Most of it's cowardice.
I leave before either of them can look toward the window and feel me standing there.
The day becomes a circle. Street to alley to bridge to the shadowed edge of Aven's neighborhood and away again. I watch the sun climb over rooftops and turn the river dull as lead. I don't sleep. I don't feed. Hunger sits beneath everything, low and patient, but the bond's become louder than my body. Ellis doesn't come clearly anymore, not outside the tower, only pressure at the edge of my thoughts and the occasional cold certainty that I'm being watched by someone who still knows me too well. Aven's a bright point at the edge of my awareness, restless and raw, flaring whenever the spirits press too close.
I know when dusk reaches him. The wire in my chest tightens. His panic isn't a thought, isn't words, but a change in pressure, a room losing air. I stand under a bridge for nearly an hour with both hands curled into fists, forcing myself not to go to him before he asks.
It happens just after midnight.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and the bond jerks hard enough to make my spine go rigid. I don't recognize the number, but I know the silence around the breathing when I answer. It isn't silence at all. It's the sound of someone drowning under too many voices.
"Aven?" I say.
There's no answer at first, only ragged, wet breathing and the low hum of spirit static behind it. The dead crowd the line in layers, whispers scraping through the speaker until the sound sets my teeth on edge. Then he says my name, and it's not a greeting. It's a hand breaking the surface of dark water.
"Cain."
"I'm coming."
I don't wait for an address. The bond points me back to his building with brutal precision, and the city blurs around me as I move. Lights smear yellow and white. Pavement flashes beneath my feet. I'm through the front door of his building and up the stairs before the call's fully disconnected.
At his door, I stop for one heartbeat with my hand hovering near the lock.
He called me. He needs me. The spirits are crushing him on the other side.
Still, the lock giving under my magic feels like another violation dressed as rescue.
I open it anyway.
The apartment's thick with shadows and grey, shimmering forms. Spirits press in from the corners, the walls, the dark mouth of the bathroom, all of them drawn to Aven's soul like starving things to a fire. He's huddled in the corner by the bed with his knees pulled up, hands clamped over his ears as if he can keep the dead out by force. His hair's tangled, his face wet, his whole body shaking under the weight of a room that won't leave him alone.
"Aven," I say, keeping my voice low. "Look at me."
He lifts his head.
The desperation in his eyes nearly breaks whatever's left of my restraint. He doesn't hesitate. He scrambles to his feet and throws himself at me with no grace at all, a full-body impact that knocks the breath from my lungs. His fists twist in my shirt. His face presses hard into my chest. He's shaking so violently that I feel it in my bones.
I wrap around him.
My arms go tight over his back, one hand spread between his shoulder blades, the other cupping the back of his neck. I lower my mouth to his hair and let my blood magic rise, not sharp, not taking, only heavy enough to anchor. It rolls through the room like dark water over stone. The spirits recoil first, then still. The whispers thin. The grey forms fade toward the edges, unable to push through the weight of my body around his and the living pulse I force into the air between him and the dead.
Aven feels the silence a second later.
His breath breaks against my throat. The frantic clawing of his hands eases by degrees, fingers still locked in my shirt but no longer tearing at it. He doesn't stop trembling all at once. Relief isn't that clean. It moves through him in harsh little waves, each one leaving him weaker against me, until his body begins to understand that the room's gone quiet and the quiet's real.
"They wouldn't leave," he whispers into my chest. His voice is muffled and raw. "They kept talking. All of them at once. I couldn't make it stop. I thought I was going crazy again."
"I know." My hand slides up to the back of his neck, thumb moving once over the sensitive skin behind his ear. "I'm here. Listen to me. Only me."
He tries. I feel the effort in the way his breathing drags itself toward mine. My pulse is slow under his cheek, steadier than it should be after a day without feeding and a night without rest.He follows it anyway. His body uses mine because mine's there, because my weight gives him a boundary the dead can't cross, because blood magic was made to anchor what spirit might otherwise pull apart.
It's the most honest thing I've done in years.
It's also another deception, because I'm holding him like comfort while wanting the bond to teach him I'm necessary.
We stay that way until his knees stop threatening to fold. Eventually, he pulls back just enough to look at me, though he doesn't release my shirt. His curls are a dark mess around his face, his eyes red-rimmed and hollow. He looks young in that moment, not because he is, but because fear strips people down to the first language they learned for pain.
"What are you doing to me?" he asks. The sarcasm's gone. That's worse than any insult. "Why does it stop when you're here? Is this magic? Did you put something on me?"
