Alexander did not move.
He just stared at Delia with unblinking blood-red eyes, his posture one Delia had memorized as I’m listening, continue.
“Dudu Yai’s fifth scroll,” Delia said.
Her voice came out more stable than she had expected when practicing this sentence in the bathroom earlier.
“I finished the translation today.” “And?” “And your name is in there.” Silence.
Not a short silence.
This was a silence Alexander let stretch long enough that Delia almost filled the void herself, but she did not.
She waited.
Because the fifth scroll had taught her one thing about conversations with creatures nearly a thousand years old who had learned how to hide things, sometimes silence was the most effective way to make them speak.
“Aleksander,” Alexander finally said.
Not a question.
“Aleksander,” Delia confirmed.
“Dudu Yai wrote about connecting blood.
About an old vampire who found it.
About a blood contract that created a bond that couldn’t be broken by the death of either party.” A pause.
“And in his last line, he wrote one question.
For whoever read his scroll.” Alexander stared at her.
“Did that vampire know from the beginning?” Delia stared back, her eyes not moving from Alexander’s face.
“Did he know from the very first night?” The silence lasted longer than before.
The room’s light hummed softly.
Outside the window, the city moved on, knowing nothing.
“Yes,” Alexander finally said.
One word.
No defense, no deflection, no long sentence building context before reaching the point.
Just…
YES.
Delia breathed in slowly.
“Since when?” “Since the moment your blood first touched my ruby.” Alexander stared straight at her.
“Connecting blood has a very specific resonance, Delia.
It can’t be mistaken by a creature old enough to recognize it.
And in nearly a thousand years of my existence, I had only ever read about its existence in old records.
The records even most old vampires no longer believed were true.” “But you believed.” “I believed when your blood touched my stone and I felt its resonance.” “And you didn’t say anything.” “No.” Delia stared at him.
“Why?” Alexander tilted his head slightly, a movement Delia associated with him choosing the most honest words from several available options.
“Because there are things a person must discover for themselves to fully believe.
If I had told you that first night, you wouldn’t have believed me.
You would have looked for other explanations, questioned my motives, spent your energy rejecting the possibility rather than understanding it.” Delia did not answer immediately.
Because the honest part of her knew he was right.
“But Dudu Yai knew about you,” Delia finally said.
“About our contract.
How?” “Dudu Yai spent his life hunting old vampires.
His information about our kind was more complete than it should have been.” Alexander’s jaw tightened slightly.
“He was dangerous not without reason.” Delia nodded slowly.
Processing.
Rearranging the past few weeks in the light of this new information, every conversation, every reaction from Alexander, everything he had chosen to say and not say, and finding that although some things shifted, the overall shape had not entirely changed.
It just became clearer.
“I’m not angry,” Delia finally said.
Alexander seemed slightly surprised by this, a very small reaction, almost undetectable, but Delia caught it.
“I’m not saying I’m not disappointed,” she continued.
“But I’m not angry.
There’s a difference.” Alexander stared at her for quite a while.
Then nodded once.
Slowly, in a way Delia could not interpret precisely but felt like something more than mere confirmation.
The moon was already high by the time they finished clearing the table.
Delia only noticed when the light from the window changed quality, whiter, colder, in a way she had come to recognize enough to make the back of her neck prickle, not from fear but from ‘oh, it’s time!’ “Full moon,” Delia said.
“Yes.” Alexander was already standing near the window, looking outside with his back to Delia.
From here, with moonlight hitting the side of his face, he looked like, Delia had no good equivalent for this.
Like something made of different material from its surroundings.
More solid.
More present.
“I know,” Delia said.
Alexander turned.
“Three sips,” Delia said, repeating the terminology she had memorized from their first full moon.
“You don’t need to wait for me to start this conversation, Alex.” Something at the corner of Alexander’s mouth moved.
“You’re no longer afraid.” “I didn’t say I’m not afraid.” Delia sat on the sofa, tilting her head to one side in a way that exposed the side of her neck, a movement not entirely intentional but not entirely unintentional either.
“But I already know this happens once a month.
It’s more efficient if I stop pretending to be surprised every time.” Alexander observed her from near the window.
His eyes glowed red in the moonlight.
Then he walked closer, silent footsteps Delia had memorized but never fully stopped responding to physically, because there was something about the way this creature moved that no human brain could calibrate as ordinary.
He sat on the sofa beside Delia.
The distance between them was not much.
“You’ve eaten,” he said.
“You’ve showered.
You’re in better condition than before.” “Optimal condition for being a vampire’s breakfast,” Delia replied dryly.
Alexander made a sound very close to laughter, not a full laugh, more like an exhale containing amusement he had not planned.
His cold hand touched the side of Delia’s face, guiding it very gently.
Delia felt the cold on her cheek and decided not to comment on how contradictory it was that the touch of a creature whose temperature resembled winter marble no longer made her want to pull back.
“Still willing?” Alexander asked, a question Delia knew was not a formality.
In their blood contract, consent was not optional.
Never was.
“Ask again and I’ll punch you,” Delia answered.
Alexander almost genuinely smiled this time.
Almost.
His hand brushed Delia’s hair to one side in a movement that was, not hurried.
Not clinical.
More like someone doing something he deliberately was not rushing because there was no reason to.
Delia felt a cold breath on the side of her neck and decided to stare very intently at the wall in front of her.
“You’re tense,” Alexander observed, his lips nearly touching her skin.
“I’m not tense.” “Your pulse says otherwise.” “You’re reading it wrong.” A very soft laugh, barely there, just a vibration in his throat that Delia felt more than heard because they were this close.
And then, in a way that gave no warning sufficient to anticipate.
His other hand, the one not holding Delia’s hair, moved to her waist.
Slowly.
Not gripping tightly.
More like…
landing.
Like someone wanting to make sure something stayed in place.
Delia opened her mouth.
“Alex…” “Be quiet for a moment,” he said, very softly, right at her neck.
Delia closed her mouth.
Because there were times when the best option available was to stay silent and let whatever was happening finish happening, and this was one of them, even though the part of her brain that always wanted to comment on everything was struggling very hard to accept that reality.
The touch of his lips on Delia’s neck was cold.
One second.
Two.
Then…
grauk!
Sharp, quick, not painful in the way Delia had expected in the first month but still always made her jolt because it was a physical response she could not control.
Three sips.
First.
Delia felt the familiar pull, accompanied by a warm sensation that contradicted Alexander’s body temperature and always made Delia think about paradoxes every time this happened.
Second.
Alexander paused.
Longer than usual.
Delia felt it without being able to explain how, like someone reading something in the middle of a sentence and needing to start over because something didn’t make sense.
Third.
Slow.
Very slow.
And when that final sip was finished, Alexander did not pull back immediately.
His lips stayed on the side of Delia’s neck, not biting, just touching for a few seconds that felt longer than they should have.
Then he pulled back.
Delia touched her neck reflexively, checking…
Two small marks already beginning to fade before her hand even got there, one of the things about this blood contract she had never found a scientific explanation for and had stopped trying.
Alexander sat silently beside her.
His eyes were not looking at Delia, they were looking at something ahead with an expression Delia could not fully read because most of its components were hidden behind layers of highly trained control.
“Alex.” Delia stared at him.
“You saw something.” Not a question.
Alexander could indeed see memories through blood.
Delia had known this since the conversation about refrigerators early on.
Three sips of Delia’s blood today carried everything that had happened since the last full moon.
Everything.
Including the research room this afternoon.
Including Gisel.
Including the seal that opened and the gemstone that glowed and the girl who did not step back and said hello to an antique jar containing a Jinn who had been lonely for hundreds of years.
“Yes,” Alexander said.
“And?” A moment of silence.
His eyes finally moved toward Delia, red, calm, with something beneath them closer to amused than Delia usually saw on his face in any context.
His pale lips moved slowly, forming a sentence in a language that flowed out very naturally, a language Delia did not understand every word of but had heard often enough to know this was not a language Alexander used for unimportant things.
Latin.
But with a different tone from dry academic Latin, warmer, more amused, like someone who had just witnessed something surprising enough to produce an honest reaction from even a creature nearly a thousand years old who had learned not to be surprised by anything.
“Ah…
Quam mirum.
Homo et daemonium.” (Ah…
How interesting.
Human and Jinn.)