He's no longer pacing. He's breaking apart in the center of the room, fury and terror blowing through him so hard his outline shreds at the shoulders. He knows before I can say it. Maybe he knew the moment Cain's blood answered that old command. Maybe Cain's family magic still hooks through him deep enough that the leash pulling tight around his brother drags him too.
Soren's magic misfires. The files on the counter lift in a sudden spiral, pages whipping through the room, Hugo's notes slapping against shelves and scattering across the floor. One of Vera'sjournals snaps shut with a crack like bone. The biting plant in the corner curls its serrated leaves inward and strikes at empty air, pot rocking hard enough to spill dirt over the rug.
Ira comes through the back doorway with a warding blade in one hand and iron filings dusted across his forearm. He takes in the room in a single sweep: me on the floor, Soren gripping my shoulders, papers in the air, spirits wailing, the empty space everyone is reacting to coming apart. His body's already braced for an attack. He looks for the intruder first, then the breach, then the blood. When he finds none of those, his eyes land on me, and whatever he sees makes his face go still in a way that frightens me almost as much as the bond.
"Cain," I manage.
The name barely leaves my throat, but it's enough.
Ira's grip tightens on the blade. Soren makes a small sound beside me, all the color leaving his face. The bond convulses again, and this time I feel Cain trying to send something steady back, trying to protect us from his terror even while his body walks into captivity. Whatever he sends twists before it reaches me, smoothed by the same force that has hold of him, and something inside me recoils so violently the shop’s lights flare white.
For years, the seminary taught me to fear the thing under my skin, to call it temptation or contamination or proof that something in me had gone wrong. They never told me what it would feel like when it stopped begging for room and simply took it.
The room changes in a single, silent wave. The woman in the torn gown lowers first, her translucent knees touching the floorboards. The old man near the umbrellas folds after her, head bowed, hands shaking against the ghost of his coat. The child-spirits stop running and sink down in a huddled line near the cabinet. One by one, every spirit in the shop drops until thefloor is crowded with the kneeling dead. Even Ellis goes still, his torn edges pulling inward as his head bows under a command I didn't know I gave.
For a moment, no one breathes.
I stare at them from the floor with Soren's hands still locked around my shoulders. The bond to Cain is under that forced calm, but the spirit static that's haunted me my whole life has gone silent around it. The dead aren't reaching for me.
They're waiting.
The dead have never waited for me before.
"Aven," Soren says.
His voice is thin. His fingers remain on my shoulders, though his grip has changed. He's checking whether touch still reaches whatever part of me just made a room full of ghosts kneel.
I turn my head toward him. The movement feels strange, too precise. I can see the pulse jumping in his throat, the ink on his wrist, the faint tremor in his lower lip that he'd deny until the building collapsed. His magic curls around his hands, ready to pull me back or burn with me if that's what it takes. Soren's never been good at choosing safety over love.
"I'm here," I say.
The words sound like mine.
Soren's eyes search my face. Whatever he finds there doesn't comfort him, but he doesn't let go.
Ira steps closer. Slowly. That alone tells me too much. Ira doesn't approach danger slowly unless he's trying not to startle it. The blade's still in his hand, but lowered now, angled toward the floor rather than the room. His gaze moves over the kneeling spirits, then to Ellis, then to my hands. I look down and realize my palms are flat against the floorboards, fingers spread, white light threading beneath the skin like veins that have remembered a different purpose.
"What happened?" Ira asks.
I can't give all of it at once. The bond's still feeding me fragments, jagged pieces of horror caught in the wrapping around him, and my own power has gone still in the center of me like a blade held perfectly level.
"They used a command," I say. "Bloodline magic. Something in the synthetic blood made it hold. He fought them. He almost got away."
Soren's mouth tightens. "Almost."
The word lands with all the cruelty it deserves.
My vision pulls toward Ellis.
He lifts his head before I speak. He's kneeling because whatever I did hasn't released him yet, but the fury in him is alive enough to burn through the reverence. His grief has sharpened into something useful. It scares me how easily I recognize that shape. Maybe because mine has done the same.
"You know where," I say.
Ellis's form flickers. His eyes go to the door, then past it, beyond the street, beyond the city as I understand it. "The tower."
Ira's breath changes.
Soren swears under his breath, not loudly, not theatrically. Just one rough word that sounds like it cuts on the way out.
