Page 71 of Each Their Own Devil

They entered a chamber not unlike the one housing the Second, though it lacked the grand decoration of its counterpart. It was clear the Astraelis had not been here in centuries. Statues filled the room, reminiscent of the Venus of Willendorf—a curvaceous female figurine unearthed nearly thirty thousand years after its creation, representing bounty, fertility, and sensuality. But these statues were massive, towering magnitudes larger than the four-and-a-half-inch figure that art historians had studied for decades.

Aleja would have met them eye to eye if she hadn’t been hunched over, still supporting Val as they moved deeper into the chamber.

The statues filled her with an inexplicable warmth. Aleja had never known her mother. Once born with her dark red hair, it had been assumed she would be her family’s final sacrifice to the Knowing One. Her birth mother had run off, unwilling to raise a daughter doomed to die. Aleja understood, in a way, and she hadn’t needed her mother, not really. She’d had her grandmother, her cousin Paola, and later Violet.

Looking at these statues now, she realized mourning would have been pointless. She had always had a mother. Every living thing did. The First had been there for every tender newborn creature opening its eyes to the world and would remain until the last of them was ushered away by the Third.

“Val, are you sure this is the right thing to do?” Aleja whispered, her eyes locking on a rough-hewn stone sarcophagus in the room’s center.

With the fire around her left hand, she sent embers drifting toward ancient candle wicks, which sputtered to life with crackles and the smell of burnt dust. Garm dragged the Third’s cage the rest of the way down. Inside, the Third lay on his side, his ribcage rising and falling slowly. This deep, Aleja could no longer hear the sounds of battle above, nor did she dare reach out with the marriage bond, fearing she might distract Nic.

“Don’t get sentimental,” Val growled, his voice entirely unlike himself. “She is making you feel those things, just as much as the Second was able to trick your senses during your Trials. Get me to the sarcophagus.”

“Okay,” she breathed. It was only a few steps before she could no longer support Val, and he fell to his knees.

“Quiet now. You can let me go. I need to concentrate,” he whispered.

Aleja didn’t know what else she could do but step closer to the Third’s cage. Saliva matted the fur around his mouth and the mane beneath his chin. What had once been shinyblack fur had dulled to matte gray, clumped together like scabs forming around open wounds. One of his claws was broken off. Aleja wondered grimly if a soldier had pocketed it—a macabre souvenir of the time their leaders had captured death itself.

As she placed a hand on the cage, a wave of vibration pulsed through her—not tender and sweet like the First’s energy, but cold and sour. The sensation traveled through her stomach and into her bones.

“Almost done,” Val whispered. “I just need a few more minutes.”

Aleja hardly heard him. Finally, she gave in and reached for the marriage bond, hoping for its familiar warmth, but the void she encountered was deliberate, like Nicolas had shut her out.

It seemed like ages until Val was back on his knees, drawing something on the dirt floor with the index finger of his remaining hand. When Aleja forced her mouth to open, it felt like her tongue was fused to the roof of her mouth. Each word came out raw.

“Val, everyone is probably dying up there?—”

“I know,” he said, trembling. Aleja recognized that tone and desperately hoped she was wrong; it was the voice of someone who had just realized they’d made a terrible mistake. “I can hear her. She’s so close, but she won’t come to me.”

“There has to be a way I can help. I was a witch before I was a Dark Saint. Just tell me what to do,” she snapped.

But Val could no longer speak. He slumped forward, his mask softening the impact of his head against the dirt floor, leaving only a muted thump.

“That was bad, right?” Garm whispered, his voice unusually subdued.

Aleja’s gaze shifted to the Third, whose deep voice rasped faintly from the cage. “The Astraelis was wrong…” he murmured. “The First cannot be forced to appear. She must be convinced.”

The Third’s voice matched his form, as if every word were dragged from the grave itself. His wings, with their weary eyes, now hung slack against the bars, tattered in the faint light.

“What do you mean? What do we have to do?” Aleja demanded. “You must know how to get her to show. Tell me, Third. You owe me. I gave you Nyra’ssickle back. I tried to warn you.”

The black Throne shifted slightly. “I’m trying,” he breathed heavily. “Nyra would want me to help you, and I?—”

“Just tell me what I need to do.”

“I can speak with the First. She is my sister—she gives life, and I take it away.”

“Then do it,” Aleja whispered fiercely.

“I cannot. Val has performed his magic correctly, but he won’t let me in. Not all the way.”

“Why not?”

“Because it will kill him. He always knew, but he thought he could find another path.”

Aleja’s next breath lodged in her chest, sticky and unyielding, like swallowing tar. “But he’ll die anyway,” she said quietly. “We all will.”

---