She called him her cav, and stopped once she remembered having one. Once she remembered ten thousand years of not having one anymore. She still remembers.

John hadn't known— well. There's a lot he hadn't known about the workings of Anna's social life, and to come up against it like this, the raw underbelly of what it's done to her, leaves him in ringing silence. His fingers have drifted to his brow, hard to the creases as though he might press a headache back into place. For a moment he worries his lip with the edge of his teeth, gaze gone faraway.

In the end, he just shuts his eyes and exhales slow. His hand falls, and for a moment, he is carefully still.

"I can imagine." He's lost all attention on Waver's horse legs, Waver's outburst with the flower pot. There's still water trickled into the hollow of his throat, his collar soaked, but he seems to have forgotten. "But this isn't a haunting I can exorcise... not without doing some other damage. Whatever has stayed with her, it's hers to contend with."

The chair doesn't shock him. God has not made anyone forget for ten thousand years, and she'd kill him for it, anyway. What would be the point?

"She was a lyctor. However briefly, it was real to her... It was real to everyone." To him. He knows what he was to her: he might understand it better than she does. "But it's done. We bury the dead and hush the ghosts. I'm not coming after her."

It's a flattening, a simplification of the truth. It's true enough to matter.