Page 8 of Each Their Own Devil (Our Lady of Fire #3)

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THE WIDOWER

“A good deceiver cloaks their lies in silence.” — The Book of Open Doors , Book III: The Whispers Beyond

“Aleja.” Nicolas’s voice was a quiet command as she slipped from the throne room, padding softly to avoid waking Garm.

His voice had always raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck, but this was the first time in months that she felt like she was back in a Satanist’s cellar, making a bargain with the Knowing One.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

She shifted her weight, uneasy. If Violet had been lying about the Avaddon, Aleja needed to know. It was a truth she couldn’t afford to run from. And if she suspected Violet was lying, then this was the chance to… Aleja couldn’t entirely decide yet.

“To meet Vi?—”

“Never mind. Don’t tell me, or I’ll be obligated to divulge it to the other Saints.”

Two silver eyes flashed in the darkness like moonlight reflecting off a winter lake. The marriage bond pulled taut— Nicolas, considering his words. “Do you remember your gift from the Second?”

“Which one? The glass heart he made me cut out of myself? The command to kill my husband?” Aleja, as usual, had slept little, and her dreams had been filled with black wings beating against a black sky and the sulfur of the Second’s chamber.

“The chalice fills, the chalice drains; we are…” he began.

“Trapped inside, in chains,” she finished. “If he wanted to be really nice, he could have told me what it meant.”

Her heels settled back to the ground. She had agreed to meet Violet in an hour, but that urgency was countered by the pull of the marriage bond—two forces of gravity so equally matched that she was held in place.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” Nicolas said. He approached a few steps closer, and she caught sight of his outline in the darkness. With his wings glamoured away and his hair tousled, he looked so painfully human that Aleja took a step forward, his gravity winning out. “It mirrors what Val said, doesn’t it? About the Avaddon. It’s a cycle of creation and destruction. Why would he give us that poem and then deny the Avaddon in the next breath?”

His voice sounded so distant that Aleja didn’t immediately answer, as if he was too far away to hear her. “I haven’t considered it. The Second wanted to torture me. I figured the damn poem was meaningless—his idea of a joke.”

“The Second can be cruel, but nothing he does is meaningless. He was trying to tell you something. And me too, I suppose.”

Aleja’s eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness. Nicolas took a step away and leaned against one of the unused thrones, disturbing a cloud of dust that made it look like he had taken control of the shadows.

“Some freedom he’s promised us, huh?” she asked. She didn’t bother hiding herself from Nicolas, not anymore, but even she was surprised by the bitterness in her voice. She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t thought long and hard about what her past self had been trying to communicate with the Unholy Relic that contained memories of when the Messenger had first proposed a temporary alliance.

In those distant memories, she had picked up hints of the first Lady of Wrath’s emotions—panic about what Nicolas would do when he came to rescue her, fear of how the Second would punish him, and anger, anger, anger. It was directed at so many things, where it lashed out could not be predicted.

“Whatever you’re doing, make it quick. Make it careful,” he said. “Bonnie spends all night working on her forest. If she sees you, there will be questions.”

Aleja was once again caught in that strange opposing gravity. “I don’t like lying to the other Saints,” she said. “Did we always do this?”

“No. And I don’t like it either, but there are too many unknowns at play. You were at that meeting. You heard the stories. Between the Second’s denouncement and the lack of proof of the Messenger’s intentions, I’m not sure I could convince the Saints to take any path that requires cooperation with her. Figure it out; then, we’ll present our findings to the war council.”

Aleja nodded. There had been an air of finality to the last statement, and she was surprised when Nicolas spoke again. “Be careful, dove.”

“I will be.”

“And… Aleja, whatever the truth of it is, whatever is coming for us, I will stop it. I won’t let anything get in the way of our eternity. Anything, do you understand? Not angels, nor apocalypses, nor gods ?—”

“Knowing One,” she snapped quietly. “You don’t need to say anything else.”

She paused for a moment before stepping through the throne room doors. “I love you more than the stars love the sky.”

“I love you more than the shadows love the night,” he whispered back.

Now that she had a proper chance to think about it, she probably should have used her last moments with Nicolas to ask him whether or not the Avisai would try to kill her if she approached them alone. She had seen at least three that lingered around the palace, all of which wore their saddles full-time now. Aleja went the long way around the gardens to avoid Bonnie’s cabin; the Avisai liked to linger in the foothills anyway, where Aleja had gotten her first training hunting Remnants with a traitor named Roland.

“Hi,” she breathed, as she spotted what she assumed was one of the younger dragons foraging blueberries at the brambly edges of Bonnie’s forest defenses. Whatever Aleja would have said next was silenced as she clamped her jaw shut, realizing the Avisai was not eating blueberries but a deer carcass that she could only identify from the shiny black hooves that reflected the moonlight.

The Avisai looked at her, clicked its teeth, then returned its attention to its meal.

At least it did not growl as she approached. For a ridiculous moment, she found herself looking for a collar that bore the dragon’s name. Okay , she thought. I’m just going to reach for the big scary dragon’s reigns and hope it doesn’t try to kill me for interrupting.

She tried. The Avisai shook its head like Garm when he got water in his ears but then grumbled in resignation when she tugged it away from the deer carcass. The only small sign of its displeasure—and Aleja was using the term “small” very loosely—was a flash of its teeth.

Aleja’s hand tightened around the reigns as she tried to remember how easily Violet had hooked her foot into the stirrups and swung her opposite leg over the Avisai’s saddle. “Good. I think that was step one. You’re not going to help me out by kneeling or anything, are you?”

The Avisai huffed.

“I thought not. At least this indignity is mine and mine alone to remember.”

It might have been a graceful climb if Aleja wasn’t the kind of person to forget how to bend her elbows and knees when she had to scramble atop something taller than herself. Her Dark Saint body might be stronger and faster than her human one, but it was apparently no more agile. “I need you to take me to the edge of the wards, near the abandoned army camp,” she said, speaking slowly and sharply.

She didn’t expect the words to work.

Against her inner thighs, the Avisai’s rib cage expanded. The rise was so sudden that the constellations sharpened as dragon and rider left the smoke of cooking fires that lingered around the palace. An involuntary noise left Aleja’s throat. As an art history student, she had spent most of her life with an instinctual disdain for anyone who whooped —sports and art history seemed to be natural, ancient enemies—but she had to force herself to make a silent apology now.

The thrill of the journey was almost enough to make her forget that she was headed to a potential trap. Alone. With her only weapons, her magic and a thin dagger that would force her to fight at close range.

“There,” she barked at the Avisai, pointing at a small clearing near where she had once met the Messenger and immediately regretting that she had taken a hand off the reigns. As the Avisai dove, she was forced to scramble to regain balance. Like turbulence in an airplane, Aleja’s body dropped before her mind caught up, and the two parts of her seemed to snap together.

As they approached, she searched the ground for troops, but they were at the edge of the mountains here. While foothills might have provided near endless places for an army to hide in any other realm, the Hiding Place’s mountains were so steep and craggy that they were impossible to traverse in significant numbers. But a lone figure in white, barely visible, paced across the clearing by herself.

“Shit,” Aleja hissed. Her hands gripped the reigns so tightly that it felt like her bones might burst through her skin. She felt a subtle change in angle in the Avisai’s shoulders as it prepared to rise but tightened her inner thighs around the saddle.

“We’re going to land,” she said in a voice that sounded doubtful to her own ears. “If something happens, and I can’t get back in the saddle, head back to the palace and raise hell. Lead the Knowing One back here.”

The dragon’s response was a grunt, but it changed course, wings steadying into a glide as they neared the ground. The Messenger did not look up to watch the Avisai land as she leaned against one of the jagged standing stones that littered this part of the Hiding Place. Nor did Aleja leave the Avisai’s back as they reached the ground. The last time she and the Messenger had met like this, it had ended with a flock of Thrones appearing over the mountains to attack her.

“You can relax, Lady of Wrath,” came her booming voice. “I’m unarmed.”

“You’re not who I came here to meet,” Aleja called back.

“I understand your frustration. Unfortunately, Violet was indisposed at the last minute. She sent me to speak with you instead.” The Messenger examined her nails, but with the circular, winged mask over her face, it was impossible to tell where her eyes were focused. “I’ve come to deliver information that can only help your comrades in the Hiding Place, but if you’d rather go, I won’t try to stop you. One of those Avisai took a chunk out of my shoulder once. I’m not eager to relive the experience.”

Aleja’s eyes darted to the Messenger’s side; her sheath was empty.

“No tricks this time,” the Messenger went on. “My army doesn’t know I’ve come. From what I hear, you’re properly back on the battlefield. It saved me some trouble; less mutineers to execute when they limped back home after disobeying my orders.”

Aleja let no surprise show on her face. “Losing control of your soldiers, Messenger?”

“I’m allowing them to think I am. Let’s talk. The heat of the Hiding Place doesn’t agree with me; I would like to spend as little time here as possible.”

“We are talking. There’s no one around,” Aleja said. Her toes flexed in her boots. Orla had been right. The attack on the Hiding Place hadn’t come from the Messenger’s command, and this was her chance to find out more.

The Messenger’s circular mask rotated slowly in the breeze. It was hotter near the wards, where the volcanic churn escaped from the vents on the side of the mountains. “It’s a matter of dignity, Wrath. I’d rather not have this conversation while trying to shout over your dragon’s panting.”

Despite the silence, she could imagine what her old self would have said. Show the Messenger that you have no reason to be afraid of her. She is weak. She is losing control of her armies. She may have the Third, but you have her son.

“Fine,” Aleja said. “I could use a stretch anyway. But one wrong move and my dragon will mow you down with fire, if I don’t get the chance first.”

“The Avisai don’t breathe fire, Wrath,” the Messenger said.

“That’s what we’ve wanted you to believe all along.”

The Messenger’s mask shifted to the left—it seemed like the equivalent of her raising an eyebrow. “Who knows you’re here?”

“That’s not your right to know, Messenger.”

“No one, then. Good. Let’s walk. I think better on my feet. Bring your damn dragon, if it makes you feel better.”

There were wards to the north of them and jagged rocks to the south. To the east, the edge of Bonnie’s forest lay a few yards away, nearly at the Astraelis border. There was nothing to do but bank westward. The damp ground was dented by heavy boot fall in a single size, moving in two directions. The Messenger, pacing as she waited for Aleja to come.

“Where is Violet?” she asked. “Tell me the truth.”

“I’m surprised to hear you ask after her. She’s a traitor to your realm.”

“I ask because I plan to kill her.”

“Hm,” the Messenger grunted. “Then, I suppose it’s better she didn’t come along. She’s confined at my home. And my son—where is he?”

“In our prisons,” Aleja told her. The truth was inconsequential. The Messenger could no more enter the prison chambers than Val could leave it without either the Knowing One or his High General. “We feed him. He is allowed to sleep. I doubt many of your Otherlander prisoners can say the same.”

“Has he asked after me?”

“Of course not. If we were to drop the wards on his prison cell today, my guess is that his next move would be to run as far away from you as possible.”

The Messenger exhaled, ruffling the lower feathers of her mask. “He didn’t always despise me so. We were very close, when he was young.”

“I didn’t come here to get your biography.”

“I’m trying to get you to see reason,” the Messenger said. “My son’s fear of me is unfounded. I may have been a…demanding parent, yes, but glory is the shining side of sacrifice. And my son was always born to be glorious. As you know, Astraelis do not reproduce easily nor quickly. I learned I was pregnant when I felt his soul spark to life in my belly while fighting Otherlanders on the battlefield. Our kind’s gestation period takes many years. By the time Val wiggled to life in my stomach, his father was long dead.”

Aleja knew precious little about Val’s father, other than what the Messenger had offered herself. The Messenger had held her role for centuries—even longer than Nicolas had been the Knowing One.

“None of that changes the fact that Val is no longer your ally any more than he is ours,” Aleja said. “He wants to survive and will give his allegiance to whoever can offer him the best chance. Even if I could convince him to return to you, there is no chance that the other Dark Saints would let him go.”

“I don’t blame him,” the Messenger said with a sigh. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have pushed him so hard, but I knew he could be like his father. My husband was an unparalleled magician but stubborn. Now, we’re all going to suffer for it. Is there something wrong, Lady of Wrath?”

“Yes. I’m not even sure if I believe in the Avaddon.” It didn’t seem wise to mention that neither their librarians nor the Second had confirmed it.

“Then you’re a fool. Why not choose to believe in something that is harmless if false but fatal to reject if true?”

“Thanks for the words of wisdom. I’m sure that will convince everyone back home.”

The Messenger shrugged. “You and I both know that we cannot do anything without an ulterior motive. That’s why I trust you to believe me. Think hard, Lady of Wrath. What good could it do you to know more my relationship with my son? I may appear hopeful, but I have little illusion that Val would ever return to me willingly. You’re right. I was a poor mother.”

“That doesn’t make me feel sorry for you. Anyway, why should I deal with a Messenger who is about to be deposed?” Aleja asked.

“Deposed? I’m not quite there yet . Besides, how would your fellow Dark Saints react if they knew you were here with me?”

The Messenger turned, and her shoulders sagged. Aleja opened her mouth, meaning to ask about the Messenger’s traitorous soldiers, but her curiosity was so annoyingly piqued that something else came out entirely. “You once said your husband taught a human woman magic. That was why he was executed.”

The Messenger’s mask fluttered around her face. “This information isn’t relevant, Wrath.”

“It’s information you offered me yourself, and you say nothing by accident. Your husband taught magic to a human woman, and he was executed as a result of it. Was he having an affair?”

“An affair?” the Messenger scoffed. “When you live as long as we do, the notion is ridiculous. Monogamy is impossible.”

Aleja shrugged. “I don’t blame anyone who takes more than one lover with the permission of the others, but I can say for a fact that you’re wrong.”

“You and Nicolas don’t count,” the Messenger hissed. “My husband loved someone else—that’s true—but he always had my blessing. Until I learned she was a human and that he had betrayed our kind by teaching her magic.”

“And for that he deserved to die?”

The Messenger was silent for a beat too long. Aleja did not need her inner voice to know that the Messenger had just admitted something crucial. It was not just her loyalty to her armies that was in question. It was her loyalties to everything the Astraelis stood for. Aleja couldn’t have caught that brief hesitation if she wasn’t already so used to listening closely to Nicolas’s bored drawl for a hint of what he was truly thinking.

“No,” the Messenger said firmly. “And before you get smug about it, know that the Otherlanders aren’t the only ones capable of debating their leader’s authority. Many Astraelis philosophers have pondered whether our isolation maintains our safety or limits our progress.”

“Maybe your quest to kill the First isn’t purely pragmatic. Maybe you want revenge as well,” Aleja said, scolding herself for being too bold as the words left her mouth, but the Messenger only shrugged.

“That matters little to the outcome either way. Besides, I could say the same for you. In which case, let me tell you why I’ve asked you here. The figs of the First Tree grant knowledge—they have the power to teach magic, to gain insights into arcane secrets, and, most importantly in your case, restore memories that have been lost. And before you think I’m being altruistic, dispel the notion from your mind. I let those traitors testify when they returned from their foolish attempt to invade the Hiding Place without me. Even from their descriptions, it’s clear that your training has been lacking. The old Lady of Wrath would have decimated that motley group with a few well-placed commands, barely needing to lift a finger. I can’t have you ruining our chances of success with incompetence.”

Whatever offense Aleja might have taken at that statement was dulled by another sensation—fear. Since returning to the Hiding Place, regaining her memories had never been an option, aside from the occasional snippet of her past that she glimpsed through the Unholy Relics.

She had not considered she could be anything else than Alejandra Ruiz, the daughter of Satanists, their would-be final sacrifice to the devil, a college dropout, a caretaker for the Gentle Hearts Agency, the best friend of a woman who had gone missing in the forest. Did she even want the last Lady of Wrath’s pain? Her anger? The hatred of her enemy that had oozed from even Bonnie during their last meeting?

“There’s more,” the Messenger went on. “The fruit of the First Tree must be plucked by the one who intends to eat it, or else it will rot. You must enter the Astraelis realm, and I will guide you there.”

“This sounds like a trap.”

The Messenger shrugged. “I’m done trying to convince you. Your stubbornness grew tiresome centuries ago. I will send a message when I can smuggle you in without being seen. If you do not answer it, my next message will be that of a war horn at your borders when we arrive to take Val back. Your armies might put up a fight, but in the end, we will win. Our forces are superior in all-out combat. You don’t need your memories to know that.”

The Avisai gave a high-pitched whine. Both Aleja and the Messenger ignored it, until the small dragon bumped its muzzle against Aleja’s shoulder. It was cool and damp against her, much like Garm’s.

“When can I expect your message?” Aleja said.

“Once I deal with my mutineer problem.”

“Fine. Go, before one of our scouts spots you. If your hole in the wards is open for too long, someone on my side will notice.”

The Messenger stepped away but turned before disappearing. For a moment, her mask drew close to her face, as Val’s always did when he was nervous. “Be careful. Even among the Dark Saints, dissent is tolerated, but betrayal is not. If you’re caught, your Knowing One will defend you. Whatever punishment you incur will fall on him too.”