Ira
Aven stands in the center of the shop's back storage room looking like he's been asked to perform open-heart surgery with a plastic spork.
He's thin, all sharp angles and defensive posture, and right now he's looking at his own feet as if they've betrayed him by existing in three dimensions.
I've seen better balance in newborn colts, but colts usually have the decency not to make a sarcastic remark about the structural integrity of the floor every five seconds.
"Stance," I say, keeping my voice level. Practical. I'm not here to define whatever the hell we're becoming. I'm here to make sure that the next time the Church sends someone, they don't find a target that's basically a polite suggestion of a human being.
"I have a stance," Aven mutters, shifting his weight.
He's favoring his left foot. He thinks I don't notice, but I've spent ten years cataloging the ways men break.
I saw him limp when he came in after that barefoot sprint through the city, and he's still compensating for a stone bruise he hasn't admitted to.
"It's called standing. I've been doing it for years. I'm quite good at it."
"You're leaning," I say, moving toward him.
The room smells of dust, old paper from the library, and the faint, sweet rot of the biting plant I moved into the hallway before training started.
It had already tried to taste Aven's sleeve once.
Aven called it botanical aggression and then spent five minutes looking personally offended that a houseplant had better survival instincts than he did.
"You're a pendulum, Aven. If I push you right now, you're on the floor. "
"Maybe the floor is where I want to be," he retorts, though his amber eyes are darting toward the door.
"It's stable. It doesn't ask me to engage my core.
It has very few expectations." He glances at the mat waiting behind me, his mouth flattening around the next joke before it even leaves him.
"If I'm murdered by training equipment, does it count as martyrdom, or is that too embarrassing for the official record? "
From the mahogany table near the back shelves, Soren lets out a sharp, jagged laugh.
He's supposed to be researching Essren stabilization, but mostly he's just being a nuisance with a highlighter.
"He's right, Ira. He's less of a fighter and more of a decorative Victorian fainting goat.
Just let him tip over and be done with it. "
"I'm not a goat," Aven snaps, throwing a glare over his shoulder. "Goats are useful. They eat weeds. I just attract things that want to turn my soul into a battery pack."
I step into his space, and his breath catches.
It's a small sound, but in the quiet of the shop, it lands clean.
I can see the pulse jumping in his neck.
He's hyper-aware of me, and the feeling is mutual.
He's smaller than I am, most people are, but there's a fragility to him that makes my hands feel too big, too heavy.
I have to remind myself that he's not made of glass, even if he acts like he's about to shatter.
"Look at me," I say. He does, and those amber eyes are wide, fractured with that constant spectral static he carries. "Widen your base. Two inches. Stop trying to take up as little space as possible. The world is already trying to erase you. Don't help it."
Aven sighs, a long, weary sound that makes him look even thinner, but he moves his feet.
I can see his attention splintering almost immediately.
He's looking past my shoulder at the corner of the room where the light doesn't quite reach.
I don't see the spirits, but I feel the cold patch they leave behind. The air gets thin. Aven's jaw tightens.
"Don't look at them," I say, voice dropping. "Look at me. I'm the one who can actually touch you. They're just echoes. I'm the reality."
"You're a very large reality," he whispers, his humor failing him for a second. "It's a lot to focus on."
Cain appears in the doorway, leaning against the frame with a grace that feels like a personal insult to anyone with a skeleton.
He's holding a book, but his eyes are on Aven.
He doesn't say anything, and he doesn't have to.
His presence smooths some of the jagged air in the room, sensory and patient, all old blood and careful restraint.
Between Cain in the doorway, Soren at the table, and me in his space, Aven looks like every exit has learned his name.
"Right hand up," I say, ignoring Cain because Cain isn't the lesson. "When someone grabs your wrist, your first instinct is to pull away. That's how you lose. You don't pull. You rotate."
I reach out and close my hand around his forearm.
His skin is hot, humming with that celestial energy that feels like a live wire under flesh.
My thumb rests against the inside of his wrist, right over his racing pulse.
He freezes. He's not fighting; he's enduring.
It's the seminary habit, the belief that if he sits still enough, the sin will pass him by.
"Rotate toward my thumb," I guide him, my voice low. "The gap in the grip is the weakest point. Use it."
He tries, but it's clumsy. He's fighting his own muscles, apologizing with every move even before his mouth catches up. "Sorry. My limbs aren't really on speaking terms today. They've formed a union and they're currently on strike."
"Stop apologizing," I say, my grip tightening by a fraction, not enough to hurt, just enough to ground him. "You're bad at this because you haven't done it. You're allowed to be bad at things, Aven. What you aren't allowed to do is give up because you're embarrassed."
"I'm not giving up," he says, his voice sharpening with a flicker of real anger. "I'm just observing that I have the physical presence of a wet noodle."
"You have the physical presence of a man who's been taught his body is a cage," I counter.
I move behind him, and the shift in proximity makes his entire body go rigid.
I reach around, my chest nearly brushing his back, and place a hand at the base of his neck, my fingers catching lightly in his dark curls.
"Listen to me. Stop insulting the body that kept you alive this long.
It got you out of the seminary. It got you to this shop.
It's the only thing you actually own. Treat it like it matters. "
The silence that follows is heavy. Soren stops flipping pages.
Even Cain seems to still in the doorway.
Aven's shoulders drop, and for a second, he leans back, just a fraction of an inch, into the wall of my chest. It's a surrender so quiet I almost miss it.
My hand stays at his neck, the heat of his skin seeping into my palm.
I'm an exorcist; I'm used to things that scream and claw.
I'm not used to things that just ache. I release him first, because I'm already learning that holding Aven only matters if he trusts me to let go.
I step back, putting three feet of air between us. I need my head clear, and it's hard to be tactical when I can still feel his pulse under my thumb.
"Again," I say, voice clipped. "From the stance. And this time, if you make a joke about your hamstrings, I'm making you do burpees until you see the light, and I don't mean the angelic kind."
"Burpees are a violation of the Geneva Convention," Aven mutters, but he resets his feet. He's trying now. There's a line of focus between his brows that wasn't there before. He's stopped looking at the spirits in the corner. He's looking at my hands.
We go through the basics for another twenty minutes.
Turns. Pivot points. How to use a smaller frame to unbalance a larger one.
He's still uncoordinated, but the frantic edge in his movements starts to smooth out.
He's beginning to understand that balance isn't a feeling; it's a mechanical fact.
He moves, and I correct, my hands briefly touching his waist, his shoulders, his elbows.
Every correction puts skin against skin, brief enough to excuse and sharp enough to remember.
"You're thinking too much," I tell him. "Don't analyze the physics. Feel the weight. If I do this—" I step in, sweeping his lead leg with a gentle tap, "—where does your center go?"
He stumbles, catching himself against my arm. "South. My center goes rapidly toward the floor. It's a very popular destination for me."
"Because you're upright," I say. "Get low. Lower."
I can see the frustration building in him.
He hates being seen like this: unskilled, vulnerable, struggling.
He's spent his whole life being the one who sees everyone else's ghosts, but having someone see his own clumsiness is clearly worse.
He's flushed, a dark pink creeping up his throat, and his breathing has gone ragged around the edges.
"Okay," I say, nodding toward the center of the padded mat. "Controlled pin. I want to show you how to find leverage when you've already lost the advantage. If you're on your back, you aren't dead yet."
"That's a very optimistic view of being crushed," Aven says, but he walks to the mat. He looks at it like it's a sacrificial altar.
I move in. Not fast. I telegraph everything so he doesn't panic.
I take his arm, pivot my hips, and guide him down, controlling the descent with one hand behind his head so he doesn't crack it on the floor.
We hit the mat together, the muffled thud echoing in the small room, and I roll him with controlled ease, pinning his chest to the padding with one arm behind his back.
The atmosphere changes.