Page 72 of Each Their Own Devil

“He knows,” the Third said, his voice softening, “but he’s trying to fight it. He’s not ready.”

“Can you channel through me?” she asked, the words escaping before she could scare herself into silence. Before she could let the truth sink in. This choice meant she would never see Nicolas again. They would never dance in Italy. She would never patch things up with Violet, something she now wanted desperately, though she had denied it to herself for so long.

“Aleja?” Garm said, his head whipping toward her so quickly that his helmet shifted atop his broad skull. She had to ignore him. If she spoke to her hellhound, she would lose the courage to go forward.

“Answer. Can you possess me?” she asked the Third, sinking by his cage until they were eye level with one another—or would have been, had a blindfold not covered the upper half of his face.

“Yes,” the Third whispered. His breath carried the unsettling scent of cinnamon and overripe fruit. Though sweet, it was also rancid, clinging to the air like decay masked by perfume.

“Then do it. Enter me and speak to the First. Val will make sure the ritual is complete.”

“Al, no,” Garm growled.

Aleja finally found the courage to meet his eyes.

“I love you, Garm. You’re a good boy. Tell Nicolas that I wasn’t afraid, okay? Tell him that I’ll wait for him in the ultramarine realm. And tell Violet that I forgive her—and to eat the damn fig, if she hasn’t already. And tell the Messenger that she owes me in a way she can’t truly understand. If she wants to make it up to me, she’ll make peace with the Otherlanders.”

“Aleja,” Garm said again, his tone trembling with grief. But she had already turned back to the Third.

“Do it,” she told him. “I’m ready.”

The Third’s enormous jowls opened, as if he were about to speak again. For a moment, Aleja thought he might protest—but when they shut, she only had a heartbeat to brace herself.

The wave of cold that followed was like nothing she had ever experienced, seeping through her skin and into her core. The space between realizing what was about to happen and the moment it did stretched unnaturally long, as if the universe itself paused to acknowledge the gravity of her choice.

She had died before—almost twice, really, if she counted the snakebite that had nearly killed her. She remembered the black candle Nicolas had lit in his desperation, the bargain he struck to claim his Dark Sainthood and pull her back from the brink.

But this was different.

Death was not stillnor gentle. She could feel something moving through her—scraping the inside of her veins like rough sandpaper. Even her thoughts hurt, like a sharp spike each time she wondered what the hell she was supposed to do next. She could distantly hear Val’s voice, but it was overshadowed by the Third, who used her body like a marionette.

Aleja’s mouth moved, but she had no control over it. “Hello, dear sister. It has been so long since we were together; come talk to me.”

Her body dropped to its knees, but Aleja couldn’t tell if this was because she was rapidly losing strength or because the Third had forced her down. A distant part of her remembered Nicolas’s words from long ago:You don’t bow, you don’t kneel, for anyone or anything else.

And, to date, she hadn’t. Even when she had faced the Second, she had stood her ground, submitting to no more than a handshake.

“Sister, please,” the Third said, as her vision filled with the ultramarine blue of his realm. It was the same color as the sky in the painting of Orpheus and Eurydice that Nicolas had made in the grief of her absence. She wondered if he would search for her in the Third’s realm. She wondered if, this time, he would ever accept returning empty-handed again and again.

“We cannot be in the same place for long, little brother. Don’t you remember?” came a deep female voice from beneath the rocks. It was enough to quicken Aleja’s pulse, reminding her that her blood hadn’t entirely frozen yet.

“Nonsense. We have always existed in the same place; I could not reap if it were not for the richness of your soil and the sweetness of your sun. Sweetness that will soon be going away. Let us talk. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

There was another silence, so complete that Aleja could hear her blood rushing through her skull. If Garm and Val were speaking, their voices were beyond her now.

“It does,” the First said quietly. “But it shouldn’t scare you. We will sleep, and one day, some small being will open its eyes and see light for the first time, and when it sees light for the last time, you will be the one to usher its tender soul away.”

“We have nothing to fear, but they do,” the Third said in Aleja’s voice.

“All things die. You know that more than anyone.”

“But they don’t have to this time?—”

Something stirred in the darkness, but Aleja couldn’t have stepped back even if she wanted to. The figure that appeared was full-bodied and beautiful in the dim light. With one hand, she cradled a round stomach beneath her bare breasts. The First’s dark eyes flickered up and down Aleja’s kneeling form.

“You’ve chosen an interesting form. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your eyes before. I know how much you miss Nyra. I know how the thought of living in a world where her memory has disappeared from the universe—where the handprint she left in the drying cement outside her childhood home, the sundress now belonging to a young woman who bought it at a thrift shop, every photograph of her smiling face, and every joke she once made that you remember so deeply in your heart… I know that it is so frightening to live in a world where all of those things never existed. But you will not remember the pain of losing them, brother. Nor will I remember the pain of asking you to do so.”

Something inside Aleja felt resigned. The Third was considering his sister’s words.

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