"You look exhausted," he says. "You're clearly struggling. Trying this for one week isn't surrender."
My laugh is too quiet. "That's usually what people say directly before surrender."
"It's grounding." He slides the cross across the table, but he doesn't push it into my hand. "It's familiar. Something from before all of this. Before the bond, before the shop, before people started telling you that being overwhelmed meant you'd found your place."
I stare at the cross.
I hate that I brought mine. I hate that I can feel it now, heavy in my pocket, as if it's been waiting for permission from him. I hate that even after everything, some old part of me still responds to his voice, to the idea of being good, obedient, salvageable. A version of myself that can be brought back if I just stop making everyone uncomfortable by existing too loudly.
"Put it on for me," Ezra says.
The phrase slips under my ribs before I can stop it.
For me.
It belongs to study rooms and late nights and the first year at seminary when I thought wanting approval was the same as wanting God. Ezra shared his notes with me. Ezra told me my visions weren't a curse before he learned how frightened he was of what that might mean. Ezra looked at me once like I was chosen instead of damaged, and loneliness has a very long memory.
"I'm not putting that on in the middle of a coffee shop," I say.
"I'm not asking you to perform anything."
"No, you're asking me to burn politely under the table."
Pain flashes through his expression, but it doesn't stop him. "I'm asking you to make sure the choices you're making are yours."
The spy spirits whisper again, softer this time, almost tender.
Ask why they need you.
Ask why the quiet costs your body.
Ask why safety feels so much like obedience.
I hate them. I hate Ezra. I hate the cross. I hate that none of them are completely wrong.
I don't put it on.
But I reach for it.
My fingers close around the silver beneath the table, hidden from the rest of the café by the edge of the booth. The burnstarts in the center of my palm and spreads under the skin, deep and steady, as if the metal has found a nerve that belongs to something older than my body. I clamp my jaw shut. The pain is familiar enough to make my stomach twist. Familiar enough to make me angry. Familiar enough to feel like a door I know how to lock.
Then the voices dim. The woman with the ruined throat fades to the far edge of the café. The shapes in the window flatten into ordinary shadows. The hiss of the espresso machine becomes only steam. For half a breath, the world stops clawing at me.
It's not peace. It's absence.
The relief is ugly enough that I almost lean into it.
Ezra watches me with a terrifying, careful kind of hope. "See?" he says. "You're breathing."
I'm not. I'm holding my breath, waiting for the world to start again.
I pull my hand back and slide the cross into my pocket beside the other one before I can think better of it. My palm throbs, skin hot and raw where the silver pressed too long. I keep my hand curled under the table.
"I have to go," I say.
Ezra stands with me. "Aven."
"I have a witch at home organizing hexes by lethality. If I leave him unsupervised, that becomes my fault somehow."
