Soren #2
The library door is unlocked when I reach it. I don't slam it. That feels important for reasons I resent. I close it behind me and stand in the middle of Vera's room, surrounded by books that have witnessed generations of people making love look like strategy and calling it survival.
My hands are shaking. I fold them under my arms and press hard until the tremor has somewhere to go.
The bond is bruised. Ira is there and not there, a solid ache behind my ribs.
I hate that part of me is listening for his footsteps.
I hate that I want him to come. I hate that if he came too fast, I'd accuse him of forcing his way in, and if he didn't come at all, I'd accuse him of leaving.
There's no version of love that makes me graceful.
The hallway stays quiet long enough for my anger to lose its first bright edge.
Long enough for me to hear Aven's low voice, then Cain's softer one, though the words don't reach me.
Long enough for the library to warm around my shoulders as if Vera's ghost has decided to be smug from beyond the grave.
Then Ira knocks.
The sound is low, controlled, and careful. It hurts because it's exactly what I accused him of not doing.
"I'm not locked in," I say.
The door opens, but only halfway. Ira stands on the other side with his left arm held too still and his face stripped down to something worse than regret.
He looks too large for the doorway, too tired for his own body, and too uncertain to enter a room he could cross in three strides if it were full of enemies instead of me.
"May I come in?" he asks.
I almost tell him no. Not because I want him gone, but because some ugly part of me wants to see if he'll stay outside and suffer. That's not justice. It's fear dressed up in prettier clothes.
"Yes," I say.
He steps inside and leaves the door open behind him.
That matters too.
Neither of us speaks at first. Ira stops near the desk instead of coming straight to me.
I'm sitting on the edge of Vera's old armchair now, though I don't remember choosing to sit.
My body made the decision while my pride was busy sharpening knives.
Ira looks at the shelves, the sweater draped over the chair, the stacks of notes on the desk, then finally at me.
"I made a tactical decision because I was afraid," he says.
I let out a small, humorless breath. "That's the least romantic sentence anyone has ever used as an apology."
"It's not an apology yet. It's the start of the truth."
That shuts me up more effectively than I want it to.
He keeps his hands at his sides. "My family taught exorcism before they taught comfort.
Salt lines. Binding rites. How to tell a human soul from something wearing one.
How to use a cross as a focus instead of a leash.
Exorcists aren't a church order, no matter how much the Church likes to pretend anything useful belongs to them.
We're family lines. Old rules. Old wounds.
People who learned the dark had teeth because something bit first."
His voice is clipped, almost flat. Facts first. Bloodless things he can stack in a safe order.
"The Church used us when it needed us," he continues.
"Respected the power when it was convenient.
Resented the part it couldn't own. My father taught me that if I knew the variables, I could keep the circle intact.
If I watched closely enough, moved fast enough, controlled enough, I could keep people alive. "
"And did it work?" I ask softly.
His jaw tightens.
There's my answer.
Ira looks down at his hands. The knuckles are scraped raw. I didn't notice that before. I was too busy looking at the places he lied and not the places he bled.
"There was someone," he says. "Before the shop. Before Cain. Someone I thought I'd protected."
The room changes. The air doesn't move, but I feel the floor tilt beneath the sentence. Ira doesn't look at me when he says it. He looks past me, toward a place that isn't in the library.
"I was away on a cleansing. Simple job. I'd checked the wards before I left.
Reinforced the doors. Salted the thresholds.
I thought I'd done enough." His voice stays steady until the last word.
Then it thins. "I came home and there was no body.
No blood. No sign of a fight. The tea on the table was still warm. "
My throat closes.
"I went to the priests first," he says. "Then to contacts.
Then to anyone who owed me enough to answer.
They told me it was a demon. They told me sometimes the dark takes what we fail to guard.
Later, I found enough to know that was a lie.
The Church had identified a conduit and taken what they wanted.
Used the soul until there was nothing left to reach. "
He finally looks at me, and the control in his face cracks so cleanly it's almost soundless.
"My rites can cleanse human souls," he says. "They can call to what lingers. They can separate rot from spirit if there's enough spirit left to find. There was nothing. No body. No grave. No ghost."
The last word breaks.
It's small. Barely more than a fracture in the back of his throat. That's what undoes me. Not the story, though the story is terrible enough to put ice under my skin. It's the sound of Ira losing control over one word after holding himself still through knives, wards, blood, and my anger.
I start crying before I decide to. Tears slide hot down my face, humiliating and unstoppable. Ira sees them and takes half a step forward before he catches himself.
"Soren," he says.
I shake my head because I don't know whether I'm warning him away or asking him not to stop.
He stays where he is. For once, he lets the distance be mine.
"I thought if I knew enough, if I locked down enough, I could stop it from happening again," he says. "I know what that sounds like. I still did it."
"You made us into the locked door," I say.
"Yes."
The anger is still there. It doesn't vanish because grief enters the room.
I can understand a wound and still hate the thing it made him do.
I can ache for the man who came home to warm tea and no ghost and still be furious at the man who looked at Aven this morning and decided peace mattered more than truth.
"I'm here," I tell him, and my voice breaks because I hate that he needs to hear it and I hate that I need to say it. "Aven is here. Cain is here. But if you keep building walls around us, Ira, you'll lose us inside them. That's still losing us."
"I know."
"Do you?" I wipe my face with the heel of my hand, angry at the tears, angry at the softness in me, angry that love doesn't make cleaner shapes. "Because knowing and stopping aren't the same thing."
"I don't know how to stop all at once."
The honesty is ugly. I prefer it to the lie.
I stand. Ira doesn't move toward me. He lets me cross the room or not cross it. He lets me decide what to do with the space between us, and that's the first thing that feels like repair instead of another version of control.
I go to him because I'm still angry and because my body is tired of holding itself away from him. I stop close enough to feel the heat coming off his chest. He smells like antiseptic, blood under clean cloth, cedar, and sleeplessness.
"You can hold me," I say. "You just don't get to keep me."
His eyes close for a second. When they open, there's pain in them and something quieter than pain. "I know."
I climb into his lap only after he sits on the floor with his back against the shelves, moving carefully because his ribs are worse than he admitted and because I'm not so angry that I want to hurt him by accident.
His hands hover near my back. Careful. Waiting.
The restraint makes my chest ache in a new way.
I take one of his wrists and put his hand against my spine.
His arms close around me slowly, leaving space I could use if I wanted to pull away.
That matters. It shouldn't have to matter, and it does.
I tuck my face against his throat and feel him breathe under me, each inhale shallow where the bandage pulls.
His heart beats strong beneath my cheek.
Too fast for sleep. Too steady for peace.
“I’m still angry,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“You have to tell Aven the rest. Not Cain. Not me translating. You.”
“I will.”
“And if something comes for him again, he hears it from us before the walls do.”
“Yes.”
His hand stays open against my back. When I shift, his arm loosens before I ask. The library stays warm around us, and the lie is still there in the walls, but Ira lets me move inside his hold.