Page 7 of Each Their Own Devil (Our Lady of Fire #3)

4

THE SECRETS

“Redemption is reserved only for those who seek it.” — The Book of Open Doors , Book II: The Trials of Passage

Aleja did not know that the transformation from battlefield—even a victorious one—to graveyard was near instantaneous. Once the euphoria of overtaking their enemies had passed—and it had passed quickly—every sword stuck in the ground began to resemble a makeshift headstone. She could not stop staring, even as Nicolas returned to her side after conferring with Taddeas and gently touched her wrist.

“We can go,” he whispered.

“Why did they do this?” she answered, equally low. “For fucking what? To slaughter us or let themselves be slaughtered? What was the point?”

Nicolas paused. “It’s not the first time you’ve said that, nor the first time I haven’t had an answer for you.”

The feeling inside her was too big and complicated to put into words, but standing here, watching their soldiers slowly pick through the dead in a vain search for the living, it was easy enough to distill it down to anger.

“Tell me the truth, Nic. Tell me right now. Do you think the Messenger is just trying to trick me?”

His brief hesitation was answer enough, but Nicolas went on anyway. “I have never been one to trust,” he said softly. “Except for you, that is. And I will admit that, at times, it has worked against me. But this attack…”

“I don’t know how to describe it, but it doesn’t feel like the Messenger’s style.”

“I have to agree with that, dove. Your instincts have always been your strongest asset. The Otherlanders are not typically known for their faith—quite the opposite, really—but I have faith in you.”

“I don’t have faith in myself.”

“Faith in yourself is the only kind of faith worth having. Come on. Let’s go home. We should be well-rested for whatever is to come tomorrow.”

“What about them?” she asked, nodding to a group of soldiers consoling each other on the field.

“Let’s give them their privacy.”

When Nicolas kissed her next, the bond between them throbbed with pain. It was a beautiful pain—the kind that only existed when Aleja knew she had something precious to lose. As they had returned to the palace wordlessly from the battlefield, she had been unable to keep herself from reaching for him; the fight had been enough to make her forget about the Messenger and the Second and the whole damn Avaddon. All that remained was what she was fighting for.

When she kissed him back, it wasn’t with tenderness. She wanted Nicolas to hurt as much as she did, and he seemed to welcome it. Her teeth clamped down on his lip, and he groaned in response. He reacted with a nip of his own, but Aleja didn’t shrink from the sting. She surged into it, as if pain were the only language they both understood.

Nicolas pulled her closer, his skin burning. They weren’t on the battlefield, but their bedroom felt like one.

“What do you need, dove?” Nicolas asked, as he pulled away from her mouth to trail rough kisses down her throat.

Aleja couldn’t answer—she didn’t know—but the marriage bond seemed to communicate for her. Nicolas turned her by the shoulders until her back was pressed against his chest, forcing her legs open with his knee. One hand remained on her hip, the other trailed between her legs, dragging a moan out of her. It seemed impossible for her to be so eager for this when there was such heaviness in her, but Nicolas was here and so was she, and that could change at any moment. And if that was the case, then she had to pour as much love into him as she could while she still had time.

“Like this,” she muttered. “Fuck me like this.”

“Hands on the bed.”

He left her briefly to reposition their bodies. A moment later, she felt the pressure of his shaft between her legs as his fingers returned to her clit. The ache of him pushing into her was so welcome, so familiar, that she sighed with the relief of it. “Fuck me hard, Nic. Don’t hold back.”

“Are you sure?”

“ Yes .”

It seemed impossible for him to pull her closer, but he did, until even the backs of her thighs were pressed against him. She had to use strength to keep his first thrust from pushing her onto the bed, but she found her rhythm a second later, arching into him. She had never been able to come like this before, but the pressure on her clit and the fullness of him made her feel like something was being drawn out of her. Aleja didn’t try to fight it. It would have been as useless as fighting the beat of her own heart.

She said something out loud without being sure what it was. Nic’s name, perhaps, or a word in the ancient language of their kingdom by the sea. With it, came a slow explosion that started low in her stomach, moving through her in pulses.

She had opened herself to the marriage bond without entirely meaning to, and Nicolas’s deep sigh was evidence enough that he had picked up the sensation himself.

It bounced between them, amplified each time it moved through the bond. Sparks danced at the tips of Aleja’s fingers—accidental magic. It had been months since she had last lost control. Nicolas’s shadows clamped down on them, but then his control slipped as well, unable to keep himself from climaxing either. As if they were extensions of his hands, those shadows raced across her body, as she felt his orgasm both inside and outside of herself.

“Aleja,” he gasped.

Three syllables that wavered in the air, as if they were an unholy blessing.

“Good job, Wrath,” Orla said. It was one of the nicest things the Dark Saint of Envy had ever said to Aleja. The reaction was slightly more subdued than Taddeas’s, who scooped her into a hug so crushing it might have collapsed a lung if she weren’t a Dark Saint.

Aleja and Orla’s brief camaraderie dissolved as soon as they returned to the palace, where Amicia and Bonnie had been preparing defenses for a battle that had never come. Bonnie’s eyes met Aleja’s just long enough to ask a silent question: had she seen Violet?

Aleja’s brief head shake was met with an expression so complicated that she couldn’t begin to make sense of it.

“I don’t like this,” Orla said. “That troop was disorganized. The Messenger isn’t above making sacrifices, but it’s not like her to send mages to the slaughter. They never had a chance of taking the palace. If this was her push to get her son back, it was a miserable attempt.”

Aleja decided not to point out that this critique canceled out Orla’s earlier compliment. “What if it was a distraction?”

“It’s possible, but to what aim? They didn’t attack any other front when they had the chance. All they did was lose two Thrones and a handful of mages. Our scouts haven’t reported any other breaks in the wards.”

The unmistakable rustle of Nicolas’s wings interrupted their conversation, the twin peaks casting jagged shadows across the ground as he approached.

“Where did the librarians go, Knowing One?” Orla asked without missing a beat. She had always had a talent for making someone feel cornered with her words.

“I sent them away,” he replied.

“Because they agreed with the Second? Because they found no evidence for the Avaddon?”

“Because the Second knew what they had found before I informed them. The librarians are in contact with him—feeding him information, at the very least.”

“Is that a bad thing, Nic?”

“Do none of you find that suspicious?” he said, unable to stop himself from raising his voice. “Or are you in denial? The Second has been sequestered for years in that cave of his. When was the last time he truly helped the Otherlanders? He could have stepped in at any time during the last war—he could have faced the Messenger himself. Yet he didn’t. He watched as our soldiers were killed, as the Dark Saints fractured, and as the Hiding Place decayed. He hides away while we fight his?—”

“Nic,” Taddeas interjected. “If you have a point, get to it.”

The words were kinder than the tone implied. Taddeas must have understood that Nicolas was only a few words away from losing the tenuous alliance of the Dark Saints, and Nicolas’s worst enemy had always been himself.

“My point is that we can no longer sit around and wait for the war to come to us. Nor do I believe we can trust that the Second has our best interests in mind.”

There was a long silence. In the Hiding Place, there was no such thing as heresy, but even the Knowing One occasionally said something that felt forbidden. When no one responded, Nicolas went on. “I think it’s about time I spoke to our prisoner myself.”

“Forget the Second. There could be an opportunity here, Knowing One,” Orla said. “If the Astraelis are desperate enough to launch a sloppy attack like that to retrieve Val, we might be able to bait them. Draw the fight here—on our terms.”

Aleja’s stomach churned at the suggestion, though she kept her expression neutral. The thought had crossed her mind too, but part of her felt too inexperienced to voice such a drastic idea. The other part couldn’t shake the image of Val’s mask tightening around his face, or the way he had seemed genuinely surprised each time he looked at his missing hand. He’d had the chance to flee to the safety of the Astraelis, knowing full well he would become a prisoner if he stayed in the Hiding Place—and yet, he had stayed.

“When I spoke with the Messenger, she told me the reason our last camp wasn’t completely decimated was because Val was among us,” Aleja said. Her voice sounded steady, but the words felt like they belonged to someone else. “If he’s killed, there’s nothing left to stop the Messenger from launching a full-scale invasion. Our armies wouldn’t be able to withstand that.”

Nicolas crossed his arms and tilted his chin in thought. “We’ll confer with everyone before making a final decision,” he said, his tone measured. “Aleja, come. Let’s see if our prisoner won’t offer us more insight with a creative line of questioning.”

She let Nicolas lead her away before whispering, “Creative? Do you really want to torture him?”

“We’ll cross the bridge when we get there.”

“I was telling the truth about the Messenger,” she hissed. “Even if the Avaddon isn’t real, Val is still our insurance.”

The journey to the dungeons seemed longer than the last time. Aleja wished she’d opted to forgo her armor, but the weight of it was familiar now; wandering even the Hiding Place without it felt like stumbling around in her pajamas.

“I agree,” Nicolas said, with a sharp glance over his shoulder as they passed into the hallway where the artwork slowly disappeared from the walls. “But if the Messenger has told us about a weakness, we’d be fools not to listen to her. Orla was right, by the way. You did good out there.”

“The Astraelis weakness was obvious from high ground,” she said.

“It wouldn’t be to everybody, but they won’t underestimate us again, especially now that you’re back on the battlefield. Every time you show up, they’ll be focused on taking you out as soon as possible.”

Orla had already told Aleja has much, and she didn’t want to acknowledge it again. She stayed silent as the hallway banked steeply downward and they returned to the door with the dramatic depiction of hell, with agonized bodies tumbling into pits.

Nicolas turned to her, and it was as if his expression had been split in two: on one side was the husband who had been devoted to her since their first human lives, and the other, the Knowing One regarding his future High General. “You have no option than to be better, quicker, and smarter than them, understand? You did it once before and you can do it again. Come on. We won’t resort to torture before we try some Otherlander trickery first. Follow my lead.”

The door peeled open for him as it had for Taddeas, wood splitting open with a creak like old bones waking from sleep. Val’s head whipped up as Aleja and Nicolas approached, but he did not stand as he had for Taddeas. The fingers of Val’s remaining hand twitched.

“Knowing One,” he said cautiously, looking between them.

“Astraelis. I’ve come to ask what you would like for your last meal. I’ve told the Dark Saint of Bounty not to bother, but she is less of a monster than I am.”

Aleja occasionally forgot how much Nicolas’s wings could fill a space with darkness. Val’s free hand moved again, grasping for the threadbare sheets. “I—I’ve done nothing worthy of execution, Knowing One, by neither Otherlander standards nor that of my people. Besides, my…my mother will not be pleased if you murder me,” he stammered.

“I thought we should keep you alive because you claim to be the only one who can stop the First from killing us all,” Nicolas said.

“That too!” Val stood up. His mask quivered around his face like his cell was full of wind. “See reason, Knowing One, please .”

“It’s difficult to see reason when your mother insists on committing war crimes on our territory. We’ve had enough of negotiations. Our response to her last aggression will be to return her son to her in pieces. Name your meal, Astraelis, before I decide to let you starve to death.”

“No,” Val gasped, approaching the reddish wards with such force that for a moment Aleja believed he was going to try to plow through them. His feet skidded to a halt a few inches away as his upper body struggled to keep balance. “I can still be helpful. I know things about the inner workings of the Astraelis armies. I can give you information.”

“You’ve had the chance to divulge that information for weeks. If you wanted to aid the Otherlanders, you’ve done a piss poor job,” Nicolas said. “One more chance. Name your meal so that I can indulge Our Lady of Bounty’s misguided attempt at kindness. I won’t ask again.”

“Wait, wait—” Val waved his arms; the bandage over his right hand needed changing. “There must be something wrong with the Authorities. I can see no other reason why my mother would bother keeping the human girl alive.”

Aleja’s eyes were hard, but she hoped her throat did not bob visibly as she swallowed. “Violet’s fate doesn’t concern us,” she said.

“If my theory is right, then it concerns my mother!” Val said. “It concerns her greatly!”

Nicolas looked to Aleja. His silver eyes were narrow, cold. “I grow bored of this. He tried to manipulate us into allowing him near the Second, and now he’s trying to feed us false information about his mother’s war plans. We should execute him and be done with it.”

She tried her best to match his drawl. “You were right to offer him a last meal, commander, but enough is enough. Every ration that goes to the Astraelis is one that we don’t save for our soldiers. Bonnie will understand.”

“Aleja, please!” Val said. It was disconcerting to hear her name come from his mouth in panic. “Let me speak for a moment, I’m sure I can convince you!”

“Go on, then,” she said with a dismissive wave. “But if the explanation doesn’t come with a good reason for why you’ve chosen to withhold this information until your life was on the line, the next person you see will be your executioner. We have bodies to bury from your mother’s last attack on us. It would be far more convenient if we already had a pit to throw your corpse into.”

The marriage bond thrummed with approval.

“Violet was in communication with the Authorities.” Val paused to take a sharp breath that whistled through his teeth. “Before she fled with my mother, she told me interesting things. The Authorities knew my mother’s plans to kill the First, but Violet did not think they agreed with it. The Principalities may be the heads of our armies, but the Authorities are the might of it. If they were to turn against my mother, she would surely lose the loyalties of her inner circle. If Violet can truly control the Authorities, my mother may need her to keep them in line.”

“What does that mean for us?” Nicolas asked. Around him, the shadows trembled with hungry anticipation, and Val took a step back from the reddish wards that separated them.

“It means that my mother may want to destroy the First and prevent the Avaddon, but if the Authorities rebel and stop her, we all die. Our time was already short. It may be even shorter now. Allow me to study the Second. I will make my experiments as unobtrusive as possible. By now, it should be clear that my loyalties lie with neither my mother’s armies nor the Otherlanders. I am a coward who simply wants to walk away from this alive, and there is only one way I can do that.”

Nicolas turned to Aleja sharply. “I’ve heard enough. Do what you will with our prisoner, Lady of Wrath. Your fire will bring down the wards to his cell, if you want the satisfaction of killing him yourself.”

“Wait!” Val shouted, but Nicolas had already turned away. His light footsteps hardly made a sound on the stone floors, but the marriage bond tugged at her sternum. Aleja knew the meaning; Val was more likely to divulge information to her.

Aleja turned back to Val. “Do the Astraelis ever take off their masks?”

The question must have surprised him, because it was the mask that answered, fanning around his face. “In private. They are as much a part of us as your—” He bit his lip as he searched for a metaphor. “I’m not sure there is an equivalent. Our masks are made when we are born and stay with us our entire lives. They become our faces. I can control my mask no more than you can control your emotions.”

“Your mask makes it hard for me to tell whether you’re lying or not, Astraelis.”

“I won’t take it off. I will do almost anything to help you, so long as you don’t kill me, but that is a line I will not cross.”

“If I wanted to see your face, I could wait until you’re dead and rip the damned thing off of you,” Aleja said, surprised by the cruelty in her own voice. She was tired. She was afraid. She wanted answers. Only so many things could exist in her before they turned into the wrath that the Second had gifted her with.

“You could,” Val said. In a strange way, it seemed as though this conversation had calmed him. His voice dropped in pitch. “But I would be dead, and it wouldn’t much matter to me at that point, would it? I’ve told you all I can, Lady of Wrath. Take my advice or don’t and die here with everyone you care for.”

It felt like her heartbeat had been replaced by a metronome, with each click swinging between two decisions—two futures, two outcomes. She should go upstairs and beg one of the older Dark Saints to tell her what to do. But it was Aleja who had set them down this path by entertaining the Messenger, and she had to be the one to get them out of it.

“You’ll live for now, Astraelis. I’ll be back later. Put together a list of what you need.”

As she passed the spiral staircase leading to her grandmother’s tower, Aleja finally gave in to the urge to climb and climb. Her thighs ached by the time she reached the top of the staircase and pushed the door carved with tiny seven- and eight-pointed stars open into the humidity that reminded her of a greenhouse. Her grandmother dreamed of jungles and rain, and the air smelled green and felt thick in Aleja’s lungs. Among the rustling leaves came the sound of insects in a steady, uninterrupted drone.

Aleja had been dreading seeing her grandmother; she had avoided it all through the Trials, even when she had desperately wanted comfort or advice from the woman who had raised her. She hadn’t yet told Catalina that she was intending to become a Dark Saint, especially during a time of war.

Her grandmother had always warned her against making a bargain with the Knowing One in the same half-hearted tone that she had warned Aleja, who hated going outside, not to go traipsing into the swamps of Florida alone. But she had been sterner in her condemnation of the Dark Saints. “The Dark Saints are as dangerous and capricious as a hurricane, mija. Do not meddle in their business and pray that they don’t decide to meddle in yours.”

A part of her wished that Catalina would be gone—visiting another one of the Ruizes in a dream—but Aleja had no such luck. Through the thick vines that nearly covered the windows in the mansion, Aleja caught sight of her grandmother with her face lowered and her shoulders moving slightly. “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Catalina said without looking up. “I supposed you were too busy with your new boyfriend to visit.”

Aleja didn’t bother to correct her that her boyfriend was indeed the Knowing One, the Prince of Lies and Shadows, and that—actually—they were married now. One revelation at a time. She pushed her way through the plants into her grandmother’s salon.

On the left wall, the painting of the matador and the bull slashed through the green with shades of bloody red. Her grandmother sat on the opposite sofa, dressed in prim black with a silver goat head pendant dangling in front of her buttoned suit jacket. Aleja glanced down at her embroidery pattern and noticed it bore an uncanny resemblance to the witches’ sabbaths she had studied in her medieval engraving class, orgy and all. She decided not to comment.

“It’s been a busy time,” she sighed, looking for a flat surface that was not so covered in plants that she could sit down and eventually giving up and leaning against the mossy wall. “There’s trouble in the Hiding Place.”

“I know,” Catalina said wistfully, pausing her hands for a moment to look up at Aleja. Her eyes were dark, yet full of intense focus. “I may not see into the dreams of the Otherlanders, but it is their magic that keeps my dream alive. The birds’ chirping has become fearful. The jaguars that used to keep their distance from this home grow ever braver.”

“It’s just a dream,” Aleja whispered. “You’re safe here.”

“Yes. I am safe, but you, my darling, are not. Did you think I wouldn’t be able to tell that something about you has changed? I can’t enter your dreams anymore, and when I try, all I see is fire.”

Aleja winced. “I took the Second’s Trials. I’m the Dark Saint of Wrath now.”

Catalina sighed as if Aleja had just told her she had failed her precalculus exam. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t think you had it in you.”

She pushed off the wall, unraveling her arms. “I honestly can’t tell whether or not that was meant to be an insult, abuela.”

“You are an adult, fully capable of making your own decisions. What you choose to do with the Second’s gifts will ultimately be up to you. Besides, it’s good to see you finally taking some initiative.”

It had definitely been a backhanded insult of the kind only a loving grandmother could make, but there were bigger issues at hand. “That’s not the only reason I came. It’s not just the Astraelis threatening war again. Some claim there is something else—something called the Avaddon that will end all existence as we know it. Something that no one knows if we can stop. I came here… I came here to tell you that I love you. Just in case it’s real.”

Catalina carefully set her needlepoint aside and gestured for Aleja to join her on the couch. There was a distance in her eyes, as if she had only been half paying attention to her granddaughter’s words. When Aleja sat next to her, she smelled of heavy perfume and petrichor. It made her want to lean in closer, so she did, dropping her head on Catalina’s shoulder as she had so many times as a scared girl back at the Miami estate.

“All things exist in cycles of creation and destruction, mija,” Catalina whispered into her hair. “The old animals must die so that the plants can feast on their bodies until spring.”

Aleja pulled back. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched her with such tenderness aside from Nicolas, and the affection made her feel at once warm and uncomfortable, as if her skin had tightened in response. “No. I don’t accept that. I’m an Otherlander now, and more, I’m a Ruiz. We do whatever we can to get what we want.”

Catalina pushed an errant dark red strand of hair away from Aleja’s forehead but then dropped her hand back to her embroidery. “That’s the spirit. Come visit me when you’re done with the apocalypse business, then. And perhaps, Paola. Your cousin dreams about you a lot.”

“I’ve already sent her a message. You can’t tell her where or what I am, but you can tell her I’m okay. Tell her she doesn’t have to worry.”

“From what you say, we all have to worry.”

“I’ll handle it, abuela,” Aleja said.

They lapsed into a long silence, but that in itself wasn’t unusual. In life, her grandmother had been a vivacious woman, except for when she was finally in the company of someone she felt comfortable around. They had spent many days quietly reading side by side on the porch in Miami, while a flock of monk parakeets chased each other from one palm to another, screaming joyfully. Aleja watched Catalina’s slender hands work the needle, and after what felt like a long time, she leaned in again and kissed her grandmother’s cheek.

“I’ll be back soon.”

“Congratulations on your wedding.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t see my dreams?” Aleja asked.

“I don’t need to. I can feel the magic tying you to the Knowing One, like a shining thread of light and shadow. It’s a good thing, I think, to have the adoration of a monster; they will always protect what is theirs. Monsters are made for moments like this—for tearing down the world so that a new one can take its place.”

“But we’re not trying to tear down the world,” Aleja whispered. “We’re trying to do the opposite.”

“Hm,” Catalina said, but when Aleja tried to get her to say more, the vines closed around her so that her grandmother could continue her needlepoint in peace.

She carried the bone with her now. Like the Unholy Relic before it, Aleja felt strange and twitchy whenever she was away from it for too long. There was another meeting. Another conversation with Bonnie and then with Taddeas that left her feeling as if she had backed away into a corner of her mind and let her body go through the motions without her.

She was distracted enough, even if the damn bone hadn’t been gently whispering in Aleja’s pocket, making it known that there was another memory to be had in it.

If Violet had sent her another memory of their past, Aleja was going to reclaim the title of High General and demand an all-out strike against the Astraelis realm with one sole purpose: crushing the sick young influencer who had launched a thousand true crime podcasts in the human world.

Aleja palmed the bone. Slipping into the memory felt as easy as reciting the artists of paintings she had studied for years. She half expected to find herself back in the city, in her college dorm with Violet’s camera flashing in her face, but that was not the case.

This was the Violet that Aleja had seen on the battlefield—gaunt and yellowed, with her thinning blonde hair hanging limp around her face.

“We need to meet in person. As soon as possible . It’s about the Avaddon. Send a memory back with the time and place and I’ll be there. Aleja. Please.”

The memory cut out.