Page 77 of What Is Dark Within Me

They were approaching her second month in the Hiding Place—three mere days in the human world—but with the moon always a blood-red monolith in the sky, it’d been difficult to track. Her grandmother’s dream world had grown more nonsensical, and Aleja wandered for what felt like hours through dense jungle to find the ruins where Catalina lingered.

“Did you know that Nicolas and I…?” Aleja asked when she finally found her.

“Not at first. He confided who you were, eventually, but I guessed the rest for myself. I can’t say I approve, mija. Nicolas and I get along, but he’s an Otherlander. They don’t think like humans. They don’t love like them either. They love like wildfire; violently and powerfully. But unlike a wildfire, their love never ceases, even if you one day choose to walk away. Everything will continue to burn.”

Aleja swallowed and looked at her hands. There always seemed to be ash beneath her fingernails these days. “I said nothing about love. Besides, I was an Otherlander once. I walked away.”

“Did you?” Catalina said. Her eyes drifted to the painting of the matador that always looked bloodier when she was in a dark mood. “I trust you, Alejandra, whatever you decide to do. But be careful. Even here, I can tell that something is changing.”

The scent of her grandmother’s perfume lingered on Aleja’s skin afterward, like a sensory reminder of her words. It wasn’t long after leaving the tower that she once again found herself in front of the painting of Persephone and her pomegranate. Its background now reminded Aleja of the Hiding Place, with its distant, jagged cliffs. Like Persephone’s underworld, it had once been a prison, yet now she was going to miss it when she left.

“Fuck,” she whispered to herself.

Had Taddeas realized she didn’t want to leave this place before she had? To be fair, it wasn’t as if Aleja had that much waiting for her in the human realm, aside from Paola. There was a job Aleja was indifferent about, and even if she re-enrolled in school or picked up fencing again, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to keep her mind from wandering back to the labyrinthine halls of the palace. To Nicolas’s infuriatingly beautiful face—the man who had commissioned this painting for her in her absence, as if it was a sort of spell, ensuring she would someday return.

He was waiting in the palace doorway, again dressed in what she thought of as his ‘human suit’; black pants, a black jacket, and a brilliant silver pin in his lapel—a coiled snake stretching from one collar to the other.

“Aleja, if you’re not ready…”

“No. No more waiting. Violet has done enough of that already.”

The way his shadow fell over her was almost a comfort, as if his wings were enclosing her in a cocoon.

“Taddeas says you’ve been doing well, but you shouldn’t make your powers known. Roland is not James. He may not have joined us until the end of the war, but he’s still a Dark Saint and more powerful than both of us now.”

“I’m going to do whatever I have to do to get Violet out of there. I hate that we’re going in blind. We should do some reconnaissance first once we’re in the mountains.”

The smile Nicolas tried to hide was obvious.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing. You reminded me of her for a moment.”

I am her,Aleja wanted to scream.I don’t have her memories, but I am her. At first, it had been like knowing there was a parasite in her stomach—something she couldn’t claw out of herself without destroying her body. But it felt different now. Just because she had a locked door in her mind, didn’t mean the house didn’t belong to her.

There you go, said the voice.

She nearly spoke, but decided the feeling was too complicated to voice. It wasn’t the first time she’d wondered if Nicolas had imagined her as her old self when she’d sunk to her knees in front of him, but the way he watched her with concern hurt more.

“I’m sorry. It was terrible of me to phrase it that way. You must know it’s not what I—”

“It’s okay. Let me grab my things.”

He was waiting in the garden when she emerged with Violet’s backpack strapped on her shoulders. After hours of fiddling with the small box unsuccessfully, Aleja had stashed it into the bag as well.

“Ready?” Nicolas asked, holding out a hand. Blotchy streaks of purple ran through gold clouds, something that might have looked garish if an artist tried to capture it in paint but was sublimely beautiful here.

She looked at it, unsure of why the gesture seemed startlingly intimate, considering how else they’d already touched each other. After a moment, she entwined their fingers, feeling his heat seep into her.

We’re more powerful like this, she remembered.

When their power was combined, instead of split.

When there were seven Dark Saints, instead of six.

“All right,” Aleja said, trying to bring some of her old self into her voice. “Time to go infiltrate a cult run by a rogue Dark Saint while you only have half your power, and I can barely control the fiery magic that bursts out of me at random.”

“Sounds like decent odds,” Nicolas said, with another smile that made her stomach flutter.

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