The Devil left at dawn.
Not through the door — through the walls, dissolving into the stone with a sound like bones being ground to dust. The air trembled in his absence. The candles burned blue, and the stained-glass saints wept blood until they cracked in half.
Isadora sat in the pews of the ruined cathedral, clutching Lucien's chained heart, still beating softly in her hands.
> "He'll come back," Lucien whispered. "They always do."
> "What did he mean by that?" she asked.
Lucien didn't answer.
Instead, he coughed, and something black came out.
Not blood. Not even human.
Isadora placed the heart beside him. Its chains tightened like a serpent when she moved away.
---
She had heard the whispers in the floorboards for days now — no, weeks — maybe even years. Time broke in the Devil's house. It folded like wet paper. It didn't matter how long she waited. Something was always beneath.
Something was always listening.
She got up and knelt near the altar. The floorboards there were ancient, riddled with sigils scorched into the grain, twisting in demonic tongues. Her fingers brushed over them, and she felt the burn of memory:
> The blood.
The wedding gown.
The veil made of moths.
The Devil's kiss on her neck that stole her breath for a decade.
She pried up a plank. Beneath, there was dirt, but not normal earth — it pulsed, faintly warm, like skin. And under that, she heard it.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Like a heart.
Not Lucien's.
Not hers.
> "Do not go further," he said from across the room.
> "This place has too many hearts already."
She ignored him.
---
The second plank came up easier. The third bled when she tore it out. Her hands were soaked now — warm red dripping down her wrists. The whispering was louder here, circling her ears like flies.
She reached into the soil and pulled up a bone.
Tiny.
Too tiny.
A child's femur.
Her own stomach turned as she uncovered more — a ribcage, fractured and fused with rusted nails, a skull with no jaw, finger bones bent backward unnaturally.
Then a name etched into bone:
> "Isadora, Mother of Ash."
> "No..." she breathed.
> "These aren't mine."
Lucien stood now. Pale. His body shimmered between flesh and something else — shadow with teeth.
> "They are," he said.
> "The ones you carried in the Devil's womb."
> "The children born of fire and madness. The ones he buried here, beneath your wedding altar, as a bridal gift."
She staggered back, her breath ragged.
She wanted to scream. But her mouth was full of ashes.
---
Suddenly, the church groaned.
The Devil was returning.
The flames on the walls dimmed, as if afraid. The pews bent toward the door. Even the moonlight retreated through the broken windows.
Lucien grabbed her hand. The heart between them pulsed harder.
> "We can still run," he said.
> "There are paths between the walls. If we use the children's names, they'll open."
But she wasn't listening.
She was touching the skull again.
Inside it, something whispered in her voice.
> "Let him come."
> "Let him see what he made."
---
The Devil entered not as flame — but as a man, cloaked in priestly robes stitched from shadows and faces sewn into the fabric. Each one wept.
He looked at the altar. At her hands. At the bones of the dead.
He smiled.
> "Do you mourn them now?" he asked.
"You named them. You cradled them in your sleep. You danced with them in the fire. Do you only weep now because he reminded you?"
Isadora stood. Blood streaked her dress. Dirt crusted her lips.
> "I remember everything," she whispered.
"And I curse you with it."
She flung the child's bones at his feet.
They did not fall.
They rose, spinning in the air, knitting together with black thread, forming the shape of something half-human, half-spectral — a child made of grief.
The Devil's smile faded.
> "You would raise them against me?"
> "They died for you," she said.
"Now they live for me."
---
Lucien placed the heart in her hands again. It was hot now. Beating like a war drum.
The church trembled. The stained glass shattered inward. And the bones beneath the altar began to chant — all together, all at once, in a hundred voices that sounded like hers.
> "Blood for the bride."
"Fire for the womb."
"Ashes for the king."
The Devil stepped back.
> "You are becoming dangerous."
> "I always was," she said.
"You just never let me bloom."
---
And then the flames obeyed her.
They crawled from the candles, slithered down her arms, kissed her fingers — and the wedding veil of moths returned, this time burning gently like a halo of ruin.
Lucien dropped to his knees, eyes wide. Not in fear. In awe.
> "You're not his," he whispered.
"You never were."
---
Isadora turned to the Devil.
> "I am the heart you failed to steal."
"I am the child you should've feared."
"And I will burn your house down with your own blood."
---
The Devil laughed.
But his voice cracked.
And the bones kept singing.
And the altar caught fire.
And behind her, her dead children smiled.
End of Chapter Fourteen