They moved to one of the larger rooms.
Everyone, eventually. Liliana, Eva, Éve, phistopheles, all filtering in once word got around, until the room held nearly the whole household. Aisha sat on the edge of a couch with her collar still open, the black cracks visible now without apology, and no one looked away from them, which she seed to find harder than if they had.
"Start from the beginning," Valerian said. He'd sat beside her. Close. "All of it."
Aisha took a breath.
"Every saint is born with a primary vow," she said. "Mine is Justice. But alongside it, every saint is also born with six minor vows. Smaller seals, layered into the sa divine frawork." She looked at her hands. "One of mine is Chastity."
"You explained so of this before," Liliana said, from where she'd settled on the floor. "Back when we found those notes from Georg Faust. You got cut off before you finished."
"I know," Aisha said. "I never finished it because I didn't want to. It was easier to let the conversation move on."
She looked at Valerian.
"Chastity, for a saint, doesn't an what people assu. It's not about virginity. It ans certain things—intimacy, in the way that matters for this—are forbidden until marriage." A pause. "But not just any marriage. The vow was sworn at my birth, under a specific divine frawork. For it to recognize a marriage as real, the marriage has to be recognized by the sa frawork. Recognized by God, in the literal sense the church ans it."
The room was quiet.
"Our marriage," she continued, "is real. To us. It's recognized by our families, by political treaties, by paperwork that matters in every practical sense." Her voice got smaller. "But not by that."
"So your vow doesn't recognize us as actually married," Valerian said slowly.
"No."
"And every ti we're..." he hesitated, "...close. Every ti I'm with you the way I'm with the others. The vow registers it as a violation."
Aisha nodded.
"And breaking a vow you were born with," phistopheles said quietly, from where she stood near the wall, "doesn't just cost a saint their power."
"No," Aisha agreed. "It inverts you. Completely. Everything I am as a Saintess becos its opposite. A Fiend. A destroyer." Her hand drifted to the black creeping along her collarbone. "This is the early stage of that. It's been happening slowly, for months, every ti I let myself feel sothing I shouldn't. Every ti I wanted sothing the vow didn't recognize as mine to want."
She looked up. Directly at phistopheles.
"It's what happened to Clara," she said. Gently. "Isn't it."
The room went very still.
...
phistopheles didn't flinch.
"Yes," she said. "As far as I understand it. I don't rember most of it myself. Whatever happened, however it happened, it broke sothing in her so completely that what ca out the other side wasn't really her anymore. Just ." She said it simply, without any visible weight, which sohow made it heavier. "I used to think not rembering was a rcy. Lately I've started to wonder if it was just one more thing that got taken from her without her permission."
She looked at Aisha.
"I don't want that for you," she said. "I want to be very clear about that."
Aisha's eyes were wet.
"I know," she said quietly.
...
"So what's the fix," Valerian said. His voice had gone very steady, the steadiness of soone holding sothing down so it didn't show. "There has to be one. You wouldn't have hidden this for months if there wasn't sothing you were trying to do about it."
Aisha hesitated.
"There is," she said. "A way to make our marriage recognized. Properly. By the frawork the vow actually answers to."
"How."
"You'd need to be baptized."
A pause.
"That's it?" Liliana said, sounding almost relieved. "A baptism? Isn't that just— water and so words?"
"Not this kind," Aisha said. "This isn't a church font. This is a specific spring. The holiest water that exists, in a realm only saints can access." She looked at Valerian directly now, and sothing in her expression was close to fear. "For soone with your bloodlines—vampire, demon, werewolf, witch, all of it—subrging in that water wouldn't be like stepping into a bath."
"What would it be like," he asked.
"Like stepping into sothing hotter than a star," Aisha said. "Everything in you that isn't holy would be attacked, all at once, by sothing infinitely stronger than anything you've ever fought." Her voice shook slightly. "You'd die. Probably more than once. I don't know how many tis, or whether your regeneration could keep up with sothing on that scale."
She looked down.
"I've known about this for a while," she admitted. "I've been trying to find a way to make it survivable before I ever brought it up. So kind of safeguard. Anything." Her hands tightened in her lap. "I'd rather carry this myself for the rest of my life than risk losing you trying to fix it."
...
"Aisha."
Valerian's voice was quiet.
"Look at ."
She did, slowly.
"The Divine Seal," he said. "From the Quintessence Matrix. phistopheles built it specifically because it's the one piece of that's holy. The neutralizer. The thing that keeps the rest of from tearing itself apart." He held her gaze. "You've felt it before. Every ti we've kissed. The remnants."
Aisha's breath caught.
"You think it would be enough," she said. "To survive the spring."
"I think it's the only foothold I have," he said. "And I think between that and my regeneration, I have a better chance than anyone else who's ever tried sothing like this." He paused. "I also think you've been carrying this alone for months while everything else was happening, and that ends today."
"Valerian, I haven't finished preparing—"
"How much worse can it get before we run out of ti entirely?"
Aisha didn't answer.
She didn't need to. The black along her collarbone answered for her, faint and slow and spreading.
...
phistopheles spoke into the silence.
"For what it's worth," she said, "I survived contact with holy water once. Not like this. Nothing like this. But I know what it's like to be the thing the light is trying to remove." She looked at Valerian. "If the Seal holds even a fraction as well as it did when it was first ford, you won't be facing this with nothing. You'll be facing it with sothing that was built, on purpose, to exist in the sa place as holy power without being destroyed by it."
"That's the theory," Valerian said.
"That's the theory," phistopheles agreed. "I never said it was a comforting one."
Liliana let out a long breath.
"So," she said. "How do we get into a realm that only saints can access."
Everyone looked at Aisha.
Aisha looked at her own hands. At the black cracks running through her skin, slow and patient and getting closer, every day, to sowhere it couldn't be stopped anymore.
"I open it," she said quietly. "I'm the one who has to take him there."
She looked up. At Valerian.
"Which ans I'm the one who has to watch."
...…
…
Braham found them before they found him.
He was in the doorway of the room before anyone had decided to go looking, leaning on his staff, expression unusually grave for a man who had spent his last appearance puking blood over his granddaughter's mild irritation.
"I felt the shift in the wards," he said. "Aisha's seal is destabilizing. Has been for a while, actually, but it's accelerating now." He looked at the room, at the open collar, at the black cracks, and sothing in his face settled. "Ah. So you finally told them."
"You knew," Valerian said. Flat.
"I suspected," Braham said. "There's a difference, and I'd like to maintain it, because suspecting and not interfering is a very different thing from knowing and choosing silence." He walked further into the room, the staff tapping once against the floor. "This isn't my area to fix. Saint matters belong to the church, and the church doesn't generally extend courtesy invitations to Archmages"
"But you know sothing," Aisha said.
"I know where the realm's threshold sits," Braham said. "Geographically, at least. I know it because Georg Faust spent years trying to find a way in, back when he still thought the Root was sothing you could simply walk toward if you found the right door." He shook his head slightly. "He never got close. The threshold doesn't respond to mages. It responds to saints."
"And you know this because—"
"Because his notes are still in this house," Braham said simply. "I've read everything that wasn't burned."
...
He led them down, eventually, into a part of the estate Valerian hadn't seen before—older than the rest, the stone here rougher, the air colder, the kind of cold that ca from depth rather than weather.
"One more thing," Braham said, as they walked. "Before you go in. People have attempted things like this before. Not many. Fewer have co back."
"How many," Valerian asked.
"Three, that I have record of. All mages, all centuries ago, all attempting it for reasons that weren't love—they wanted the power that recognition would grant them, the boost to their standing with the church." Braham's voice was even. "None of them had anything like your Seal. None of them had your bloodline regeneration. And none of them ca back as themselves. What returned wasn't whole. The spring took sothing from each of them that didn't co back with the body."
The group was quiet.
"I'm not telling you this to frighten you," Braham added. "I'm telling you because going in blind, thinking it's simply painful and then over, is worse than knowing it might cost sothing permanent. Better to walk in with open eyes."
Valerian absorbed this.
"Understood," he said.
Aisha's hand found his. Gripped it tightly.
Valerian smiled wryly at that…'Guess I have to burn myself again for my Marriage huh?'
He shook his head and walked forward
'Just a little Pain is a Fine price to Pay for my happiness'
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