants to be surprised.

Ryat goes to the house of Lords to seek Matt, even though he knows this will make him late for an appointment with his father. In the house’s gym, Ryat strikes Matt in the head with a heavy dumbbell and, with Prickett and Gunner’s assistance, pins him beneath heavy weights. He tells Matt to stay away from Blakely and knees him in the face, breaking his nose. Prickett and Gunner caution Ryat to move past whatever happened in Chicago (which remains a secret to all but Ryat and Matt), as the Lords will object to Matt and Ryat fighting over Blakely.

As Ryat boards a private jet to meet his father, his phone rings; it’s the man (revealed in Chapter 38 to be Blakely’s father) who assigned him to “choose” Blakely. The caller knows about the “issue” between Matt and Ryat. The caller is unconcerned about the violence, instead instructing Ryat to “do whatever [is] necessary to keep him away from her” (189). In exchange, he will protect Ryat from retribution in the Lords. Ryat is pleased with these orders.

Ryat arrives at his Upstate New York home, where his mother greets him gleefully. He waits in his father’s office while his father takes a call and watches Blakely nap via the cameras he installed in her apartment. Ryat’s father has heard from Cindy’s father about Ryat choosing Blakely in the Ritual. Ryat reminds his father that though he has been coerced into an arranged marriage, the agreement does not discuss fidelity from either party. Ryat’s father reports that Matt’s family has called, offering to “buy” Blakely from Ryat for $50,000, which prompts his father to ask “how much [Blakely is] worth” to Ryat (193).

Blakely watches a movie in bed, bored while Ryat is out of town. He calls her on the phone, makes sexually suggestive comments that reveal he is watching her on the cameras. Blakely finds this arousing, but Ryat prohibits her from masturbating before he returns, which he says will be two days later. Blakely, disappointed, returns to her movie.

That evening, Ryat sneaks into Blakely’s apartment while she sleeps, binding her with zip ties, covering her face with a cloth bag, and putting her in the trunk of his car before she is fully awake. He drives her to a remote house, where he takes her inside and binds her to a bed, noting physical evidence of her arousal. They have rough sex, and Ryat praises her for enjoying their encounter.

When Ryat removes her bindings and gag, Blakely begins to cry, ashamed of her pleasurable response to the enactment of her fantasy. Ryat reassures and soothes her. He explains that he owns this house and that he felt bringing her to a new environment would correspond best to her fantasy; Blakely thanks him for not judging and thoughtfully responding to her desires. He asks what she liked and disliked, and she requests that he not warn her about any subsequent enactments, as the lack of control heightens her enjoyment.

After a weekend together, Ryat and Blakely delay returning to campus. Prickett texts Ryat to turn on the news, which is following a federal manhunt: the son of a prominent Lord was killed during an attempted “hit” on the Lord, Gregory Mallory. Ryat is summoned to the house of Lords and hurries Blakely to the car, irritated when she scoffs at his refusal to let her know what is happening. He cites his oath to the Lords, and she says that she appreciates the reminder that Ryat’s interest in her stems from a desire to “piss off Matt” (212). At the house of Lords, they run into Sarah and Gunner; Sarah reports attempting to contact Blakely all weekend, but Blakely didn’t get the messages.

In the Lords’ basement armory, Lincoln asks for volunteers for an unclear assignment of uncertain duration. Matt volunteers himself and Ryat, and Ryat reluctantly agrees so as not to reveal his personal problems with Matt. Prickett protests that Matt is “setting [Ryat] up” (218), but Ryat is unconcerned. Lincoln reports that Ryat will leave in five hours.

Sitting in Ryat’s room, Blakely reports her irritation at the secrecy around the Lords, but Sarah claims that she has “heard some shit” and that Blakely is “much better off not knowing” (219). Before she can say more, Gunner enters and Sarah leaves. When Blakely pushes Ryat for more information, he reacts with enough tension that Blakely lets the matter drop. When they leave the room, Matt smiles at her in a way that makes her uncomfortable. He comments that he will “see [Ryat] soon” (220), which Ryat refuses to explain to Blakely. They return to Blakely’s apartment, where Ryat gives her a glass of water (revealed, in the next chapter, to be drugged) and she falls asleep, resolving to demand answers in the morning.

Ryat leaves a sleeping Blakely, annoyed that he is unable to answer her questions due not only to his oath but also to his own lack of knowledge. Gunner and Sarah have agreed to keep an eye on Blakely (and keep her from the house of Lords) while Ryat is away on his assignment. A text from a blocked number directs him to the cathedral. Matt and Ryat enter the cathedral, followed shortly afterward by three masked men holding guns. As the strangers hold Matt and Ryat at gunpoint, Ryat thinks of how he enjoys the “action” and “violence” of the Lords.

Ryat is bound to a chair in a warehouse, Matt beside him. Gregory Mallory enters, accompanied by two men who resemble FBI agents. Gregory shows Ryat a photo of a man named Erik Bates. Gregory strikes both Ryat and Matt and promises them that he will ensure they end up in prison permanently if they do not successfully kill Bates.

In a dream, Blakely wakes up in an empty version of Ryat’s house. She explores the luxurious house before calling Ryat, who reports he will return from Barrington shortly. A text message encourages her to seek him, and she finds a masked figure she assumes is Ryat on the porch. They have sex outside, the possibility of someone seeing them arousing Blakely while Ryat chokes her repeatedly.

Blakely wakes in her apartment, thinking of how her dream was a memory from her weekend with Ryat. She showers and enters her living room, startled to find Gunner there. She is perplexed and then irritated by Gunner’s explanation that Ryat has left for “an assignment” without saying goodbye. She sees the sleeping pills and realizes Ryat drugged her, chastising herself for “[putting] too much trust in him” (236).

Bates is incarcerated, so Ryat and Matt have been “arrested on bogus crimes and booked under fake names” (238). To Ryat’s surprise, Gregory enters the jail interview room. He reports hearsay that Ryat is “the best” and tells Ryat that Bates was arrested, though Gregory ordered his son’s murderer killed. Ryat puzzles over Gregory offering more information without Matt present but agrees to Gregory’s deal that Ryat will be quickly released once Bates is dead.

Matt and Ryat are put in the same cell, where Matt explains that he volunteered Ryat for this job to keep him from Blakely. Ryat attacks Matt, pleased when this gets him put in solitary confinement, where Bates is reportedly being held.

Meanwhile, Blakely frets over Ryat’s three-day absence. She denies that she misses him, attributing her worry to anger. She calls him despite knowing it will reach his voicemail and rejects an offer to go to dinner with Sarah and Gunner, thinking of how being ignored is her “biggest pet peeve and what Matt would do the moment [she] asked a question he didn’t want to answer” (242).

Ryat doesn’t mind the isolation of solitary confinement, though he regrets the time away from Blakely and passes time by thinking of their weekend at his house. A guard summons him for a shower.

Six days after Ryat’s departure, Blakely watches TV in bed, angry despite wanting to be “over it.” Ryat enters her apartment, battered and bloody, and heads straight for the shower without greeting. She demands he leave but he ignores her, undressing to reveal numerous bruises. He collapses in the shower, citing exhaustion, but refuses to tell her anything that happened.

The narrative flashes back to the prison, shortly after Ryat killed Bates in the shower. He was returned to his solitary confinement cell, where, to his surprise, he found another inmate with a knife. The inmate reported that he was sent by “a friend” who wanted Ryat “to suffer”; Ryat assumed this meant Matt was seeking retribution for Ryat’s relationship with Blakely. They fought and Ryat killed the inmate just as Gregory arrived to free him.

In the narrative present, Ryat wakes in Blakely’s apartment, thinking of how he will use Blakely to get revenge on Matt for trying to have him killed. They have sex as Blakely wakes. She expresses her irritation at his sudden departure but agrees with his claim that he “owns” her. Afterward, Ryat stands in Blakely’s kitchen wearing only a towel. He informs her that there will be a “ceremony” to “show [her] off” at the house of Lords the following weekend but that she doesn’t have to “do anything” but “be [his]” (255). Valerie enters without knocking and gapes at Ryat’s near-nudity and the hickeys and bruises on Blakely’s neck and legs. Ryat, unperturbed, goes to Blakely’s bedroom.

Valerie demands to know why Blakely is with Ryat instead of Matt and why Blakely has been ignoring her calls. Blakely counters that she broke up with Matt and hasn’t received any calls. She refuses to marry Matt; privately, she resolves to save small amounts of money each day prior to graduation so she can go on the run. When Valerie strikes her, Ryat exits Blakely’s bedroom and drags Valerie from the apartment. Blakely is embarrassed at Valerie’s violence and curious why her mother seems “obsessed” with Matt.

Later, Blakely asks Sarah if she has sent any messages that Blakely missed. Sarah reports that she hasn’t done so since the weekend Blakely was at Ryat’s cabin, and when she sends a test call, it goes through immediately. Sarah brushes off Blakely’s concern, arguing that she should consider it “a blessing” to avoid her mother’s calls. Sarah opines that Ryat is kinder to Blakely than Matt was, as Ryat is not cheating on her. This makes Blakely wonder if Ryat’s “assignment” involved having sex with someone else, which makes her jealous. She asks about Sarah’s relationship with Gunner, and Sarah reports that she enjoys their exploration of kink, specifically “breath play,” which involves temporarily restricting one partner’s breathing to heighten sexual pleasure.

Ryat approaches to inform Blakely that he will be “gone” that evening for a personal matter—not something to do with the Lords. He gives no further detail. Ryat notices she is upset, which he blames on Valerie’s visit. Blakely, who is upset over Ryat’s refusal to tell her about his life, does not correct him. He leaves and she researches breath play, hoping it will distract her.

Ryat attends a meeting with his father, Blakely’s father, and the Archer family lawyer. Ryat offers Blakely’s father, Phil, $500,000 for Ryat to marry Blakely instead of Matt. Ryat notes that the Anderson money and reputation would benefit the Winstons while the Andersons got nothing in return; however, Ryat and the Archers have sufficient money and influence that they don’t want or need the Anderson fortune or business. Ryat “just want[s] Blakely” and has no interest in a prenuptial agreement (267), as he thinks it implies there will be a divorce in their future. He does, however, wish for a clause that demands fidelity. Ryat is confident he can convince Blakely to agree and wants a wedding as soon as possible, though he mentally denies that he loves her, instead characterizing his feelings as obsession. Phil agrees to sign the contract but refuses the money, pending Blakely’s agreement to the marriage.

Later, Ryat enters Blakely’s bathroom while she hurries to get ready, as she is running late. Ryat brushes off her concern about her classes, and the two have sex. In the middle of intercourse, he demands she marry him, restricting her air flow when she hesitates to answer, something Blakely finds sexually pleasurable.

Ryat carries Blakely to her bed, where they continue to have sex that involves erotic asphyxiation. Blakely admits preferring a life with Ryat to one with Matt. While she sleeps after their sexual encounter, Ryat puts an engagement ring on her finger.

When Blakely wakes up, she feels “like a new person” until she realizes she has missed classes (277), which will infuriate Valerie. When Ryat brushes off this concern, she sees the ring on her hand and remembers their conversation about marriage. She is shocked; she assumed his proposal was a joke. He is annoyed at this and angry at her assumption that he has been romantically involved with other people during their time together. He insists that she will be “[his] forever,” something Blakely thinks she should find alarming but instead finds appealing.

Blakely still believes Ryat will eventually abandon her to the supposed arranged marriage with Matt, though he denies this. They banter flirtatiously about Blakely running away and Ryat finding her, at which point, he claims, he will “do whatever [he wants] to [her]” and she will “be [his] wife” (281). Blakely thinks this could be a way to get out of the arrangement with Matt’s family, as her mother is opposed to divorce.

Blakely calls Phil, asking to use his jet and falsely claiming that she and Sarah are going on a prearranged “girls’ trip.” He agrees to have it ready that night. Blakely looks forward to trying to escape Ryat, though she is certain he will locate her.