“Aven,” I say, voice rough against his mouth. “Come for me. I’m right here with you.”
He comes with a sharp, broken cry, his body clenching hard around my cock as his release spills hot between us. I follow him seconds later, hips stuttering as I empty inside him, the pleasure sharp enough to drag a low sound from my throat.
Aven lifts his hand to trail lazily through my hair. He's exhausted, eyes half closed, sweat drying at his temple, but the haunted look has loosened around the edges. For the first time since he came to my door, he feels deeply, honestly quiet.
"You're annoyingly good at that," he mutters, voice rough. "Making terrible, life-altering decisions feel physically convincing. It's an unfair tactical advantage."
A laugh leaves me before I can stop it, soft against his hair. I pull the duvet up over both of us and tuck it around his shoulders with a tenderness I no longer feel the need to disguise.
"I'll put it in the incident report," I murmur.
His mouth twitches against my chest. "Good. I want documentation."
"Of course."
He doesn't answer after that. He shifts closer instead, tucking his head into the crook of my arm and slinging one leg over mine. Within minutes, his breathing deepens, while I stay awake, holding him in the dark. He chose the bed tonight. Chose my hands. Chose the quiet while knowing what it cost and what it gave him.
27
Soren
Vera’slibraryopensbeforeI touch the door.
That should be impossible. The old oak usually makes me earn entry with blood, patience, or humiliation, and I am currently low on all three. Today, the latch gives with a soft click while I’m still halfway across the hall, coffee cooling in my hand and my temper already awake for reasons I have not named yet. The front room murmurs behind me, each sound feeling like proof that the shop is holding together. Instead, they make the open library door feel more deliberate. Like the room is waiting.
I leave the coffee on the nearest shelf and step inside before I can call for anyone else. The door swings open further with a welcoming silence that feels more like a trap than a greeting. Ever since Aven arrived, the room has stopped fighting me. Books that used to snap at my fingers now lean into my touch. Shadows that used to hide the titles I needed draw back before I ask. It should bother me more than it does.
The smell of dried lavender, old leather, and Vera's specific, sharp perfume hits me like a physical blow. I walk to the desk, past her slippers and the sweater still draped over the back of the armchair. The room is saturated with her magic, a warmth that shouldn't be here in a house where the owner is six feet under. I pick up a stack of journals, intending to organize them, but they practically leap out of my hands. The library is helping. It's showing off.
One book, a thin volume bound in faded green silk with gold-leafed corners, falls open on the mahogany surface as if it's been waiting for the exact weight of my gaze to trigger its release.
Tucked inside the back cover is a letter.
The paper is heavy, cream-colored, and smells of the ink Vera used for her most private accounts, an ink made from crushed beetles and a drop of her own blood. My name is written on the front in her brisk, elegant script, the S looping like a fishhook. I don't want to open it. I want to throw it into the fireplace and watch the secrets curl into ash, but my fingers are already tearing the seal. My magic hums, a low, desperate vibration that matches the thrumming in my ears. The room grows slightly darker, the shadows lengthening as the words begin to bleed into the light.
My dearest Soren,the letter begins.
Her voice is so clear in my head it makes my throat ache, that velvet rasp that could soothe a wild beast or flay a man's pride in a single sentence.
If you're reading this, you've finally stopped trying to survive on spite alone. You've found what I couldn't hand you plainly: the one who steadies spirit, the one who holds blood, and the one who knows how to stand between you and the blade.
I sink into the chair, the air leaving my lungs. The wood beneath me is cold, but the air around me is sweltering.
She knew.
Of course she knew.
Vera was never just a witch; she was a cartographer of people's miseries. She explains it with a clinical, loving detachment that makes me want to scream. The Essren magic isn't a solitary flame. It's a circuit, and Vera writes around the pieces with infuriating confidence: spirit to translate, blood to anchor, protection to hold the boundary, essence to direct the current. She never writes their names. She doesn't have to. Aven is asleep on the couch. Cain is under this roof. Ira's ward marks are still bright by the door. I understand anyway.
The shop was never only a shop,she writes.I left enough of myself in the wards to call toward what your pride would refuse to ask for. Need recognizes need. Grief recognizes grief. Power, if tuned carefully enough, will answer its own echo.
I read the paragraph three times, each pass making the words sharper.
I'm sorry for the manipulation, my boy, but you were always too proud to ask for what would save you. You'd have let yourself hollow out until you were nothing but a shell, and I wouldn't have that for my heir.
I'm furious.
The anger is a hot, sharp blade in my chest, cutting through the grief. Being manipulated by a dead woman I love still counts as being used. She took my choice. She took our choices. She treated us like ingredients in a recipe she'd been perfecting since before I was born. She knew enough of their wounds to aim the house toward them. She knew I'd be alone. She knew I'd fight the bond until it hollowed me out completely, so she made sure the answer arrived wearing faces I couldn't ignore.
