Aven #2
I hate that I brought mine. I hate that I can feel it now, heavy in my pocket, as if it's been waiting for permission from him.
I hate that even after everything, some old part of me still responds to his voice, to the idea of being good, obedient, salvageable.
A version of myself that can be brought back if I just stop making everyone uncomfortable by existing too loudly.
"Put it on for me," Ezra says.
The phrase slips under my ribs before I can stop it.
For me.
It belongs to study rooms and late nights and the first year at seminary when I thought wanting approval was the same as wanting God.
Ezra shared his notes with me. Ezra told me my visions weren't a curse before he learned how frightened he was of what that might mean.
Ezra looked at me once like I was chosen instead of damaged, and loneliness has a very long memory.
"I'm not putting that on in the middle of a coffee shop," I say.
"I'm not asking you to perform anything."
"No, you're asking me to burn politely under the table."
Pain flashes through his expression, but it doesn't stop him. "I'm asking you to make sure the choices you're making are yours."
The spy spirits whisper again, softer this time, almost tender.
Ask why they need you.
Ask why the quiet costs your body.
Ask why safety feels so much like obedience.
I hate them. I hate Ezra. I hate the cross. I hate that none of them are completely wrong.
I don't put it on.
But I reach for it.
My fingers close around the silver beneath the table, hidden from the rest of the café by the edge of the booth.
The burn starts in the center of my palm and spreads under the skin, deep and steady, as if the metal has found a nerve that belongs to something older than my body.
I clamp my jaw shut. The pain is familiar enough to make my stomach twist. Familiar enough to make me angry.
Familiar enough to feel like a door I know how to lock.
Then the voices dim. The woman with the ruined throat fades to the far edge of the café. The shapes in the window flatten into ordinary shadows. The hiss of the espresso machine becomes only steam. For half a breath, the world stops clawing at me.
It's not peace. It's absence.
The relief is ugly enough that I almost lean into it.
Ezra watches me with a terrifying, careful kind of hope. "See?" he says. "You're breathing."
I'm not. I'm holding my breath, waiting for the world to start again.
I pull my hand back and slide the cross into my pocket beside the other one before I can think better of it. My palm throbs, skin hot and raw where the silver pressed too long. I keep my hand curled under the table.
"I have to go," I say.
Ezra stands with me. "Aven."
"I have a witch at home organizing hexes by lethality. If I leave him unsupervised, that becomes my fault somehow."
He reaches as if he might hug me. I step back before he can. His hand falls, and for a moment he looks genuinely wounded. That hurts more than it should.
"Think about what I said," he says. "They're not neutral. Bonds aren't neutral. Relief isn't the same thing as freedom."
I don't answer. I walk out of the coffee shop and into sunlight that doesn't feel warm anymore. It only feels bright.
The six blocks back to Soren's shop take longer than they should.
I keep my burned hand in my pocket, fingers curled around both crosses now because apparently one religious crisis wasn't enough.
Every time a spirit drifts too near, the silver pulses and they recoil.
The relief follows immediately, and then the shame follows that, and then the relief again, until I can't tell whether I'm carrying a weapon, a cure, or proof that I'm exactly as weak as the Seminary always thought I was.
The shop bell chimes when I push the door open.
Usually, the sound feels like crossing into a pocket of warmth. Today, the shop feels too alive after the cross-numb quiet: herbs breathing in jars, charms humming faintly from hooks, old wood creaking under pressure, Soren's magic sparking somewhere behind the counter.
He's holding a glass vial of something glowing blue, one hand lifted over it in the middle of a spell. The light thins as soon as I step inside. It gutters once, then goes out.
Soren looks up sharply.
Cain appears from the direction of the library, drawn by my heartbeat or the scent or the bond or whatever other terrifyingly intimate sense he's decided to make my problem today. His nostrils flare. He stops three feet away, eyes dropping to the hand I still have buried in my pocket.
"What did he give you?" Cain asks.
Ira comes out of the back room with a length of warding chain in one hand. He doesn't speak. His gaze scans me from head to toe, catches on the stiffness of my arm, then returns to my face with enough quiet force to make lying feel physical.
"Coffee with Ezra remains cheaper than therapy and only slightly more cultish," I say, forcing a laugh that sounds like dry leaves skittering across concrete. "He sends his regards. Mostly in concern-shaped sentences."
No one laughs.
Soren sets the dead vial down very carefully. His face has gone pale beneath the flush of spellwork. Cain stays where he is, not moving closer, which makes the space between us feel worse. Ira's hand tightens once around the chain.
"I'm going upstairs," I say before any of them can ask the right question. "I have a headache coming on. Probably the theology. It always did give me migraines."
I move past them without looking back, feeling their eyes follow me up the stairs.