36. Soren #3
"The absorption will hurt," I say, letting the partial truth carry enough weight to distract from the rest. "It might get ugly.
You'll need to cleanse what vents off me, but not until I tell you.
If you touch the active blood magic directly before I ground it, it could use your light as a second conduit, and then we have two problems instead of one. "
Aven absorbs that. His fear has nowhere to go, so it becomes focus. "I can do that."
"I know."
Ira hasn't moved.
He looks at the too-bright smile, the way my shoulders sit half an inch too high, the way one hand keeps drifting toward the pocket where Vera's letter rests against my ribs.
"Soren," he says.
My name in his mouth isn't accusation. That's the problem.
I look at him. "Yes, darling?"
"Tell me the price."
The room tightens. Aven looks between us, sensing the shift but pulled back toward Cain every time the bond pulses. Ellis stays near the shelves, expression unreadable. The other spirits watch me with the kind of attention I usually charge extra to tolerate.
Ira stands at the map with both hands braced on the table, choosing not to become the cage he promised he'd stop building. That choice makes the lie taste worse.
"The immediate price is pain, likely collapse, and several hours of me being unbearable in a horizontal position."
"Soren."
"I need twenty seconds. Thirty if the tower fights dirty, which it will." I hold his gaze because looking away would be confession. "I can do it."
"That isn't what I asked."
"No." My voice softens despite me. I hate that too. "But it's the answer I can give you before we get Cain home."
Ira's jaw tightens. For a moment, I see every instinct in him rise. Save me from myself because he knows, he knows, that I'm deciding something in the part of me that doesn't ask permission when love is cornered.
Then he breathes in.
He remembers.
The apology in the library was real. He said he'd learn the difference between protection and control. He said my choices had to be mine even when they scared him. I'm using that promise against him now, and the cruelty of it lands in my chest before he even nods.
He nods anyway.
It costs him visibly, in the flex of his hands against the table, in the way his shoulders settle as if he's accepted a wound he can't tend yet.
"Thirty seconds," he says. His voice is rougher than before. "That's all I can promise inside the active structure. If you're not finished, I'll have to choose between dragging you out and reaching Cain."
I smile because the alternative is apologizing, and apologies are for later if later is kind enough to exist. "Then it's fortunate I only need twenty."
Aven rises from the floor, a little unsteady. The spirits shift around him, giving him room without being asked. He notices and flinches at the reverence before forcing his attention back to us. When he looks toward the map, his expression hardens.
"I can get Ellis to the ward-stone," he says. "Or close enough."
"You don't have to carry every spirit in the city on your back while doing it," I tell him. "Start with the dead vampire and work outward from there."
Ellis gives me a look that would be more satisfying if he had a pulse to offend.
Aven glances at him, then back to me. "He says he heard that."
"Excellent. Then he can also hear that I expect useful directions and no dramatic self-sacrificial nonsense from him either. We're currently over capacity."
Aven's mouth almost moves toward a smile. Almost is enough.
Ira begins listing supplies. Silver wire.
Salt. Iron filings. Chalk mixed with ash.
Two blades treated for vampire blood. A containment charm I hate because it pinches if tied too tightly.
He speaks quickly, and I answer where I need to, building the plan around the lie in my pocket.
Aven tracks Cain's thread between each instruction.
Ellis feeds him fragments. The map becomes more than paper under our hands.
Route. Gate. Corridor. Chapel. Ward-stone. Cain.
The spirits remain too quiet when I pass near them.
I feel their attention follow me as I gather chalk from the cabinet and pull Vera's secondary containment tin from the bottom drawer.
The dead know I'm walking into that tower with more truth hidden than I've admitted.
They know the absorption rite could carve years off me in minutes.
They know the shelf-life secret sits against my ribs, warm from my body, waiting to become betrayal.
They can hate me later too.
Right now, later means Cain is alive enough to be angry.
I slide the containment tin under my arm and turn back to the others. Ira is watching me. Aven is watching the map. Ellis is watching the door.
"Good news," I say. "We have a terrible plan, a worse timeline, and exactly the right number of emotionally unstable people to pull it off."
Ira doesn't smile. Aven doesn't either. But I walk back to the table like the floor isn't shifting under me.
They can hate me later.
Later means Cain is home.