Aven's thumb stills for half a breath, then starts again. He doesn't interrupt, which is unfair of him.
"It erodes," I say, and the word scrapes on the way out. "Slowly most of the time. Faster when I do something stupid, like absorbing a blood-tether door built by a vampire aristocrat with boundary issues. The coven stabilizes me. It keeps me from hollowing out all at once and makes the magic stronger, cleaner, easier to survive. But over time, if I keep drawing more than I can replace, the bond compensates."
Cain's hand tightens at my ribs. Enough that I feel him understand where the sentence is going before I say it.
I force myself to keep talking. "It can pull from the bonded circuit. From you. It's slower than that. Meaner. Depending on how badly I manage it. Vera thought there were ways to slow it. Ways to share it safely, maybe. But not erase it."
Aven looks down at the letter in his lap. "I can't cleanse it."
"No." I swallow, and my throat feels raw enough that the word comes out thin. "Because it isn't corruption. It's just what the magic is."
Cain's mouth brushes the back of my shoulder, one dry, brief touch through the blanket slipping low on one side. It'sreassurance with teeth in it, a reminder that his body is still here against mine, that he heard the cost and hasn't moved away. Somehow that makes the panic worse.
"I can't blood-magic it into obedience either," Cain says. His voice is quiet, almost flat, and the edge under it isn't aimed at me. "It isn't an enemy that can be made to kneel."
"And I can't exorcise a nature," Ira adds. His arm stays around my waist, firm and warm, while his other hand spreads over my stomach as my breathing starts to thin out. "So we manage it. We slow it. We learn where the edges are."
"You make it sound very tidy," I whisper.
"It isn't." Ira's thumb presses lightly through the blanket, grounding me back into his chest when I try to curl forward. "I'm not making it tidy. I'm telling you it being ugly doesn't give you permission to hide it."
There it is.
I close my eyes, but that only makes the room smaller and their bodies clearer. Ira's chest behind me. Cain's hand at my ribs. Aven's fingers around mine. Vera's paper waiting in the space between us, patient and cruel.
"I knew you'd say yes," I say.
No one speaks.
That's worse, so I keep going before the silence can become a verdict. "That's the part I couldn't stand. I thought about that too. But the worst part was knowing you might stay. You might look at the cost and decide I was worth it, and then I'd have to live every day knowing I let you spend yourselves on me."
Aven's grip tightens.
"I told myself I'd fix it before it mattered," I say. My voice cracks on fix because the lie sounds pathetic out loud. "I told myself I had time to find a workaround, that Vera missed something, that I could take the worst of it into myself and leavethe bond untouched. I told myself it wasn't really hiding if I was going to solve it before anyone got hurt."
Cain's hand shifts under the blanket, his palm flattening more fully over my side. "And did you believe yourself?"
I want to say yes. I want to be that clean. Instead, my throat works around the truth while Ira's arm holds me in place without tightening.
"Sometimes," I say. "Not enough."
Aven lets out a breath that shakes. When I look at him, his eyes are wet, but his mouth is set in a line I recognize too well from the mirror: hurt trying very hard not to become cruelty.
"You decided for us," he says. His voice stays low, which somehow makes it land harder. "You looked at the part where we were supposed to choose and crossed our names out."
I flinch.
Ira's arm comes more securely around me when my shoulders creep up. He doesn't trap me. He just refuses to let shame turn into distance before I can hear the rest.
"You don't get to do that," Aven says, and his thumb moves over my knuckles again. "You don't get to decide the truth is too expensive for us and call that protection."
"I know," I say, though knowing now feels useless.
"You did what Vera did to you," Ira says against my hair. The words are blunt, not cruel, and that makes them harder to dodge. "Different reason. Same wound."
I go still.
Cain's mouth touches my shoulder again, slower this time. "Vera loved you."
