Page 2 of Each Their Own Devil

“Vi, are you sure that—” Aleja stopped herself from speaking. What she had been about to say—Are you sure that theAuthorities 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.

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