Page 73 of Each Their Own Devil

No. Please.Aleja begged him silently, her thoughts burning—the only warmth left in her.You said you would convince her. You said you could help us.

“I can’t do it, sister,” came the words from her mouth, though they lacked the force they’d carried when the Third had taken control. “I can’t forget her. Her memory is all I have.”

Exactly, she screamed in her mind.It’s all we have. Memory, love, and hope. It doesn’t have to end.

“You’re in pain, brother,” the First said tenderly. “The Avaddon will ease that pain. That is the point. It is a gift given to us by the laws that govern the stars, the atoms, and everything in between. A resetting.”

No, Aleja screamed silently.It’s okay to feel pain. It’s okay to grieve. Living is frightening and dangerous, but that’s why it’s beautiful.

The stiletto blade in Aleja’s hand was so cold she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to drop it without tearing the skin from her palm, but her thoughts darted to the sickle that had hung by the Third’s cage. The sickle she had once used to kill Roland, the Dark Saint of Pride—because it was so full of death magic that a single swipe had been enough to end him.Shewas full of death magic now, wasn’t she? And only the Third was powerful enough to kill the First.

Aleja knew how to channel with Unholy Relics. If the Third noticed, he would surely snuff her life out, but she was dead either way. With a soft push, she redirected the cold in her chest to her hand and into the thin, shining blade that had felt like the first weapon to truly belong to her since coming to the Hiding Place.

The Third seemed to shift inside of her like a parasite that had taken root in her chest, but after a brief moment, his attention again returned to his sister. “I don’t—” he said with Aleja’s voice. “I think grief might be better than forgetting.”

That is what I’ve been telling you, Aleja screamed at him.

“You are bargaining now as you have seen a trillion creatures do before you, and yet, you have taken them anyway, because you knew that there is nothing to be afraid of in the darkness.”

The First spoke so sweetly that for a moment, Aleja doubted her ability to complete what she had come here to do. All things came in cycles of creation and destruction—the chalice filled, the chalice drained—and to defy this was to defy the natural order. But then again, Otherlanders had never been much for order. If they had, the Second would never have absconded to the Hiding Place with his band of rebels.

Don’t listen to her, Aleja pleaded to the Third one last time, a distraction as she channeled more of his magic into the blade.

“I have done something foolish,” the Third sighed through her. “When I was captured, the living were quite convincing. This body here belongs to the Dark Saint of Wrath. Forgive me, sister. I’m afraid I did not come here to talk, but with darker plans.”

The First touched her round stomach tenderly. Perhaps this was the new world, growing in her belly—a world Aleja would never know. “I understand. There was a time when I, too, loved my devotees with all my heart. I was a poor mother to them; because I could not stand the sight of my children suffering, I hid myself away. Perhaps in the next cycle, I shall not be so cowardly.”

It was as if she felt the Third slump with resignation inside of her.

Coward, she screamed in her head.You said you would help us!

My sister is right, came his tired voice.I cannot let my selfishness get in the way of this grand design. Rest now, Lady of Wrath. If it is your husband you fear for, know that he is a stubborn bastard. If nothing else, I trust he will find you in afew billion years, when cells turn into fish who turn into reptiles who turn into mammals who turn into apes who turn into humans who can dream up creatures like the Knowing One.

It was too late to worry about whether or not he could feel her channeling his power into the blade. She let it surge—let death flow through her without any thought to the consequences—let it fill her veins with cold, ultramarine blue.

What are you doing?came the Third’s voice from inside of her.

“Brother?” the First asked.

Maybe you can decide not to be selfish, but I can’t afford not to be, Aleja told him. She tried to place her free hand on the ground and push herself up, but a distant part of her understood that she would never stand again. If she died on her knees, then it would be in physical form only.

You cannot?—

Aleja didn’t give him a chance to stop her. It was a weak thrust, but neither the First nor the Third expected her to move. She did not aim for the First’s torso but her thigh—the soft inner skin of her naked legs where, in humans, a precious artery ran. It was the only place within reach.

As her stiletto sank into the First’s skin, the Third did his very best to kill Aleja.

She knew this with the last sparking neurons in her head—an ancient reptile instinct informing her that her nervous system was about to be no more. There was no gradual wave of cold. Aleja’s vision filled with light, brilliant and blinding, snuffed out before she could marvel at its beauty. When she tried to breathe, it was pointless. Her body no longer worked, and even as a Dark Saint, her mind would follow only seconds behind.

She tried to think of Nic. She tried to picture his silver eyes and the warm smile that had always been just for her, and their second marriage beneath the standing stones at the edge oftheir nameless kingdom by the sea. Aleja knew she was too far to connect with the marriage bond, but she reached out all the same with a wordless apology. If Nicolas caught even a hint of it, he would know she hadn’t been afraid at the end—that she had been happy to save him and everyone else she loved.

The ultramarine swallowed the last of her vision.

The Third’s voice, whispering through her own, said, “This is the problem with you Otherlanders. You never know when to stop fighting.”

“It’s not just the Otherlanders,” said someone else.

Aleja recognized the brutal vibrations that coursed through her; she had felt this sensation once before, when Val had helped his mother capture the Third. Back then, one of her molars had cracked open—healed only by her final Trial. Now it felt as though every bone in her body was about to pulverize. There was no chance she’d ever stand again. Not even a Dark Saint could regrow a skeleton.

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