37. Aven #3
Gabriel's voice doesn't carry clearly, only the rough shape of it through the phone, but I know his cadence well enough to recognize the question even before Ira goes silent. The silence stretches too long.
“Will he be okay?”
Ira doesn't answer fast enough to lie. I open my eyes and find Ellis watching me. The dead do that too often. Watch the exact place where pain tries to hide. I look away first.
When Ira returns, he shuts down his expression going straight to the map and folding the phone into his pocket like the call is one more weapon checked and stored.
He crosses to Soren without the old sharpness I've seen in him before, stopping close enough to block some of the room from him and says something too low for me to catch.
Soren looks up ready for a fight. It's there in his face, the chin lifted like a dare. Ira doesn't give him one. He waits. Whatever he asks next lands differently. Soren's expression shifts, confusion cutting through the performance so quickly it leaves him younger for half a breath.
Then Soren reaches for Ira's wrist and places Ira's hand flat over his own chest.
The gesture empties the library of sound.
The spirits still shift. The map still rustles.
Cain's forced calm still pulses like a bruise through the bond.
But the center of my attention narrows to Soren's fingers wrapped around Ira's wrist and Ira's hand spread over the place where Soren's heart beats too fast beneath his sweater.
Ira bows his head toward him. Soren kisses him first, hard and scared and brief enough that it belongs to desperation more than desire.
Ira lets him take it without turning it into something else.
One hand stays over Soren's heart. The other settles at his waist as Soren's shoulders shake once and Ira absorbs it, the bond warming.
I look down because whatever's happening feels private and sacred in the ordinary way, not the dead way, not the Church way. Then Soren's hand catches my sleeve.
He doesn't tug hard. He doesn't have to. I could refuse. That's the point. I stand there for one useless second with every instinct telling me not to intrude on a thing that already looks whole without me. Then Cain's absence pulses through the bond, and the thought breaks apart.
It's not whole without him.
It's not whole without any of us.
Soren pulls me against his side, still gripping Ira's wrist with his other hand.
Ira shifts to make room, bracketing both of us against the shelves with a care that never once feels like a cage.
His shoulder presses warm and solid near mine.
Soren's heartbeat hammers under Ira's palm, and I feel it through the line of their bodies, frantic but present.
My own hands find Soren's sweater and the edge of Ira's sleeve.
For one brief minute, the circuit holds around the missing place where Cain should be.
Cain's absence burns at the center like a cutout in the shape of a man. The spirits at the edges go quiet with recognition.
Soren's forehead rests against my temple for one breath. His voice is barely there. "Later."
I don't know whether he means the lie, the letter, the fear, or the consequences waiting for all of us when Cain is home. Maybe he means all of it.
"Later," I agree.
Ira's arm tightens once around both of us, then releases. He steps back into the role waiting for him, and I watch the tactical mask return. Soren wipes his face with the heel of his hand and returns to the table. I stand straighter, though my body feels wrung out.
The dead are ready.
I can feel it in the room, each of them around us in agreement.
Some will scout the service road. Some will pull attention toward the chapel level.
Some will watch Cain's room if they can slip past the wards.
Some want only to find the places where the chains are anchored and wait for us there. A few remain undecided. I let them.
Ellis stands by the door, looking faded again, the effort of memory and grief thinning him around the edges, but his posture is steady.
I meet his eyes. "You don't have to come inside."
His mouth curves without humor. "Yes, I do."
I don't argue. Consent includes choices that hurt to witness.
Ira checks the final pieces with swift hands: blade, cross, wire, salt, map folded twice and tucked inside his jacket.
Soren lifts his bag, the strap cutting across his chest, too heavy for how pale he is.
I take one step and sway before I can hide it.
Ira's hand comes to the back of my neck, warm and grounding, and I lean into it for half a second before pride remembers itself.
Soren notices anyway. He always does. He moves closer until his shoulder brushes mine, just enough pressure to keep me from pretending I'm steadier than I am.
The bond pulses again, and this time I answer with one narrow thread of promise: Hold. We’re coming.
Maybe he feels it. Maybe Adaro’s tether twists it before it reaches him. Maybe it becomes nothing but a spark against stone. I send it anyway because the alternative is letting silence have the last word.