Page 26 of Each Their Own Devil

“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, norgods?—”

“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 shehad 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 forthe big scary dragon’s reigns and hope it doesn’t try to kill me for interrupting.

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