Page 16 of Each Their Own Devil (Our Lady of Fire #3)

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THE FRUIT OF THE TREE

“To see the world through the eyes of your enemy is to let their lies take root.” — The Book of Open Doors , Book VI: The Crossing of Worlds

Aleja had seen Orla lingering around the Third’s cage shortly before their meeting was due to start. It wasn’t the usual gathering place for the Dark Saints, but a random salon filled with paintings of the human St. Sebastian, pierced with arrows, and a haphazard arrangement of chairs. The Dark Saint of Envy was paler than usual as she entered and said, “I’m not sure if I like this evidence.”

“You don’t have to like it,” Aleja said. “It just is.”

“Can we trust the Third?”

“Can’t you always trust in death?”

“Are you really playing word games right now?” Orla said with no real malice in her voice.

“It’s not a word game. It’s reality.”

“Oh, shut up, Al,” Orla muttered without venom.

The Messenger came to the meeting with Violet in tow, which Aleja found extremely annoying. Bonnie, who had arrived ahead of everyone else to claim a seat in the corner, was enveloped in a darkness unusual for a Dark Saint who usually wore sundresses and a golden rye-and-wheat crown. That crown was secured on her dark curls now, shining like a halo, but no light reached Bonnie’s eyes.

Violet and the Messenger had been the last to enter, followed by Taddeas with his axe strapped to his back. They dispersed silently to the remaining empty chairs, forming three points of a broad triangle. Merit and Orla sat on the floor together in the corner, their legs crossed in such a confusing array that Aleja soon stopped trying to decipher which boot belonged to whom. Amicia took a chair near Nicolas.

At the center of the room was a black blanket that Aleja supposed was meant for her. Doing this in front of everyone was starting to feel like a very bad idea. Maybe she should’ve just popped the damn fig in her mouth beneath the First Tree and relayed whatever she’d learned to an incredulous audience.

“Shall we introduce ourselves? Hello, I’m the Messenger. I have few hobbies outside of war, but I do enjoy interior design,” the Messenger said.

“I swear to the Second that if you try to be funny, I will open a void in your torso,” Orla said from the corner.

The Messenger’s mouth stretched into a flat frown below her mask. “So much for the hospitality of the Otherlanders.”

“You’re getting the best of our hospitality,” Bonnie said from her corner. “You’re lucky your son thought to abscond from your failing realm before you did. I don’t know about any of you, but I’d rather not hear the Messenger speak again until our Lady of Wrath consumes the fig.”

“Lady of Bounty,” Nicolas said, his voice not quite a warning but sharper than usual. “If you please, allow me to lay out our terms to the Messenger. It really dampens the sense of suspense when you interject like that.”

“My apologies, Knowing One,” Bonnie said, sinking back into her chair with a smirk that made it clear she wasn’t very sorry at all.

In any other army, Nicolas might have publicly scolded someone who was technically his subordinate, but that wasn’t the Otherlander way. This alone was an act of defiance against the Messenger. For a moment, a deep sense of pride burned in Aleja’s chest.

Well, if Bonnie was allowed to speak out, so was the Lady of Wrath. “What is Violet doing here, Messenger? We didn’t agree to host anyone but you.”

The Messenger picked a piece of stray fluff from the lower half of her mask. “Violet, as much as you would like to avoid her, is frighteningly useful to both our causes. And she is also, to my dismay, rather clever. It’s better she hear whatever Aleja has to say directly.”

“Wrath?” Nicolas said, his voice tinged with a slight question.

It was enough to make the next words stick in Aleja’s throat. If she sent Violet away now, it would mean that she cared. “Fine. She can stay.”

“So, how do we do this?” Taddeas asked quietly but steadily.

“It’s exceedingly simple. Aleja, you will eat the fig, be silent for a few moments, then tell us what knowledge you gained,” the Messenger said.

“If anything happens to her, Messenger, you will not be leaving the room alive,” Nicolas said. “Wrath, you can proceed whenever you’re ready.”

Aleja was miles ahead of him. The fig was already in her palm—she had known her hands might shake if she was forced to dig it out of her satchel. She brought it to her lips and took as much of a bite as she could muster.

Although she had never been fond of figs, it was much sweeter than she had imagined, bursting with liquid that made golden sparks dance in her vision. Horrified, she felt her tongue drop out of her mouth to lap at the juice on her face, no longer able to control her own movements. When her teeth sank into the fig again, she half expected—and fully wished—that this bite wouldn’t be as all-consumingly delicious as the first.

It was better.

So much better that Aleja understood she might not be able to tear herself away unless someone yanked the damn fig out of her mouth and forced her to stop?—

Aleja thought of every brushstroke of every painting, both finished and unfinished, and every message every painter had tried to convey through the centuries with a few globs of color. She thought of all the undelivered love poems and all the delivered ones too. She thought of every murder plot that had succeeded, and every one that had gone sour because the would-be murderer had made the mistake of looking at the would-be victim with fondness in their eyes.

“I would love you if you knew the secret name of every star,” Nicolas had said. And, by the gods, right now, Aleja did. She knew that, on a small planet that circled a distant red dwarf called Sitaraal, a sentient crystal was slowly falling in love with its neighbor, who had grown beside it for ten thousand years. Right now, in the human realm, a man named Marc was running and running and running from a beast made of flame and shadow. Though he had not tired yet, in two and a half years, he would grow so weary that when he spotted the creature over his left shoulder on a street in Istanbul, next to the shimmering waters of the Bosphorus, he would turn and open his arms.

This is not the information you want, said a voice that didn’t wholly belong to her. She knew this person. It was the woman from that little locked room in her mind. The Aleja of the nameless kingdom by the sea. You need to concentrate. You could wander here forever unless you focus.

I missed you, Aleja said back. And, with the sweet taste of the fruit in her mouth, she understood that this person in her mind had never fully left her. Aleja had simply opened that locked door, and they had become one.

Stop. There’s no time to get sentimental now. The Avaddon, Alejandra, concentrate. You need to find the First.

How do I ? —

But it was as if the very thought of the Avaddon was enough to propel her. It felt as though she’d reached the end of a trail. Beyond it was a cliff, and if Aleja tumbled off, she would never stop falling. Distantly, she heard someone calling her name, but here, only one person could reach her.

You need to keep going.

I’m afraid.

If you’re afraid, that means you’re alive. Go.

Knowing she was so close to falling off the edge, Aleja continued forward.

Nicolas drew his sword before she spoke.

“What’s going on with her?” he barked, gesturing to Aleja. She was pale beneath a curtain of dark red hair, cradling the violet fig in her palm. A bit of dark juice clung to the corner of her lip. She looked like Persephone in the Botticelli painting that hung across the hall from the office—but while Persephone’s gaze was tender, Aleja’s was frighteningly blank.

“Relax, Knowing One,” the Messenger said. “She ate from the First Tree. You should have seen me when I did this. I could hardly breathe for all I was vomiting.”

“She’s been like this for ten minutes,” Nicolas said, unable to stop himself from raising his sword arm slightly. Nearly everyone in the room shifted in their chairs, preparing to stand, except for Aleja. “How do we wake her?”

“Only she can do that. Lower your weapon. Alejandra Ruiz will be fine. Physically, at least. Mentally—well, you see what happened to me after a bite of those figs.”

“This is not the time for jokes,” Nicolas said. He had the advantage in this room, and the Messenger knew it. Her only ally was a human girl who hadn’t completed her Trials to become a Dark Saint, and there were no Authorities for her to control here.

“It’s not a joke. Believe it or not, I’ve softened toward your wife, Knowing One. In a perfect world, we could have it out in one glorious final argument of fire and blades and be done with it. But, as it is, I’m stuck with you. Be patient. Our Aleja will rejoin us when she is ready.”

His eyes darted to Violet, who had said nothing this entire time. Her face was mostly in shadow, but even so, he didn’t think he’d be able to read her expression if he tried. He didn’t like that she was here, but he had to trust that if Violet summoned the Authorities to the Hiding Place, then she and the Messenger would be in as much danger as the rest of them.

He opened his mouth to speak again, but the person who interrupted was his wife. Her eyes had been half-open the whole time, but now they widened. “Nic. It’s okay.”

“Where are you?” Nicolas asked. He tried to keep his voice steady in front of the Messenger, but he could barely stop his fingers from twitching around the hilt of his blade.

“I’m not sure.”

“Tell us what you see, Wrath.”

“I don’t see anything. There’s nothing left to see or taste or smell or touch. It’s so fucking quiet. I don’t think this is where the First is. I think… I think this is the Avaddon.”

The Messenger leaned forward, her winged mask rotating more quickly than usual. “Aleja, take a deep breath. You are not nowhere. You are sitting in a room in the Hiding Place’s palace—which is garishly decorated, by the way—surrounded by the other Dark Saints and the Knowing One.”

Nicolas couldn’t keep his gaze from shooting to the Messenger, now that her attention was turned to Aleja. All of their previous conversations—often held with blades pointed at each other’s throats—had been carried out in the context of war, and it was still jarring to hear her voice soften.

The Messenger truly believed that his wife was the key to their salvation.

Nicolas felt as if a blade had been rammed through his throat. He’d been a fool. He’d refused to believe the truth, all the while telling himself he was being rational because the alternative meant that he couldn’t protect his wife or any of the people he loved for that matter—most of whom were gathered in this room.

“Help her, Messenger,” he said.

“What do you think I’m trying to do? Aleja, are you still with me?” the Messenger snapped back.

“Yes, both of us are here. Me and the me that was.”

The frown that tugged at his mouth was almost painful. She had confessed to the voice inside her mind weeks ago, though he had always suspected that a small piece of Aleja remembered her former life in ways she could not express—even to herself. Aleja had claimed the voice had stopped entirely after her final Trial.

The Messenger spoke before he could. “What does this other you say?”

“I don’t know. I can’t understand,” Aleja replied, screwing her eyes shut.

“That’s impossible,” the Messenger told her. “Right now, you should be able to understand anything you put your mind to.”

“I know,” Aleja whispered, though it didn’t seem to be an answer to the Messenger. “But what do you want me to do? There is nowhere else to go from here.”

“Who is Al talking to?” Amicia asked quietly. It was the first thing she had spoken in front of the Messenger. During the last war, Amicia’s followers had been decimated. She had always attracted the lovers—the pacifists. Many had refused to fight. Those who had, Aleja had urged to return to their strongholds in the mountains. Some had listened, but for those who didn’t, the Lady of Wrath had done all she could to ensure they were sent to safer borders, less active territory. The Dark Saint of Lust had never forgotten it.

“She’s talking to herself,” Nicolas said, his voice low. “Her past self. Or, at least, the version of herself that her subconscious came up with during her centuries away from the Hiding Place.”

“Then please fetch the other fig out of her satchel. I know she left the First Tree with more than one,” the Messenger barked.

Aleja’s backpack was crumpled in the corner. The one she had carried from the human realm had fallen apart after a few weeks in the Hiding Place, and she had yanked this one from a pile in one of the many rooms filled with the detritus of the last war.

Nicolas had never considered a world where she would have her memories back. He didn’t need to. The Aleja that sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him was just as much his wife as she had ever been. They would make new memories. They would create new inside jokes, nicknames, and words only they understood—a million little gestures and glances that would become a new language of their own. Just like last time. It would be like falling in love again and again and again.

“No,” Nicolas said, finding the word did not pain him.

“What do you mean ‘no’?” the Messenger snapped, this time turning her mask to him. The feathers trembled at the edges.

“She did not agree to eat the second fig, and none of us will feed it to her.”

“What are you saying, Knowing One?” Orla asked from the opposite corner, where she and Merit had both leaned forward to watch. “If our lives will be saved by giving her the fig, then give your wife the damn fig. I promise she will forgive you.”

“I might actually agree with that,” Taddeas added quietly. “And it’s not just because I want her to take over as High General. A fully trained Dark Saint will be more than useful. I don’t know how many more times I can?—”

“No,” came a shaky voice from the shadows. Violet’s freckles were pale pink against her skin. “If Aleja told you not to do it, then don’t do it. The Authorities are afraid of her.”

“That is all the more reason—” Orla began.

Violet interrupted her. “They’re afraid of her without her memories. They think it makes her more unpredictable. We should trust her judgment.”

If she hadn’t been a traitor, she would have made a decent Dark Saint of Pride, Nicolas thought. The Messenger’s gaze was scathing, even though he couldn’t see her eyes. The flash of her upper teeth was enough to show her displeasure.

“Aleja?” Nicolas pressed, ignoring the Messenger. “All you need to do is find the right question. Where can we find the First?”

Aleja tilted her head, as if carefully considering Nicolas’s words. “She’s in the roots. No. She is the roots.”

“The roots?” the Messenger said. “Does she mean the roots of the First Tree?”

“Yes,” Aleja said. “The First was the seed of the First Tree. We follow roots, we get to her. There is a—there was—a statue. It doesn’t look like the ones that Otherlander carved for the Second. No, I don’t think that it was made by anybody. I think it just…came into existence. It’ll look like a boulder now. That’s where we’ll find her.”

“I know the place,” the Messenger whispered.

“That’s where she is,” Aleja muttered. “That’s where Val needs to do the ritual.”

She fell silent for a few moments.

When she opened her eyes, she was entirely surrounded by flames.