But under the fury, there's a shameful, heavy relief that tastes like copper. The magic is working better because of Aven. It's not in my head. The way the library feels soft instead of sharp, the way the wards are holding without me bleeding into them everynight, that's him. That's the circuit closing. My essence isn't leaking into the corners of the room as fast as it was a week ago. I'm not just a dying man anymore. I'm a piece of a whole.
I hate her for it.
I hate that part of me is grateful.
I turn the page, looking for more, and my vision flickers. There's another sheet tucked behind the first, a thinner vellum that feels oily when my fingers brush the edge. As I reach for it, the text slides away like mercury. It's magically obscured, a gray blur that resists my focus. Every time I try to read it, a wave of nausea rolls through me, a wrongness that suggests Vera didn't want me to see this part yet. Not until I was already too deep to turn back. A word almost surfaces, dark and narrow at the edge of the blur, but the page slips out of focus before I can catch it.
The unease settles low in my bones and stays there.
"Soren?"
I jump, nearly knocking the letter off the desk. Aven is standing in the doorway, looking like he just rolled out of a dryer. His hair is a mess of dark curls he hasn't bothered to comb, and he's wearing one of my old sweaters, a deep plum wool three sizes too big for him, making him look smaller than he actually is. He's holding two mugs, and the smell of the liquid inside makes the nearest fern lean away.
"I made tea," he says, walking over and setting one of the mugs in front of me with a hopeful look I find devastatingly difficult to sneer at. "I think I followed the instructions. Mostly. I might have used the leaves from the jar that look like dead spiders, though. Or maybe they were just very old mint?"
I look down at the mug. The liquid is a murky, swampy gray with things floating in it that are definitely not mint. I take a sip, and it tastes exactly like boiled dirt, disappointment, and a hint of something that might be floor wax. It's the worst thing I'veever put in my mouth, including the time I accidentally drank a potion for dissolving warts.
"This is a hate crime, Aven," I say, leaning back and looking up at him. My heart is still racing from the letter, and the sight of him, living, breathing evidence of Vera's meddling, makes my chest tight. "You've managed to ruin water. It's almost impressive. If I die, tell Ira the tea was the murder weapon."
He shrugs, a small, crooked smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He doesn't back away from my sharpness anymore. He's learned that my tongue is just another ward, designed to keep people at a distance. "You're welcome. You looked like you were about to have an existential crisis, and I figured a terrible beverage would be a good distraction. Besides, Ira said you needed to hydrate or you'd start looking like a prune."
He glances down at the letter on the desk.
He doesn't ask to read it. He just stands there, his presence a quiet, grounding weight that pulls the library back into focus. He smells like sleep and woodsmoke and the faint, cold scent of the dead that he carries like a perfume, a scent that should be macabre but is somehow just him. Having him in the library makes the air feel thicker, more substantial. It makes the silence feel like a choice rather than a void. He's the bridge between the ghost of the woman who built this place and the man who's trying not to crumble within it.
"It's from Vera," I say, my voice cracking. I don't know why I'm telling him. Maybe because he's the only one who wouldn't try to fix it with tactical analysis like Ira or ancient, weary wisdom like Cain. He knows what it's like to be a tool. "She orchestrated everything. The shop, the wards, the coven. She knew you were coming long before you ever saw that sign. She made sure you had nowhere else to go."
Aven doesn't look shocked. He doesn't look betrayed. He leans against the edge of the desk, fingers tracing the grain of thewood. The gold of his eyes catches the library light, making him look older than his years. "The dead are usually better at planning than the living. They've got more time on their hands. And they don't have to worry about the fallout."
"Doesn't it bother you?" I demand, my anger flaring again, fueled by the tea and the vellum page I can't read. "Being a piece of a puzzle she put together? Being a resource for a dying line? You were looking for freedom, Aven. This looks a lot like another cage."
Aven looks at me then, his gaze clear and devastatingly honest. He reaches out, his hand hovering over mine for a second before he lets his fingers brush my knuckles and then pulls back. It's barely a touch, but my magic notices anyway, lifting toward him before I can stop it. The library warms by a degree. One book shifts softly on the shelf, then goes still.
"I spent my whole life being useful to people who called it holy," he says. "If I'm part of a circuit here, at least I get to choose whose hands I'm putting mine in."
He taps the rim of my mug. "Drink your dirt-water, Soren. Ira's making breakfast, real food, not my experiments, and Cain is currently trying to figure out how to use the toaster without offending it. It's a delicate negotiation. We need you out there before he decides to just eat the bread raw out of spite."
He turns and walks out of the library, his footsteps light on the rug, the oversized sweater swishing around his knees. I watch him go, the image of him in my clothes burned into the back of my eyelids. It's a claim, whether he intended it or not.
I look back at the letter, at the obscured second page I can't yet read. The sickness is still there, the sense of something hidden in Vera's prose, but for a moment, I can breathe around it. I slide the letter into a heavy volume on Essren history, hiding it behind the record of a coven that died out so I could exist. I'll read therest when I can breathe without feeling the weight of her hand on my shoulder.
I take another sip of the terrible tea. It still tastes like dirt. Warm, though. Mine, because Aven made it badly and left it in my hands. Around me, the library lights stay soft and gold, almost gentle. That's the cruelest part. Vera's love always did know how to bare its teeth while pretending to smile.
28
Aven
I'vespentthreedaysnot looking directly at the spirit in the corner which sounds impossible, considering she's the coldest thing in the shop and I'm the only one who can see the shape of her pain clearly enough to be useless about it. But avoidance is a skill. The Seminary taught me prayer, shame, and how to stare through the dead until my eyes watered. I can dust around a haunting. I can restock mourning stationery beside a woman-shaped absence and pretend the air isn't thinning around her every hour.
This morning, pretending stops working. She’s kneeling near the Victorian cards with both translucent hands at her throat. Yesterday, she still had a face if I looked sideways. Today, she's mostly charcoal blur and pressure, vibrating so hard the glass display case beside her has filmed with frost.
Soren comes up beside me without making a joke. That's how bad it is. Ira turns from the ward by the door, already looking at the cold corner, and Cain steps in behind me, hands settling atmy hips only after I lean back enough to ask without words. The room narrows around the thing I've been trying not to see.
"She's worse," Soren says.
"Yeah." The joke waiting behind my teeth doesn't make it out. "I noticed."
"Normal spirits have texture," he says. "Purpose. Habit. Something that belongs to them. Even when they're confused, the confusion is theirs."
