Page 1 of Each Their Own Devil (Our Lady of Fire #3)

“The Book of Open Doors begins as it closes: with a betrayal.” — The Book of Open Doors , Part I: The First Gate

“I don’t care that you were my best friend; if you make a sudden move, I’ll kill you.”

The sound of fighting had faded as Aleja and Violet moved deeper into the forest, the trees muffling the thunder of enormous wingbeats. Violet stepped back, her empty hands raised. Fragmented feathers clung to the blood on her palms. “If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t have stopped the Authority, Al,” she said.

Aleja didn’t have an argument for that. After her meeting with the Messenger, she’d been alone on the battlefield, the Otherlander armies too distant to assist her. Aleja may have taken on an Authority by herself once, but it had been weak, barely alive.

“If you were smart, you’d have waited a week to betray us. You were only one Trial away from becoming a Dark Saint. Now, you have thirty seconds to explain what you’re up to.”

The sight of Violet was disarming. After the first two Trials, she’d looked steadier on her feet, the fullness returning to her face reminding Aleja of selfies from Violet’s pre-diagnosis travel blogs. But now her collarbones were too prominent again, her jaw sharp beneath a thin layer of clammy skin.

“There wasn’t time,” Violet said.

“Don’t assume I care whether you live or die. This is a war. A war your side started?—”

“They’re not my side,” Violet cut in. “Just let me say what I need to before your Knowing One finds me and sends his shadows down my throat.” She took a shaky step forward.

Aleja didn’t make good on her promise to kill her, but her palms warmed with magic as a raven cackled overhead. More had gathered, drawn by the battle, their glossy blue-black wings streaking the trees like oil.

“Speak,” Aleja said flatly.

“The Authorities think the Messenger is up to something. Her armies have had plenty of opportunities to crush the Hiding Place, but she’s made excuses every time. They’re getting restless—bloodthirsty.”

Aleja, who could confirm the Messenger had been colluding with an Otherlander ( her ), didn’t mention it. “What does this have to do with you running off with the enemy? Hurry, Violet. If you think Nicolas’s shadows are the worst an Otherlander can do to you, I’d love the chance to prove otherwise.”

“I saw into the Authorities’ minds. There was something else… It’s difficult to put into words.”

“Try.”

“The Messenger thinks the Authorities are completely under her control, but she’s wrong. Something else is happening in their realm—something she’s trying to keep secret. But the Authorities can sense it, like they’re…” Violet paused, her eyes darting as she searched for the right words. Her irises were faintly ringed with yellow. “Imagine standing on a beach, and the ocean starts receding out of nowhere…like a tidal wave is coming.”

The Avaddon, Aleja thought. Val had described it as a supernova, but the meaning was clear all the same. She wet her lips before speaking. “Either tell me why it’s so important or get on your knees so I can take you as a prisoner of war.”

“Whatever this tidal wave is, the Authorities want it to happen.”

Aleja still wasn’t used to her new body as a Dark Saint. It felt like her heart wanted to race, but a firm fist locked it into a slow, steady beat. The Messenger had claimed she couldn’t let her armies know what she was doing; perhaps this was why.

Violet went on, oblivious to Aleja’s inner crisis. “The Messenger could’ve killed you twice already. If she’s trying to stop this…wave, then maybe she’s on the right side.”

Aleja’s heart broke free of its vise, giving a shuddering beat. “What do you propose I do about that, Violet? Call a time-out on the war?”

Violet reached into her pocket and pulled out a bloody chunk of bone, its edges jagged as if gnawed off a carcass.

“Here. This is from an Authority’s corpse.”

“And it’s not even my birthday,” Aleja said, raising an eyebrow. “Next time, I’d love a Panera gift card.”

Violet ignored her. “I took two pieces of bone. The basic principles of making an Unholy Relic weren’t hard to figure out. I linked them with one of Agnes Flanders’s binding spells. We’ll be able to share memories—including recent ones.

“The Messenger knows the Authorities are on the verge of rebelling. She thinks I can quell them. It’s probably the only reason I’m still alive.”

“Vi, are you sure that—” Aleja stopped herself from speaking. What she had been about to say— Are you sure that the Authorities won’t try to kill you? —were not words that belonged to the Dark Saint of Wrath. They were the words of the old Alejandra Ruiz, who was foolish enough to bargain with the devil because her sick friend had walked into the woods and never come out. “If this is a trap, then I will kill you the next time we meet, if your own body doesn’t do the job first.”

The words burned Aleja’s tongue. It was a cruel, villainous thing to say, but Violet only flicked a strand of blonde hair away from her face and sighed. “I deserve that. Even so, I don’t think I could have brought myself to stand in the Second’s cave again. Funny, isn’t it? Before the Trials, I thought I would do anything to keep myself alive, but when I saw what he did to you… Forget it. I have to go. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m not worried about you,” Aleja said, but she palmed the bone anyway.

“Of course not, Dark Saint.”

Violet had always been a hiker, a tracker, more at home in the forest than under the harsh lights of the community college where she and Aleja had met. With a few steps, the tree shadows swallowed her, and the ravens let out a series of screams. Aleja waited for the sound of rustling, signaling that the armies had caught up, but aside from the ravens watching callously from overhead, she was the last person left in the forest.

As she turned and pushed through the thick bramble of vines, she wondered if the numbness she felt was one of the Second’s gifts. She tried to recall what it had been like to scroll through Violet’s social media feeds with a true crime podcast on in the background—tinny voices discussing whether a blonde woman caught on camera at a gas station in Atlantic City was evidence that Violet had faked her disappearance to get out of a gambling debt. Could she still remember what it felt like to miss someone so much that with their disappearance, it was as if the rest of the world had emptied as well?

Are you there? I need to talk to you, she asked her inner voice, who remained silent.

“Where is she?” someone else barked.

Flames rippled to life around her hands, but the voice had come from Taddeas, his axe drawn. Pulses of red magic danced around the curved blade. Behind him, nearly hidden by the darkness between the trees, was Nicolas. The relief in her chest at the sight of him consoled her; at least she could still feel something that wasn’t anger.

“My fire reacts poorly to Bonnie’s defenses. Violet got away. I’m sorry,” Aleja lied, hating the way Taddeas’s eyes softened at the words. But she could not admit what she knew about the Messenger without speaking to Nicolas in private first. “Is everyone else?—?”

“The attack took out a few foot soldiers. The Dark Saints survived, but Amicia is in bad shape. She won’t be rejoining us on the battlefield any time soon,” Taddeas replied, as Nicolas reached them.

The Knowing One regarded the blood on Aleja’s face silently, but she could feel the thrum of their renewed marriage bond like a rope pulled taut between them. They hadn’t spoken since she’d pressed an Unholy Relic cut from her past self’s body into his hand and run off to meet the Messenger.

“Let’s go back. I’m sure the others need help,” Aleja said.

“We need to look for Violet. She knows too much. Every second she spends with the Messenger is another when she could be revealing our weaknesses,” Taddeas told her.

“The girl knows nothing,” Nicolas interrupted. “We cut her off from anything but essential information long before she betrayed us. Let her go. She won’t survive long among the Astraelis.”

Taddeas looked between them, knuckles straining as he gripped his axe handle. “How did you take down that Authority, Al?”

Aleja took a long breath that felt cold as it reached her lungs. She couldn’t lie, not about this. “Violet stopped it. Maybe she doesn’t want me dead yet, or maybe she wanted to do the job herself. I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.”

“Did you watch it? The memory in the Unholy Relic?” Aleja asked. She was finally alone with Nicolas, who had ushered her away to the palace as soon as the other Dark Saints began reconvening on the battlefield, saving her from more questions. With the bargain fulfilled, he again looked like the inhuman Otherlander she had met in Agnes Flanders’s basement. Even with his wings glamoured away, there was a sheen to his olive skin, as if he’d just come in from the rain. A thorny vine from the snake tattoo on his chest crawled along his throat, just over the edge of his collar.

Nicolas’s voice was low. “Not here. I’ve sent Garm to watch over Amicia. The others are undoubtedly with her. We won’t have this sort of privacy again for a long time.”

He held out a hand, tipped in glossy black nails that caught the flickering candlelight—a field of stars in the Knowing One’s hands. For a moment, it felt so much like their first bargain that Aleja almost grinned despite the dread in her chest.

“Where are we going?”

“That’s up to you.”

“I really thought getting married would make you think twice before employing the cryptic Otherlander thing,” she said, taking his hand. As usual, he was hot to the touch.

“You’re a Dark Saint now. It’s time for your first lesson. We’ll need to raise some power for the Otherlanders now that Amicia is injured.”

His hand tensed around hers, and the marriage bond with it, like that rope between them was nearing its snapping point. “Your devotees are calling to you. You felt it the last time you were in the human world. Now, listen for them again. Close your eyes and shut everything else out.”

Aleja was embarrassed to admit that she hadn’t thought much about her duties as a Dark Saint. All her life, her family—who had been happy enough to deal with the devil—had warned her against seeking the favors of his emissaries. The Knowing One followed a set of rules, however dangerous they might be, but the Dark Saints delighted in chaos. To think that there were humans lighting candles for the Lady of Wrath, and that she could answer them as she pleased, almost made her laugh at the absurdity. If they knew their Dark Saint was a college dropout with emotional regulation issues, maybe they would have moved on to the next deity down the line.

Still, she did as Nicolas requested. The marriage bond withdrew, but in its place came a similar sensation. Instead of one powerful rope, there were dozens—hundreds—tugging at her core insistently. And the bonds whispered with the voices of the angry. A man whose wife had been killed by traffickers; the corrupt police would not apprehend the murderers. A young woman whose farm had been burned to the ground by men in the pocket of developers who wanted her land; she still dreamt of the calves screaming in the barn.

“Pick one,” Nicolas said.

As he said the words, she remembered her first trip to the Hiding Place, when she’d been appalled to learn that the Knowing One decided whom to help seemingly at his whim.

Aleja opened her mouth to stammer something, then clamped it shut so quickly that her teeth made an audible click. It felt like there was a rod driven through her heart and hundreds of people were trying to yank it in their direction, unmindful that it was tearing her apart from the inside.

“How do I choose?” she whispered.

“You just do. It’s your first time. Pick something easy.”

“Easy?” Aleja hissed. “Am I going to have to kill someone?”

“If you decide they deserve it. You’re a Dark Saint now, beholden only to me and the Second. Human laws cannot touch you.”

Otherlanders and humans had morals that did not always overlap, but the flippancy with which Nicolas suggested she murder someone made a muscle in her heart flutter. The tremor must have made it through their bond.

“There are many ways to exact your wrath on someone, wife. Do you think Bonnie and Taddeas go around slaughtering humans who displease them? You will be the Dark Saint you decide to be,” he amended.

“Fine,” she breathed, closing her eyes again. Searching all the threads tugging at her was too daunting a task, so she concentrated on the whispers closest to her ear. Aleja couldn’t say what focused her attention on a single thread. It was as if, from the corner of her eye, she’d spotted a shining light. The thoughts came to her easily. “This one. Her name is…Josephine. She was jilted in some way. That’s good, right? I hardly think I need to scorch some college ex-boyfriend who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.”

“That is entirely up to you, Wrath.”

“Gods, you Otherlanders are dramatic. How do we go to her?”

“You’ve done this before. It’s like taking a very wide step—almost wide enough so that you think you won’t be able to make it. Picture the candle she has lit for you. Hear the prayers in your name. Make the decision to help her.”

Aleja opened her mouth to argue again, but like a newborn foal, she realized she didn’t need spoken instructions on how to run. Instinct drove her across the tether between herself and the human woman in southern France. Just as Nicolas had described, it felt like taking an uncomfortably wide step over a ravine.

As Aleja’s head cleared, a woman gasped. The sounds of the room came first: a French heavy metal song crackling through a tinny Bluetooth speaker, the goose-like honks of a traffic jam below, and a neighbor shouting in the apartment upstairs. The room smelled of Nag Champa incense and cherry body spray.

A candle toppled as the young woman fell back onto her bed, her bleached blonde hair splayed across undone black sheets. If her eyeliner hadn’t already been intentionally smudged, it would have run when she ground her fists into her eyes, blinked hard, and then wiped her face again.

“ Mon diable ! I did not light the black candle—I called?—”

“It’s fine,” Aleja said. All the French she should have known were the few words she had picked up in college. It must have been another of the Second’s dark gifts that brought this sense of understanding. The phrase I’m new nearly left her mouth, but she realized it might not be the best way to inspire confidence in a devotee. “The Knowing One is accompanying me to make sure that you’re satisfied with my—with my service. Customer feedback is very important to us.”

Josephine’s fists gripped the bedsheets. They were frayed at the edges like the shawl in the Stevie Nicks poster on the back wall. The smell of incense was replaced by that of cigarette smoke as a neighbor stepped onto the shared balcony outside.

“I’m sorry. Customer feedback?”

“Fo-Forget I said anything. Our HR department made a big mistake when they suggested it,” Aleja stammered. “Let’s start over. Tell me what you would ask from the Lady of Wrath and Fire.”

Josephine’s eyes again returned to Nicolas. “Well, now that I have you here, perhaps I should make a bargain.”

“Believe me, I will demand a much higher price for whatever you ask than Our Lady. Better you deal with her.”

“Fine. Frankly, I don’t care who makes him suffer,” Josephine spat, sitting back. She had a remarkably pretty face with dark eyes that were enhanced by the heaviness of her makeup. When the light shifted, a greenish bruise on her cheek was visible beneath her foundation.

“My ex-boyfriend betrayed me. He had a nice car. A nice apartment. After getting clean, I was practically homeless, and he took me in with all sorts of promises. It was beautiful at first. Dinners on the beach, parties that lasted until dawn. Then he started stealing my phone as I slept and deleting my contacts. He told me my friends and family were poisoning me against him. He told me they hated me; he told me?—”

“Shhh. Tell me what happened next,” Aleja soothed on instinct. She had never been a particularly social child, but she had grown up believing she was going to die at the devil’s hand at any moment. Her cousins, in their more tender moments, had sometimes slipped into her room as she cried.

“He dealt coke,” Josephine said in a choked voice. “I didn’t know at first, but by the time I realized it, no one else would speak to me. I started making plans to get away, but I had no money. One day, he said, ‘I need you to do a job. Just pick something up at this address.’ I could sense he was setting a trap—that he wanted me to take the fall for him. So, I… Fuck. I hate to say it, but I contacted the police. I told them when and where I was supposed to be, and they suited me up with a hidden microphone to catch the transaction. But those bastards were in his pocket too.”

Aleja smothered her instinct to glance back at the Knowing One. “And then?” she asked.

“They tried to kill me for betraying him,” Josephine told her, voice steadier than it had been a moment before. “I realized the plan and ran. I was panicking. One of his men tried to catch me, and I picked up a rock and threw it at his face. The rock hit him on the temple, and then his ears were bleeding. He fell to the ground, twitched, and that was it. Now all of the fuckers are after me, and I can’t even go to the cops because they?—”

“What’s his name?” Aleja asked.

Josephine wiped her eyes again. “His name?”

“You called for the Lady of Wrath, didn’t you?” Aleja asked. The next sentence felt clunky in her mouth, but she tried to picture what Nicolas would say. “Tell me who I should bring that wrath down upon.”

“Oh,” Josephine muttered, leaning back so that her head hit the wall, crinkling the Fleetwood Mac poster. “Marc. Are you going to kill him?”

Aleja could relate to her uncertainty. After all, she had called for the Knowing One by lighting a black candle even when she had believed he’d slaughtered three innocent members of her family. But the moment he appeared, she had no idea what to do, like a house cat who’d gotten ahold of a poisonous snake in the garden.

“Do you want me to kill him?”

“I—” Josephine began. “I hate him now, but I loved him before. I’m scared of him. I want him to rot in prison. I want him dead. I don’t want him dead. I—I don’t know. What would you ask of me, Lady of Wrath?”

This time, Aleja could not stop herself from glancing back at Nicolas, who was so surrounded by shadow that she might have forgotten he was there if not for the glow of his silver eyes behind the curls of incense smoke. His expression was both intense and strangely unreadable, even to Aleja. This was her choice to make.

“Are you on social media?” Aleja asked.

Josephine’s dark eyes blinked. “Yes, but I set everything to private after I figured out how he was gaslighting me.”