Isabella sat up slowly.
Her movents were careful, the way soone moved when their body felt unfamiliar, like clothes that had been worn by soone else for a long ti and were only now being handed back. She looked down at her own hands. Turned them over. Flexed her fingers, one at a ti, watching them with an expression that didn't have anything in it yet.
Not relief.
Not fear.
Just.....nothing. The specific blankness of soone encountering sothing they didn't have a na for because they'd never experienced it before.
"I'm..." she said. Quietly. To no one in particular. "This is my body."
"It is," phistopheles said. Gently, for her.
Isabella looked up.
Her eyes found first.
And then, a beat later, found phistopheles, standing beside in a form Isabella had never seen, black hair and white streaks and a face that resembled mine, and sothing in Isabella's expression shifted into open confusion.
"You're....." she started.
"Free," phistopheles said simply. "Both of us."
...
Isabella looked back at .
And then, slowly, color started rising in her face.
Not the blank kind from a mont ago. Sothing else entirely. Her eyes had gone wide, and she was looking at with the particular horror of soone whose mory had just caught up to the present, piece by piece, in real ti.
"Oh," she said.
"..." I said.
"Oh no."
"Isabella—"
"I rember," she said. Her voice had gone very small. "I rember all of it. While she was.....while I was....." She put both hands over her face. "Oh my god."
phistopheles, beside , looked extrely pleased with herself for approximately one second before catching the look I gave her and adjusting her expression to sothing marginally more diplomatic.
"That's," I said, carefully, "not the most important thing right now."
"It is a little bit the most important thing right now," Isabella said, from behind her hands.
"It's really not."
She lowered her hands, slowly. Her face was still red, but underneath the embarrassnt sothing else was surfacing. Sothing heavier.
The blankness from before was gone. What replaced it was worse.
...
"Can I....." she started. Then stopped. Started again. "Can I tell you sothing. Both of you. I think I need to."
"Of course," I said.
phistopheles, quietly, moved to sit on the arm of a nearby chair, giving the room a little more space without leaving it entirely. Present but not crowding. I sat down across from Isabella, close enough that she didn't have to raise her voice.
Isabella looked at her hands again.
"My father," she said, "raised to be useful."
She said it plainly. Like a fact about the weather.
"Not loved. Useful. There's a difference and I didn't understand there was a difference until very recently, because no one ever showed what the other one looked like." Her hands twisted slightly in her lap. "Everything I did growing up was evaluated. Grades, magic theory, social standing, who I was seen with, how I presented myself. All of it. Constantly. And when I did well, I wasn't praised. I was simply.....not corrected. That was the closest thing to approval I ever got. The absence of correction."
She glanced up at , briefly, then back down.
"I used to think that was normal," she said. "That everyone's parents were like that. It took a really long ti to figure out they weren't."
...
"There's a thing you used to say," Isabella continued. Her voice had gone quieter.
She looks at with wet eyes "Before you got entangled into this supernatural ss".
She lowered her head as she continued.
"When I asked you about..... becoming my boyfriend I rember those words…that I still don't have a full understanding of.
Emotions.
Why I didn't seem to feel things the way other people described feeling them."
She paused. "You told to learn about love first. Before I tried to understand anything else. Like it was a prerequisite. A subject I hadn't passed yet."
She laughed. It wasn't a real laugh. It ca out broken in the middle.
"I spent years trying to figure out how to 'learn' it. Like there was a textbook sowhere. Like if I just studied hard enough I'd eventually understand what everyone else seed to understand without trying." She shook her head slowly. "I never did. I don't think I ever got close."
"Isabella—" I started.
"And then," she said, talking over , like she'd been holding this and needed to get all of it out before she lost the nerve, "I heard you'd gotten involved in sothing dangerous. The supernatural politics, the factions, all of it. And I felt sothing. For the first ti in my life I felt sothing that I couldn't explain and couldn't ignore and didn't have a frawork for. And I thought....."
Her voice cracked.
"I thought maybe this was it. Maybe this was what you ant. Learn about love. Maybe this feeling, this fear of sothing happening to you, was the thing I'd been failing to learn my whole life and I'd finally found it by accident."
She pressed her lips together.
"So I summoned her." A small nod toward phistopheles. "I gave up everything. My freedom, my body, all of it, because so part of thought that if I did sothing big enough, sothing that proved I felt this thing.....maybe it would count. Maybe it would be real. Maybe you'd..."
She stopped.
"I don't even know what I wanted from you," she said, very quietly. "I don't think I ever knew. I just knew I felt sothing and I had no idea what to do with it except throw everything I had at it and hope that counted as proof."
...
The room was quiet for a long mont.
Isabella was looking down at her hands again. Her shoulders had started to shake, very slightly, the kind of shaking soone did when they were trying very hard not to cry and losing.
"I'm sorry," she said.
The words ca out small. Worn down. Like she'd been carrying them for a long ti and had finally found sowhere to set them.
"For all of it. For the drink Victor was supposed to give you. For everything that ca after. For dragging you into all of this in the first place because I didn't know how to..." She pressed a hand against her mouth. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
And then she broke.
Not loudly. Isabella didn't seem to know how to cry loudly, the sa way she didn't seem to know how to do most things that ca naturally to other people. It ca out in small, choked sounds, her shoulders curling inward, her hands pressed against her face like she was trying to hold sothing in that had already gotten out.
I moved without thinking about it.
I sat beside her and put my arms around her, and for a mont she went rigid, like she didn't know what this was either, like even this was sothing she'd never been taught.
Then she leaned into it.
All at once. Like sothing that had been holding itself upright for twenty years had finally been given permission to stop.
"It's okay," I said quietly. "You don't have to apologize anymore."
"I do," she said, muffled, into my shoulder. "I really do."
"Then you did. Just now. That's enough."
She cried for a while.
I didn't say anything else. There wasn't anything else that needed saying. phistopheles stayed where she was, quiet, watching with an expression that had none of the mischief left in it at all.
...
Eventually the shaking slowed.
Isabella pulled back, just slightly, wiping at her face with the back of her hand, looking embarrassed and exhausted and, underneath both of those things, sothing that looked almost like relief. The real kind this ti. Not the blankness from earlier.
"I don't know what happens now," she said. Quietly. "I don't have a father who wants back. I don't have a contract anymore. I don't really have.....anything."
"You have tonight," I said.
She looked at .
"And tomorrow, probably," I added. "And the day after that. We can figure out the rest as it cos."
phistopheles, from the chair, made a soft sound. Almost a laugh, but warr.
"That's very you," she said. "Solving an entire life's worth of trauma with 'we'll figure it out.'"
"It's worked so far."
"Has it though."
"...Mostly."
Isabella, between us, let out a small, watery laugh of her own. The first real one I'd heard from her.
It wasn't much.
But it was sothing.
...
A/N: Hi There Readers,
I have sothing to say...you Know That This chapter marks Valerian's Seventh and Eighth official love interest...
So I kind of feel isn't The Title of the book pretty much aningless now...
I an it's supposed to be Five wives but sohow now it's Eight
Maybe it's ti I send a email to Webnovel to change the book's na..
What do you think? Let know in the comnts...
Also join the Discord and patreon..
(づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ
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