Page 24 of Each Their Own Devil

“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. Everyration 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 passedthe 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 keepsmydream 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.”

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