Page 8 of Each Their Own Devil

“Don’t kill me,” Marc whimpered as the beast readjusted its grip. The other two men had gone silent aside from a deep gurgling sound from the boy with the rose-gold hair and the crackle of the beasts, snapping and popping like bonfires.

“You should be grateful. This is my first day on the job, and I haven’t decided what kind of Dark Saint I’m going to be yet,” she told him. “So these creatures are only going to chase you. They’re not that fast—you were just unprepared. But that doesn’t mean they’ll ever give up. You’re going to need to run, Marc, and keep on running, because if you ever turn around, if you ever think about returning to this place, you’ll understand that I’m not doing you a kindness by letting you live.”

“Please. Let me up,” he whispered.

“Since you asked so nicely,” Aleja said, pushing herself to her feet. She took one last look at the creatures born of her magic combined with Nicolas’s. They were as large as Great Danes,with chests that bowed out, pulsing with an internal rhythm of red and gold light, as though their hearts were forged from fire.

“Let them get up,” she commanded the creatures. “Give them a fifteen-minute head start before the game begins. When they sleep, you stop chasing them, but for no more than six hours at a time. If they turn around and try to come back here, then they’ve broken the rules, and you are free to do as you wish with them.”

One of the creatures brayed—a horrible scratching noise like claws raking the inside of its throat. It stepped back, allowing Marc to stagger to his feet. The other two followed, releasing the vampiric man and the boy with rose-gold hair. Blood streamed from their noses, bubbling against their lips as they struggled to take ragged breaths.

“Ready, set, go,” she whispered.

The men ran.

2

THE DARK ASSEMBLY

“There is no reason to fear knowledge, as long as you are the only one to hold it.”—The Book of Open Doors, Part I: The First Gate

That evening,Nicolas kissed her so desperately that she was forced backward onto their bed, tumbling together as if they were one of the beasts of flame and shadow. Garm had whined as they closed the door behind them, but the tap of his nails had disappeared several minutes ago, leaving only the beat of Nicolas’s heart as she clawed off his shirt to reveal the black snake tattooed on his chest, still tortured by thorns.

“You did good,” Nicolas whispered against her mouth, pulling away only long enough to let the words fall before burying his face into the crook of her neck to nip at the skin there, still marred by scars. Aleja arched against him, one hand reaching blindly for the gauzy black drapes surrounding their bed. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment they had reclaimed this room, with a painting of their past selves watching them from above, slashed by the claws of their enemies.

Aleja wanted to ask if those men had deserved to spend the rest of their lives running, but it was already clear from the devotion in his silver eyes what he thought of the situation.You’re a Dark Saint now, she told herself, trying to sound like the inner voice she’d lived with for twenty-three years.It’s your job to bring wrath unto those who have earned it. You should feel no more guilty than a storm passing over a village.

Nicolas must have noticed that her breaths had gone silent. “Dove?”

“Did I do the right thing?” she asked, turning her face into the sheets. They were fresh but smelled faintly of vanilla and the incense that burned constantly throughout the palace.

“Did Josephine deserve to feel safe?”

“Yes, of course, but I don’t think I’m exactly qualified to dole out judgment.”

“The Second would not have allowed you to take the Trials if he believed you were not worthy to be a Dark Saint. Neither would I have.” He crawled up her body so he could take her chin in his hand. She met his eyes without protest, wondering how she had ever shrunk away from the intense silver of his irises.

“You’ll get used to it,” he went on. “And if you don’t, you’ll figure out your own way to be a Dark Saint. We all do.”

“Okay,” Aleja breathed.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

She tilted her head up in invitation, and Nicolas was never one to miss an opportunity. This kiss was more tender than the first; he scooped a hand beneath the arch of her back, pulling her against him. As he coaxed her mouth open again, he tugged at the bond with a silent question. With a shudder, she understood how desperate he was to touch her skin. She felt the way he wanted to devour her until they were indistinguishable from one another.

Nicolas’s clothes slipped away easily until they were pressed against each other. She moaned in protest when Nicolas pulled back until he was kissing his way down to her nipples, taking each one in his mouth for a brief moment before drifting lower and burying his face between her legs. Aleja was so slick already that there was no resistance as he pushed two of his fingers into her, pumping in time with the lazy strokes of his tongue. His other hand made its way to her stomach, pressing down as if she might try to scramble away.

And she did, after the first orgasm raced through her, deep and intense from the curl of Nic’s fingers inside of her and the lavish way he lapped at her clit. She expected him to crawl back up the bed and fuck her until the bond overwhelmed them and they came together, but Nicolas did not relent when she gasped his name, half-heartedly trying to push his head away from her sensitive core. But it wasn’t a full-throated attempt, and Aleja relented when he lowered his head again, tasting her until the sensitivity passed and she was moaning again, her back arching in a sharp curve off the bed.

He didn’t rise until her inner thighs were quivering from a second climax and every touch made her flinch with a pleasure that was almost too much to bear. “Sleep,” he muttered against her hair, as if his erection wasn’t pressed firm against her thigh.

“No, you should—let me?—”

“Sleep,” he said again. “That magic took a lot out of you, and we have a meeting first thing in the morning.”

It was the first she had heard of it, but a profound wave of exhaustion proved Nicolas right. Aleja had barely turned onto her side so he could curl around her before she drifted away to dreams of fire, shadow, and great wings beating against the sky. In a locked box, at the other end of the room, a chunk of bone torn from the body of a dead angel lay dormant.

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