Page 14 of Each Their Own Devil

“Oh! You came,” he said. His voice was ragged, but his shoulders perked up at the sight of her.

“I did,” she said. “Better me than one of the other Dark Saints. They think I’m a fool for entertaining you; better you don’t prove them right.”

Val rose, and though Aleja should have been used to it by now, her primal instincts still reeled at the sight of his full height. Taddeas was tall, but Val loomed at least a head taller. He had thinned considerably since Aleja had last seen him. His robes, cobbled together from mismatched pieces of Otherlander clothing, hung askew on his broad shoulders, emphasizing his gaunt frame.

Garm growled again, and Aleja shushed him.

“I’ll have to ask that the hellhound leave,” Val said.

“No.”

“What I have to say is sensitive. I’d really rather it be just you Dark Saints.”

Taddeas glanced at Aleja. “Your call.”

She stopped herself from sighing. “Go wait by the door, Garm. Don’t try to pass through the wards without us, understand?”

The dog whined but obeyed, his nails clicking against the stone floor as he retreated. Aleja listened to the sound fade, trying to calm herself. She’d thought the weight of her new life as a Dark Saint had hit her when she answered her first call, but this was another reminder of just how much now rested on her shoulders.

Val scratched at the pale skin where feathers were missing from his mask. “As I’ve told you before, my mother may have the Third, but without me, it’s doubtful she’ll find a way to coax the First into appearing in a form in which she can be killed. I made great strides in my research while in the Astraelis realm, but unlike the Second, the First does not speak to us. So I couldn’t study her directly.”

“I know this, Val. Get to the point,” Aleja said.

Val shifted his weight, one hand clenched around the edge of his patchwork robes. “Well, this problem is easily solved in the Hiding Place if I were allowed to study the Second.”

A laugh rose in Aleja’s throat, but she forced it down. Beside her, she could practically feel the tension radiating from Taddeas’s rigid stance. “I’m sorry,” she said after a stunned pause. “Did you actually think that was going to work? Your mother has expressly said she plans to kill the Second. Do you think there are any circumstances where we would allow you access to him?”

Val’s pout was accompanied by a twitch of the feathers on his mask, like a bird springing to attention at the yip of a fox. “I’ve explained this to you both already, and I’ll explain it to the Knowing One, should he decide to step foot here. My mother’s cause is your cause. The squabbles between our peoples can come later. If she does not succeed, we all die.”

Neither Aleja nor Taddeas bothered to make their silent conversation covert. When she glanced at him, one scarred eyebrow was raised in question. Gods, she wished he would tellher she wasn’t ready for this and send her back upstairs, where she could visit her grandmother and listen to the deep crash of a dream-ocean against a dream-shore. But she was a Dark Saint now. Somewhere in the world, men were running from beasts of fire and shadow she had unleashed. If she didn’t act, they would die—and so would Josephine with her smeared eyeliner and Fleetwood Mac posters; Paola, who so tenderly cared for her patients; and Louisa, who had bargained away an immortality-granting fig for the chance to live a single, normal life.

“Even if Taddeas and I agreed, there’s almost no chance the other Dark Saints would let you anywhere near the Second. You’ll have to find another way,” she told Val.

“And how can I do that? If you’re going to keep me trapped down here, then you might as well kill me—because we’re all dead anyway!” Val waved his arm, but the gesture faltered. Even with his eyes obscured, Aleja saw the moment he caught sight of the bandages in his peripheral vision and dropped his arm sharply to his side.

“If you could give us some sort of proof—” she began.

“My equipment remains in the Astraelis realm. Your proof will come when the First explodes like a dying star and destroys us all,” Val snapped.

“You have to give mesomething, Val. All we have to go on is your word. Our librarians deny it. The Hiding Place has been in a state of magical decay for years, and those effects are noticeable. If the Avaddon is so much worse, why can’t we feel it?”

“Both my mother and I have sensed the magic—only the Astraelis are attuned to the First’s…moods. Perhaps my mother more than most, having eaten from the First Tree—what you Otherlanders might call the Tree of Knowledge.”

“But you must have some proof—in your laboratories, right? What about your luminariums?” Aleja said, recalling the small glowing orb she and Nicolas had once recovered from the Third’srealm. It had contained information Val used to mislead anyone who might try to chase him. “Maybe if you gave the librarians one of them?—”

“I destroyed most of my research when I left the Astraelis realm, thinking my mother still meant to kill the Second,” Val said glumly. “You’ll just need to have faith in me, Wrath.”

“I’m an Otherlander,” Aleja spat. “We don’t have faith.”

“You’ll need to this time.” Val’s voice was sharper than she had ever heard it. It felt like a blade tip pressing against her sternum, pushing in just hard enough to be uncomfortable. “Because the consequences if you don’t will end us all.”

“I don’t know if I can do that, Val,” Aleja muttered. “I know how your mother has tricked me in the past.”

The edges of his mask quivered. “I’ve heard the stories too. The truth is, I no longer know what I can say to convince you. Go ask the Second. Perhaps he will confirm it for you. Will you have faith in him?”

“A scientist who asks me to have faith?”

“Yes.”

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