The room was quiet.
Eva and Éve had drifted off some time ago, tangled together at the foot of the bed the way they always ended up, breathing slow and even. Liliana was still awake, just barely, her head on his chest, one hand idly tracing patterns against his skin with the loose, unhurried movements of someone who had nowhere else she wanted to be.
Valerian pressed a kiss to her hair.
"Goodnight," he murmured.
"Mm." Liliana tilted her face up, and he kissed her properly this time, slow, unhurried, the kind of kiss that didn't need to go anywhere because everything that needed to happen already had. When he pulled back she was smiling, eyes half-lidded, pink still lingering faintly at the edges of purple.
"Goodnight," she said back. Quiet. Content.
She settled against him again, and within a minute her breathing had evened out too, slow and steady, her hand going still against his chest.
Valerian lay there in the dark.
The room was warm. Full. Quiet in the way a room was quiet when everyone in it was finally, completely at rest.
Then the air beside the bed shifted.
Not a sound exactly. More like the space simply rearranged itself, the way it had in Braham's entrance hall, except smaller, contained, deliberate.
Mephistopheles was standing there.
Black hair, white streaks, purple eyes catching what little light the room had. She wasn't looking at the bed the way she normally might have — no teasing, no comment about the obvious. Her expression was something else entirely. Focused. Tight around the edges in a way he hadn't seen on her since the contract.
"Valerian," she said. Quiet, careful not to wake the others. "I need to talk to you."
...….
…
The library at the Faust estate was the kind of room that swallowed sound.
Tall shelves, old books, the particular hush that came from centuries of paper absorbing whatever noise tried to exist in the same space as it. Aisha sat near one of the tall windows with a book open on her lap, though she hadn't turned a page in a while.
Mariabell found her there.
"Oh, there you are." She crossed the room and settled into the chair across from Aisha, tucking her legs up. "Where's everyone else? It's been quiet all morning."
Aisha didn't look up immediately.
Then, slowly, color started rising in her face.
"Valerian is...occupied," she said. "In the room. With the others."
"Occupied," Mariabell repeated, not understanding yet.
"...With all of them."
Mariabell looked down at the page she'd been about to flip through.
Then back up.
Her face went from its usual warm color to something closer to a tomato in the space of about two seconds.
"Yo... you mean he's..." she lowered her voice instinctively, even though the room was empty. "...doing it. With all of them. At once. Sex?"
Aisha nodded. Meekly. Not looking at her.
Mariabell didn't ask anything else.
She opened her book and stared very hard at a page she clearly wasn't reading, her face still red, and the library went quiet again in the way it was built to be.
...
The quiet didn't last.
"Hey, has anyone seen the second volume of—" Victor's voice arrived before he did, and then he came around the shelf carrying an armful of books, looking for somewhere to set them down. He spotted the two of them and stopped.
He looked between them.
Then, with the specific obliviousness of a man who had walked into a conversation already in progress and had no idea what it had been about, he said:
"Why didn't you join too? I mean, he's your husband, right?"
Mariabell choked on nothing.
Aisha shook her head. Quickly.
"I may be his wife on paper," she said. "But it's still a political marriage. Besides..." she paused. "It's n…not the right time yet."
The stutter at the end of the sentence was small. But it was there.
Victor, meanwhile, had gone somewhere else entirely.
"Lucky bastard," he muttered, mostly to himself, setting the books down with more force than necessary. "All of them. At once. I'm engaged to one woman and I can barely—" he stopped himself before finishing that thought, glancing guiltily at Mariabell, who was now looking at him with an expression that suggested she'd heard exactly enough of that sentence to have opinions about it later.
"Anyway," Victor said, too quickly. "Why didn't you join, though? Seriously."
"I told you," Aisha said. "It's not the right time."
...
"Oh, is that so."
The voice came from directly behind her.
Aisha's whole body went rigid.
"Or is there something you've been hiding from me, Aisha?"
She didn't have time to turn around. A hand caught her shoulder and the world tilted, and then her back was against the bookshelf beside the window, Valerian's arm braced beside her head, close enough that she could feel the cold radiating off him in a way that wasn't normal.
"Valer—"
"Shh."
His voice was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that asked for silence rather than requested it.
"Answer me properly, Aisha." He tilted his head slightly, and even in the dim light of the library something about his eyes was wrong, though she couldn't immediately place what. "What colour are my eyes?"
Aisha's breath caught.
"What are you talking about," she said, and even she could hear how thin it sounded. "It's obviously blue. It's been blue." She laughed. A short, bright, completely unconvincing sound. "Right?"
Valerian looked at her.
Not angry. Worse than angry. Disappointed.
"Aisha," he said. "My vampire form is active right now. Has been since I walked in." A pause. "My eyes are red."
Aisha hiccuped.
"Ah—" she started, scrambling for something, anything. "I mean..."
"Stop," he said. Gently. "Just stop."
He reached up and, with careful fingers, started undoing the top buttons of her shirt collar.
"Valerian, what are you—"
"How long," he said, not stopping. "That's all I want to know right now. How long has this been happening."
"What is—"
And then she saw his face change as the collar opened.
...
"Oh my god," Mariabell said.
She was on her feet without remembering standing. Victor had gone completely still, the book he'd been holding hanging forgotten in one hand.
Aisha's collarbone, where the fabric had been covering it, was black.
Not bruised. Not shadowed. The deep, spreading, cracked black of something Mariabell had seen exactly once before, in this same estate, on this same woman, some time ago, with holy water and screaming and Aisha collapsing into her arms.
Fine hairline cracks ran through the black like a window about to shatter, and at the edges, where it met healthy skin, something darker pulsed faintly, slow, like a heartbeat that didn't belong to a body.
"That's—" Victor's voice cracked. "That's the corruption. From before. The Djin thing. Why is it—"
"It's not the Djin," Aisha said quietly. "Not this time."
Valerian's hand was very still against her collar.
"How long have you been unable to see Aisha?" Valerian continued his fingers gently rubbing the corners of her eyes.
"You hid this," he said. Quiet. Flat. "From all of us. From me. For how long?"
His eyes—red, sharp, the vampire form he hadn't bothered to drop—held hers without blinking.
"You managed to conceal it well, my wife." The title came out with an edge that wasn't quite anger and wasn't quite hurt and was, somehow, both. "To think I didn't notice your body's condition at all. This whole time."
Aisha's gaze dropped.
"Tell me," he said. "From when."
The library was completely silent. Mariabell had both hands over her mouth. Victor had taken a half-step forward and then stopped, like he wasn't sure if he was supposed to be here for this at all.
Aisha looked at the floor.
"After I fell in love with you," she said.
...
No one said anything for a moment.
Then Victor exploded.
"What the hell, Valerian!" He crossed the room in two strides, jabbing a finger at him. "What is this! Were you the one doing this to her? Is this some kind of— why is your wife's skin turning black, why didn't anyone tell me, why are you just standing there—"
"Victor," Valerian said, without turning.
"Don't 'Victor' me! Look at her! Why are you cornering her against a bookshelf instead of— wait." He stopped. Something in Valerian's expression registered for the first time, late, the way it did with Victor when he was angry first and thinking second. "You didn't know either, did you."
Valerian didn't answer immediately.
The silence answered for him.
"...Oh," Victor said. Considerably quieter. "Oh, okay. Sorry. I just— I saw the black skin and I panicked and you were the closest person to yell at, I didn't actually think it through, sorry—"
"It's fine," Valerian said.
He still hadn't moved from in front of Aisha. His hand was still resting against the edge of her collar, careful, like touching the corruption itself might make it spread faster, even though it clearly didn't work that way.
"How did you find out," Aisha said. Quietly. "Just now. How did you know to ask about my eyes."
Valerian's jaw tightened.
"Aisha… You stopped wearing your Eyepatch" Valerian muttered weakly his eyes filled with Worry making Aisha finally realize her one blunder…
Her Eyepatch…
The reason for a Saintess to wear Eyepatch is usually to protect their eyes from Sin
But for Aisha who had already become blind after losing herself to Corruption ones, it became useless…
"Mephistopheles told me," he continued. "She's been able to sense it. And Just a few moments Ago she told me about it. She said it's been getting worse for days and she thought I already knew, because she assumed you'd have told me yourself." His voice dropped. "She was wrong about that part."
Aisha closed her eyes.
"I was going to," she said. "I was going to tell you. I just— I wanted to wait until I had a plan. Until I knew what to do about it before I made it your problem too."
"Aisha." Valerian's voice softened, finally, the edge going out of it. "You're not a problem."
He pulled back slightly. Looked at her properly, the black cracking spreading faintly past her collarbone, the way she'd been hiding it under high collars and careful posture for what was apparently months.
"But we're talking about this," he said. "Now. All of it. Whatever it is."
Aisha looked at him for a long moment.
Then, slowly, she nodded.
"Alright," she said. "Then I'll tell you everything."
