MHHC Chapter 145

A Married Couple's Quarrel Is...

In the end, what Valentin's words amounted to was this: above all others in Ansgar, he would consider only her safety.

And in order to protect her, he was prepared to sacrifice any number of knights and soldiers who followed him as their lord.

Of course—she understood it, in one part of herself. Even the imagination of Valentin placed in danger froze her heart with something close to terror.

And yet. In the rapidly shifting chaos of battle, what priests could accomplish was limited.

Even the most experienced and capable among them. What they could offer amounted to this: suturing flesh, setting bone, wrapping bandages.

"Then you'll need me all the more."

"......"

"If there's even one soldier with a perforated abdomen like last time—ordinary priests won't be able to treat that. It would be better to take me with you."

"......"

"Please. Let me do what I can do."

To do what she could do. It had become, lately, her most essential purpose—the thing she reached toward.

When had it become this, exactly? This almost blind attachment to the work before her—when had it taken root so deep—

She cut off the thought before it could sprawl further and pressed both hands together in supplication.

"Valentin. Please."

He studied her face with eyes that seemed to weigh the sincerity behind her words. Her cheeks, flushed with the urgency of her pleading, lent her a beauty that was almost painful to observe.

Her pale green eyes shimmered with their particular shade of anguish, and her full lips—as always—exerted their wordless pull on every instinct he had spent centuries trying to govern.

But more than anything else, it was the other quality in her expression—that helplessness of someone who could not read the fate already written around her—that had always, unfailingly, made him weak.

Perhaps it had always been that reason, from the very beginning. Knowing everything that would be lost. Knowing every trap into which these feet were already walking. Knowing all of it, and still finding himself utterly unable to look away from those eyes.

"How am I supposed to persuade you."

At last, Valentin released a slow and clouded breath. A reassuring smile followed in its wake—then vanished as though it had never been.

"The situation is more dangerous than you understand. Unlike the past, when I could control the monsters to some degree, I am now losing everything, piece by piece. That is how I know."

"......"

"In the end, this fortress will become the last barrier. If we cannot hold the line before it comes to that, then everyone—myself included—will have failed."

"......"

"I won't deny it. I want you somewhere safe. At the very least, until I—"

He paused, as though searching for the right word. When none came that satisfied him, he touched the corner of his own mouth with something like restlessness and lowered his voice.

"Whatever happens from here, I need to know you won't be caught in it."

Whatever happens. The phrase carried only one meaning. Adelheid looked up at him with widened eyes.

"You're not—are you going to use your divine authority in this battle?"

"If necessary."

She stared up at him with a face gone stiff with shock. Her lips trembled once, twice, before words came out in something barely louder than breath.

"That's dangerous. You're already—"

"I'll be fine."

She felt it—the faint tremor running through the hands Valentin had placed on her shoulders.

He already knew, without her needing to say it aloud.

How reckless it would be, in the state his body was now in, to use divine authority at all.

The awareness settled over her with sudden clarity. What they stood on together was a skin of ice so thin it could shatter at any moment without warning.

Resentment and suspicion—everything—shattered before the terror of possibly losing him. Adelheid reached for him in urgency.

"Don't go."

"There is no other choice."

"Then at the very least, you have to take me to the front line with you."

"The closer you are to the fighting, the more my actions will be constrained. That's not an option."

"And I cannot yield either. You know—in this condition—how truly dangerous this is."

At her stubborn reply, Valentin's eyes narrowed. As though reading through to the inside of her, or perhaps protecting something in himself. The lips that had been silent as a wall tilted, fractionally, to one side.

"Can you feel what state my body is actually in?"

"I can tell one thing. The way you're trembling right now—I know it's all because of the craving. For what flows from me. The divine authority."

His hunger was vivid enough to take the breath from her. Everywhere her eyes rested she saw his labored restraint made visible.

The tendons standing taut along his throat. The muscles splitting along his forearm. The backs of his hands. His brow. The fine beads of perspiration gathering at his temples.

"When even just a few days apart makes you suffer this much—"

"......"

In the brief silence, Adelheid realized that her answer had, slightly, disappointed him.

It was not what he had hoped to hear. Valentin lowered his eyes a fraction and covered whatever had moved through him with practiced ease.

That elegant mouth curved into something warm.

"You have always reminded me to be patient. To wait. That's hardly new. There's no reason to make it a source of suffering now—not after everything."

"......"

"All of this arose from me. It is only right that I be the one to set it right."

But if responsibility was to be apportioned, Adelheid was not free of it either.

The world had twisted to this extremity because of her. Because she had plunged a sword into Valentin's heart and released the corruption that now spread through everything.

She tightened her grip on the fabric of his clothes.

"This is not yours to take responsibility for."

She had to turn him somehow—could not allow him to sacrifice himself once more for her failures, once more, like this—

The anxious feeling broke open into labored breath.

"Then—then I'll do it. Whatever you're planning to do, let me do it instead. Somehow, as quickly as I can, I'll master the divine authority. Give me a little more time. Please."

"......"

The hands that would ordinarily have drawn her close first—in tenderness, always in tenderness—drifted uncertainly through the air. He dragged a hand across his gaunt face, again and again, before answering with deliberate quiet.

"To use divine authority the way I do, it will take several more years of refinement."

"I'll try as fast as I can. I'm the one who should be responsible. Everything that happened—it all happened because of me."

"Where it began, and whose fault is greater—none of that matters. The moment of choice ended long ago. And the past, once fixed, does not change no matter how deeply it is regretted."

The word regretted—it was the first time she could recall hearing it from his mouth. Did he regret it? Loving her? All of it? Or truly—

"I am the only one who can end all of this, Adele."

The fingers that had been clutching the front of his coat went slack. She let her hand drop, falling as though the string holding it had been cut.

No means of persuading him came to her. Only the realization, growing sharper with each passing second, that she could neither redirect his decision nor cause him to reverse it.

"...But then—if you do—"

Perhaps she would never be able to reach for him again.

The understanding was bitter as alum. The winter air threading through the worn folds of his clothing felt newly cold against her skin.

"Valentin, what am I supposed to—"

A gust of wind cut across them without warning, and her words died in her throat.

She was still worrying at her lower lip with her teeth, smoothing the hair that had blown loose across her face, when Valentin rescued that abused lip with his thumb.

The ghost of an old expression flickered over his—the faint frown, the quiet reminder that she had a bad habit.

But it was not what it had been in those bittersweet days of before.

The face that emerged as the dust settled was perfectly still. The golden eyes looking down at her, the narrowed pupils—unchanged from always. And yet.

"......"

"......"

He cupped her face between both hands with care, and the cold that had settled into her skin was swallowed immediately by the heat of him—his body temperature like something held too close to a furnace.

She forced her eyes upward—filling now with tears she could not seem to stop—and found his face directly before her, close enough to count each breath.

"Don't cry."

When he brought himself level with her gaze, Valentin always had to lower himself to meet it.

Not just his face—his entire frame pitched forward and down, as though poured toward her. As though nothing else in the world had weight enough to matter. She had always loved that about him. Had never quite been able to say so.

It was the same now. Gaze meeting gaze, nose nearly touching nose, suspended in the distance where only each other existed.

"Just this once, wish me luck."

"......"

"Mm? Adelheid."

The dim corridor. The dense, close air. No footsteps nearby—or perhaps they were only too far away to hear. Every breath he drew, every flutter of his eyelids, the quiet sound of him swallowing—all of it arrived to her with terrible clarity.

The warmth of his breath bloomed white between them in the cold.

What he wanted was unmistakable. What he intended to take from her was plain. Divine authority.

Adelheid laid her hand over the back of his.

Permission. She closed her eyes.

His lips descended—softly, barely—against her forehead. Then her nose. Then, at last, her lips.

Ah. A thin sound escaped her—something caught between grief and surrender—and she wound both arms around the firm column of his neck.

He was a predator who missed nothing. He found the narrow opening and pressed through it, ruthlessly dismantling her entirely.

The hem of her clothes rode up in the urgency of his movements. Even the saliva pooling between them tasted faintly sweet.

She liked the sensation—the slow dissolution of boundaries between them. His breath. The sinuous movement of him. The desperate percussion of his heart against hers.

"Ah—Adele—"

The lips coiled around each other finally, reluctantly, came apart. Adelheid became aware, gradually, that her back was against the wall and that she was gasping.

Moments later, both her wrists were caught—pinned like a butterfly pressed beneath glass, nowhere left to flee.

Looking down at her where she lay helplessly beneath him, a distinct heat moved through his eyes.

His mouth skimmed across her cheek, her jaw, the column of her throat—rapid, almost frantic. She was on the verge of a breathless laugh at the tickle of his exhale against her skin—

When Valentin bared his teeth and bit down at the soft notch of her throat.

"—!"

Adelheid drew a sharp, involuntary breath. The pulse leaping beneath her skin—Valentin savaged it without mercy, with teeth and tongue, demanding.

She could feel it: the divine authority beginning to flow out of her. Him tearing it away from her, without gentleness.

Nothing at all like the past—when he had done all that careful, painstaking work to rouse it and then allowed himself only the barest sip at the surface—and then called that enough.