Page 63 of Each Their Own Devil

Violet had looked so sick at the war table. Her voice—which had always been high, bright, and filled with enthusiasm—had trembled with every word. A stubborn part of Aleja reminded her that she shouldn’t feel bad for Violet’s suffering. Yet thatsame part still remembered obsessively listening to every true crime podcast about her disappearance, as if a few students in their early twenties, recording in a rented basement, might have noticed something that Aleja herself had missed.

“You’re exhausted. Come here.”

“I’m not sure if I can even—” Sex had always been a strange, perfunctory thing in Aleja’s life before she met Nicolas. She’d enjoyed it when it was good, but she hadn’t craved it enough to go out of her way to find a partner when she was so busy with school. Then, the Knowing One had come along and she had finally understood what it meant to crave the touch of their hands against her skin so brutally that it hurt.

But she was so tired now that she swayed on her feet. If the Messenger decided to betray them all and storm the palace, Aleja wasn’t sure that she would be able to muster the will to try to stop her.

“That’s not what I was asking, dove. Lay on your stomach.”

Aleja didn’t so much climb onto the bed as collapse into it, and a moment later, Nicolas’s warm hands were on her back, kneading into her muscles. “This is going to make me fall asleep,” she muttered into the sheets.

“Then sleep,” he said.

“We should talk strategy.”

“We’ve already talked strategy. From this point on, we’ll adapt to whatever happens next. But, if this goes wrong, then we’re going to have to choose a last memory. I want mine to be of my wife in our bed.”

He pressed down between her shoulders, and it dragged an involuntary moan out of her. The heat of his hands made her muscles feel soft and pliant beneath him, and despite her exhaustion, she felt a wetness gathering between her legs.

Aleja, who was excellent at not letting things rest, almost opened her mouth to say something—about the First Tree, aboutthe fig, about the fact that they were going to attempt to killwhat amounted to a godin the next few days. But, just this once, she stayed quiet. Nicolas was right. If the world was about to end, then all they had was this.

Above them, their slashed-through portrait watched from across time, and Aleja quietly decided that if they came out on the other side of this alive, she would eat the red fig. She would give Nicolas his wife back, fully and wholly.

He made a sound of protest when she squirmed beneath him, rolling onto her back. “I meant what I said. We really don’t have to?—”

Aleja reached around his neck and pulled him closer, until they touched from forehead to toe. Nicolas did not close his eyes, and the intensity of looking into their brightness was almost painful. His kissed the side of her mouth firmly, tasting of vanilla and woodsmoke. When she felt his heart beating beneath his sternum, the sensation brought a great, nameless emotion moving through her, like a stampede of the monsters they were so adept at creating together.

When she reached between his legs and guided him into her, he did not protest again; she could feel the way his muscles strained as he forced himself to move in a slow, controlled rhythm. She almost begged him to let himself go, tilting her hips up to grind into his thrusts, but as the pleasure built, she timed her breaths to his motions, and it felt like she was under the ocean, rocked back and forth by the endless and eternal movements of the tides.

By the time they came together, she was almost certain that their hearts were beating in rhythm too.

“I have a present for you,”Aleja said flatly. It hadn’t been hard to find Violet after their last meeting, when Bonnie had urged her to speak with the Third. The tarp was back over his cage. Aleja ignored the tight frowns of the Astraelis guards; if they wanted refuge in the Hiding Place, they’d have to get used to seeing a Dark Saint every now and then.

“Is it a knife in my throat?” Violet asked without bothering to get up from where she was seated cross-legged in the grass, picking at a few weeds that had managed to grow from the ground Aleja had scorched during her weeks training with Taddeas. “Don’t bother. Several people are already eager to give me one.”

“A girl can never have too many.”

“In this case, I think we’ll have to disagree.”

Violet looked down too quickly to catch Aleja rolling her eyes—a damn shame. “Here. This fig was gifted by the Astraelis to the family of one of the women your ex-doctor tried to lure to his village. Luckily for Louisa, the Knowing One got to her first. She gave him this in a bargain.”

Violet turned her face up again, her green eyes narrowing. A yellow tint clouded her irises. “It’s not from the First Tree, is it?”

“No. Louisa’s family were members of a cult devoted to the Astraelis. The fig was a gift for them—immortality gained through a few bites of fruit in exchange for servitude.”

Aleja waited for Violet’s reaction. She was a good actress, but Aleja had always felt that Violet was as afraid of being seen as she was of being unseen, maintaining a careful balance. She hadpresented one face to her thousands of followers, another to her friends, and—Aleja had once believed—a secret final one to her.

“Servitude?” Violet asked.

“I didn’t get much of an explanation. But two points here: you’re dying, and you’re dying.”

“Have you researched this in any way?”

“No, of course not. I’ve been busy.”

Violet rolled her eyes, but even this seemed strenuous enough to make her shoulders sag. “I don’t feel excited about being the Messenger’s kind-of prisoner forever.”

“You figure it out, Violet. Can’t you see that… I’m trying to save your fucking life, okay?” Aleja snapped. “And, two weeks ago, I really wanted to kill you.”

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