"Aven Marlow," she says.
My full name hits harder than it should. It pulls a thread from somewhere old and mean in me, from Seminary roll call and Ezra's soft corrections and my mother's name written in reports by men who made her death sound like an unfortunate administrative outcome. My throat tightens around a prayer I don't believe, which is insulting enough that I almost laugh.
Ira doesn't move from the doorway. "Say what you came to say from there."
The woman's gaze stays on me. "You were once a promising seminarian. Troubled, certainly. Resistant to guidance. Some called you a failed priest, though I believe that language lacked compassion."
"Honestly, failed priest had a nice finality to it," I say. My voice comes out dry, but my hands are cold. "It sounded less like inventory."
One of the priests shifts behind her. His fingers touch the cross at his throat, and the light inside it tightens. The ghost at the window makes a sound no living throat could manage.
The woman hears it. I know she does. She doesn't look toward the dead.
"We understand now that your difficulties weren't failure," she continues. "You're a celestial conduit. Untrained, unstable, and currently surrounded by dangerous associations that have encouraged misuse of your gifts."
Cain goes very still beside me.
The word conduit lands in my ribs, then vessel, even before she says it. I can feel the shape of the next cage inside the old one. Failed priest was a door closed behind me. Conduit is a drawer pulled open.
Soren's fingers tighten around the ward-stone. The floor beneath the woman's shoes gives one soft complaint, wood settling with a hunger it doesn't usually have. "Careful," he says, and the single word is enough that both priests look at the shelves.
The woman finally glances at him. Her eyes don't widen at his magic. They assess it. That's worse. "Essren involvement was noted. Your coven has become a significant spiritual risk."
"Your crosses are full of dead people," I say.
The room stops pretending around that sentence. Ira's shoulders shift. Cain's hand flattens against my back. Soren inhales too quickly and almost covers it by looking annoyed at the nearest plant.
The woman's expression softens into something almost sad. "Gathered divinity isn't death, Aven. It's service beyond the limits of a single life. Lingering spirits can be given purpose.Uncontained power can be stabilized. Dangerous gifts can be brought into sanctuary before they destroy the vessel carrying them."
Vessel.
There it is.
My knees don't buckle, but they remember how. They remember cold stone under them, Ezra's hand at my shoulder, the sting of a cross pressed into my palm because pain was supposed to teach me which voices were holy and which were not. They remember being told that containment was mercy. They remember my mother's journals, her handwriting getting worse near the end, every page full of fear someone later translated into doctrine.
"They were people," I say. The words are quieter than I mean them to be, but the dead at the windows hear me. "You took people who should have crossed and ground them down until you could wear them around your neck."
The priest on the left looks at his cross as if he's never considered what warmth costs.
The woman doesn't. "Most servants of the Church aren't burdened with the full mechanism of sacred work."
Soren laughs once. It sounds like it hurts. "That might be the most expensive sentence anyone's ever used to say cover-up."
Ira's voice drops into the room like a blade laid flat on a table. "You bind spirits and call it divinity. You call cages sanctuary. You call retrieval mercy. We understand you."
For the first time, the woman looks directly at him. She isn't afraid of Ira. She recognizes violence as an obstacle, not a moral force, which means she's probably spent a lifetime sending other people into rooms where violence happens and calling herself clean.
"The voluntary offer remains open until dawn," she says. "Aven can return with us and receive proper stabilization. Hiscompanions will be evaluated for contamination and released if possible."
Cain's mouth brushes the side of my hair, barely there. His hand on my back doesn't move, but something in the bond cools into a shape I recognize from the night he killed Adaro. It isn't rage. It's decision.
"If possible," I repeat. My voice shakes, so I let it. "That's generous. I've always wanted my loved ones evaluated by the soul-harvesting committee."
The woman's eyes return to me. "You're tired. You've been frightened by people who benefit from your confusion. This coven can't protect you from what you are."
"No," I say, and the first time I hear the word, it sounds too small for the room. I say it again, not louder, just steadier. "No. I've had enough people managing my spiritual wellness for one lifetime."
The spirits stir behind me.
