Everly Sterling's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Belphegor walked them to a black door set into a wall of raw stone. He pressed his palm against it and the door split like skin. Heat rolled up through the crack, sour and wet. "One hour," he said. "After that the door shuts and I cannot open it again from this side." He looked at Everly the way he had looked at her on the couch. "Ignore what you hear down there. Ignore what you feel. It is not yours. Find Zereth. Come back." Everly nodded. Arden gave a small bow that was almost serious. Then they went through. The pit dropped in tiers, each one wider and darker than the last. A narrow path spiraled the wall. Everly kept her hand on the stone and counted her steps to have something to count. Voices came out of the rock. Her mother's voice, which she had not heard in fifteen years, saying her name from a doorway. A child crying that sounded like Belphegor at six. Arden's breath hitched once behind her. She did not turn around. "Keep walking," she said. "None of it is real." "I know," Arden said. His voice was tight. "Talk to me anyway. Tell me something true. It helps." She told him. She told him about the door in Hell she had walked through when she was six, and how she still did not know who had put her on the other side, or why Belphegor had been waiting. She told him she became a demonologist because a rift had opened near her school and a boy she knew had come out of it wrong. She told him about the rift bleeding into her city right now, three weeks old, growing every night. "I want Lucifer's favor," she said. "I want into his library. There is a spell there that names blood. I want to know whose I am." Arden was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "Sterling. That is the least ridiculous thing you have ever told me." The path ended at the spire. It rose from the pit floor like a black cage twisted around itself, thorned iron wound through the bars, red light bleeding from the door at its base. Inside, on the stone, a gaunt figure sat with his back to them. Silver hair to the shoulders. Two burned stumps where wings had been. He did not turn when they entered. "You are not guards," Zereth said. "You want the crown." "We do," Everly said. She kept her voice level. "Azraxis sent us. Tell us your price." Zereth turned his head. His eyes were pale and steady. He looked at her a long moment, then at Arden. "My wings," he said. "And out of this pit. That is the price." "We cannot give you either," Arden said. "Then get someone who can," Zereth said. "Lucifer. No one else. Bring me his word and the crown is yours." Everly checked the watch on her wrist. Thirty-eight minutes. She looked at Arden. He nodded once. "We will bring it," she said. Zereth turned his face back to the wall. They climbed. The door was still open when they reached it. Belphegor pulled them through and shut it behind them. Everly stood in the soft light of his room with her hands shaking and a new name to carry upstairs. She had her price. Now she had to walk it to the throne.