They moved to one of the larger rooms.
Everyone, eventually. Liliana, Eva, Éve, Mephistopheles, 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 seemed 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 same divine framework." She looked at her hands. "One of mine is Chastity."
"You explained some 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."
