I know that look. He wore it when I asked too many questions in chapel. When I woke from visions and said things the priests told me not to repeat. When I wanted to know why my mother's file had missing pages and why every answer about her death came wrapped in pity instead of facts.
"You were assigned to me when my bloodwork hit their system, weren't you?" I ask.
Ezra looks down at the table.
The answer is there before he says a word.
My chest goes so tight I can feel every seam inside it. "Not because you loved me. Because they wanted the bloodline watched."
"It wasn't like that."
"Say no."
His silence is worse than the confession would have been if it came cleanly.
I laugh once, but there's no humor in it. It's just the sound my body makes because the other option is breaking. "Two years."
"Aven."
"Ten years at the seminary and two years of you telling me to open up. To communicate better. To stop shutting down when the visions got bad. To let you in." My voice stays low. Thatmatters. If I raise it, I'll give him the satisfaction of making me look unstable in a room this clean. "You wanted access. You wanted to know where the doors were."
His face goes pale. "I cared about you."
"I know."
That's the cruelest part. I know he did.
Ezra wasn't only a handler. He was the boy who brought me soup when I forgot to eat after finals. He was the hand on the back of my neck when I came out of a vision shaking. He was the first person who made my gift sound like something that might have a place in the world instead of a crack in my skull. He cared about me, and he reported on me, and he doesn't understand why one truth doesn't erase the other.
"I was assigned," he says finally. His voice is rough now. Smaller. "Yes. But the friendship was real. What we had was real."
The awful thing is that I believe him.
Not enough to save him. Enough to make it hurt.
"I thought if I kept you within the structure, you'd be safe," he says. "You have no idea what you're becoming. The Church has records of what happens when bloodlines like yours go uncontained. Your gift isn't just sensitivity. It's access. You're a celestial conduit, Aven. Your blood opens doors. Things will come for you. People will use you. Without guidance, without discipline, you could burn yourself out or tear yourself apart."
The language is familiar. Structure. Guidance. Discipline. Words with bars under them. Words that sound gentle until they close.
"The Church can keep you safe," he says.
I look at him for a long moment.
Then I ask, "Did they keep my mother safe?"
Ezra's mouth opens but nothing comes out.
The coffee shop keeps moving around us. The barista calls a name. A chair scrapes. Someone's phone buzzes against a tabletop. All those ordinary sounds gather around Ezra's silence and make it louder.
The lights above us flicker once. Not enough for the room to panic. Enough for Ezra to see it. Enough for the ghost near the pastry case, a gray man with wet shoes and a missing left hand, to turn slowly toward me and sink to his knees.
Ezra sees my reaction too.
"Don't say safe to me again," I tell him.
His eyes shine. "I didn't know everything."
"But you knew enough to stop asking."
