Ira #3
"Then they know enough to classify him."
"They know enough to come."
The kitchen holds the silence between us. Bleach. Blood. Old magic. The repaired ward humming behind me. Cain looks toward his room again, and I see the decision in him before he speaks.
"They need to know."
"No."
His eyes return to mine. "You don't get to make that choice alone."
"I already did."
The words land badly. I know they do. Pain makes honesty sharper than it should be, but taking it back would be a lie too.
"Soren is running on fumes," I say, keeping my voice low. "Aven nearly hollowed himself out on a bound spirit and has spent the last two days being pulled between Ezra, the dead, and your family's search pattern. They need sleep before they need another threat with a deadline."
"They need the truth."
"They need to survive long enough to use it."
Cain steps closer. He doesn't crowd me. He knows too much about cages to block the doorway, and too much about fear to pretend this is only strategy. "You think you're building a shield."
"I am."
"You're building a smaller room."
The words hit where he aims them. Cain knows protection spoken by people with keys.
He knows the damage done by hands that say safety while locking the door.
I know it too. I know what Soren will hear when he learns I decided for him.
I know what Aven will see when he finds the lie under the bandage and the reinforced ward.
I know secrets rot foundations from the inside.
I also know the sound of a house after everyone inside it is gone.
"Soren will feel the ward shift when he wakes," I say. "I'll tell him I reinforced after the sweep. That's true. Aven will see the shoulder and ask. I'll say the ward work pulled it. That's close enough. By the time they know about the scout, I want more to give them than panic."
"Aven will know."
"Maybe."
"Soren will hate it."
"He should."
Cain looks at the blood between my fingers. "And you'll do it anyway."
"Yes."
He could wake Aven from here. He could call Soren's name.
He could take the truth out of my hands and let it do what truth does, which is break the room open whether the people inside are ready for the weather or not.
Instead, he stays still, and the silence that follows isn't agreement. It's a warning I'm choosing to ignore.
"You need stitches," he says.
"I can close it."
"That wasn't my question."
"It's the only answer tonight."
He lets me pass, though his judgment follows me down the hall.
The bathroom light makes the blood look honest. I peel my shirt away from the wound and keep my breathing controlled while the fabric pulls free.
The cut is deep enough to need stitches and clean enough that strips will hold if I don't move like an idiot for a day.
The shoulder is worse than the ribs. Purple has already spread under the skin, and lifting my arm sends grinding heat down to my elbow.
I clean the ribs first. Alcohol, pressure, gauze.
The sting keeps my thoughts in order. I wrap tight enough that breathing becomes work, then pull on a clean black shirt and check the mirror.
The bandage shows if I stand wrong. The shoulder shows if I reach.
I lower my arm, square my stance, and make the lie fit my body.
Cain is gone when I open the door.
I check the library before I return to my post. Soren is still asleep over Vera's notes, one cheek pressed to an open ledger, fingers curled around a pencil.
The lamp throws warm light across the sharp angles of his face.
He looks exhausted, not fragile. Fragile is the kind of word people use before they start deciding what someone else can carry.
I take the knitted blanket from the armchair and lay it over his shoulders without waking him.
Cain's door is open enough for me to see Aven curled on his side with one hand fisted in the sheet.
Cain sits beside him now, back against the headboard, eyes on the doorway before I reach it.
Neither of us speaks. Aven's breathing stays even.
The room smells faintly of old blood magic and sleep, the only quiet he trusts because it has a body attached to it.
I go back downstairs.
The shop is dark except for the streetlight bleeding through the front window and the faint glow of the repaired ward in the back hall.
The frost from earlier is gone. The search pattern has faded from my teeth, but the absence doesn't comfort me.
Predators go quiet after they flush something from cover. They wait for movement.
I sit near the counter where I can see the front door, the hallway, and the shadowed mouth of the back entrance.
My side pulses with every heartbeat. My shoulder stiffens by the minute.
By morning, the bandage will be hidden under a clean shirt.
Soren will see the new ward and think I worked through the night.
Aven will smell coffee and make some tired comment because fear gets too close if he doesn't put words between himself and it.