Chapter 778: Ice

Vesa stopped carrying Alucard’s voice into the room.

Thepes watched her from inside the restraint, then closed his eyes without letting his head rest against the ice. She kept the marks around his body in view while narrowing the conversation to the old connection alone.

"Master, can you hear me without the others?"

"Yes."

She waited through a faint break in the answer.

He was still weak. Finding a clearer path had not given him the strength to say more. She wouldn’t ask him for a long explanation just to keep hearing his voice.

But there were things she needed before they tried to reach anyone else.

"I wanted to thank you," she said. "For helping them stop Thepes. And for the organ."

"They did the work."

"They needed what you knew."

Vesa looked through the doorway. One of Dorian’s soldiers stood beyond it, holding his weapon low while another carried supplies toward the wounded.

Without the separation Alucard had described, they might still be fighting under Arachne’s web.

She had trusted him to help, and he had answered. She wanted the reunion to stay that simple. It made the next question harder to ask.

"When you split me, did you know what each part would be left without?"

The connection remained quiet.

Vesa kept her hold light. Had he missed the question, or was he choosing not to answer?

"Enough to continue," he said at last.

"Enough knowledge?" she asked, wanting something more exact.

"Enough of you."

Vesa lowered her eyes.

The words should have comforted her. He had meant for her to survive. She had wanted to hear him say that instead of having to keep believing it on her own.

But she remembered the other Vesa in Thalia’s castle.

That part of her had awakened around the essence, become corrupted, and fought the people she was supposed to help. When they finally recovered what remained, she had gained a body she could use more freely. She had not recovered everything she needed to know.

She remembered stepping out of the cocoon and looking at her new hands, eager to use them. Yet when Mingyue asked about her knowledge, she had still been unable to give her what she needed.

Afterward, Vesa had waited for the next piece of essence to explain the gaps. Waiting was easier than asking whether Master had left them there.

Alucard could say there had been enough of her because she was here to answer him.

She had been the one who had to live with the gaps.

Vesa looked at her small hand against the wall. During the battle, she had left the clearer voice to guide a carrier around the corner with an injured soldier. Master had still been there when she came back.

She wished asking this question felt as simple as telling him to wait had been.

"Not every part continued the way you wanted," she said.

"I know."

"How much did you know before we found them?"

"Vesa, I didn’t stand beside every piece and watch what happened to it."

"I know you couldn’t. That’s why I’m asking what you left there, not what happened afterward."

A sound came from the street.

The guard outside the door stepped aside for two people carrying a bed. Vesa looked up long enough to make sure they passed the building without approaching the restraint.

Thepes opened his eyes.

She kept Alucard’s voice within their connection and returned her attention to him.

"The missing knowledge wasn’t all lost when the other part was corrupted," she said. "There were things I couldn’t answer before that. Things Thalia knew that I didn’t."

"You were not meant to carry every answer."

"Then tell me which answers you chose to keep from me."

"Would you like the entire list now?"

Even through the faint connection, Vesa recognized that tone. She had heard him use it to turn difficult questions aside before. Once, familiarity would have made her relieved enough to let the question go.

This time she looked at the rune holding Thepes’s chest.

The artifact inside him had been put to a use Alucard had not chosen. They were about to use its connection again, and she would be the one telling the others what was safe enough to attempt.

"No," she said. "I want the part that can hurt them now."

The faint amusement left his voice.

"What are you afraid I will ask you to do?"

"I don’t know. That’s the problem."

Her hand tightened against the edge of the broken wall. She had asked the pair to trust her because she was afraid their questions would end with them rejecting the essence, her master, and the work she needed them to do.

"I knew there was part of your soul in the essence Alex absorbed," she said. "I didn’t tell him. When Mingyue asked, I admitted it to her first because I was afraid of what he would think."

"He would have thought I wanted his body."

"Yes."

"He asked me that himself."

"And you could answer him. I couldn’t. I still told them you meant no harm."

Alucard was silent for several breaths.

Vesa did not fill them with another defense.

"I didn’t tell you to hide that," he said.

"I know."

She had chosen that concealment. She had also held back essence and offered Mingyue more strength if they kept the truth from Alex. Master had not made those choices for her.

But not every silence had been hers. There were answers she knew and could not give because of the limits he had placed on her. He could not call those missing memories either.

"The soul was my choice," she said. "The limits on what I can tell them weren’t."

"No."

"Are you going to say those were lost knowledge too?"

"I know which restrictions I set, Vesa."

"Then you know why I can’t simply promise them you mean well."

She waited for him to explain. His presence remained, but no words followed.

"Do you expect me to assure them about this call while I’m still guessing?"

"No."

The quick answer surprised her. Vesa waited, and Alucard continued more slowly.

"I split the power. You went with its parts. I did not give every part everything I knew. Some things were withheld, and some things you lost afterward. Those are not the same."

"Then stop answering as if the loss explains all of it."

The connection thinned.

Vesa eased her hold at once, letting him rest without dropping the trace. She was angry with him. That didn’t mean she wanted to spend the last of his strength forcing him to answer.

Thepes shifted inside the ice.