Page 46 of Each Their Own Devil

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Don’t be.” Val rubbed his forehead. “Just because I don’t want you all to die doesn’t mean I agree with your ideals. And I say this as someone who has spent their life acquiring knowledge that has nearly driven me mad.”

Aleja decided not to comment on thenearly driven me madpart. She couldn’t handle it.

“Anyway,” Val said, straightening to his full height. “What I mean is that perhaps not everyone is suited for every type of knowledge.”

“Suited?” Aleja raised an eyebrow. “I think I’m beginning to understand our philosophical differences.”

“I don’t mean it that way,” Val said. “What I mean is that not all knowledge is beneficial. In fact, I would say some of it is actively harmful.”

“I can prove you wrong once we avert the apocalypse.” Frustration welled in her chest as she turned and strode toward the door.

Val raised his head slightly. “Where are you going now, Wrath?”

“To find your mother,” Aleja said, her tone sharp.

The Messenger was already in what Aleja could only assume was her salon by the time Aleja entered, feeling greasy from her old clothes. Meanwhile, the Messenger’s armor looked freshly polished, her circular mask shining in shades of pale orange, gold, and pink. Garm yawned widely as they entered.

“I want to go to the First Tree. Forget the fig that will grant me my memories; the Third claims there is one that will tell me more about the Avaddon,” Aleja said, eyeing the Messenger’s mug. A curl of steam rising from it crimped the lower feathers of her mask. Aleja still felt too nauseous to eat, but the smell of the liquid—something like honey and lavender—made her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth, like it was full of sugar as well.

“How interesting,” the Messenger said, stirring her tea. “Are you ready to leave now?”

“Now?” Aleja asked sharply.

“Of course now,” the Messenger said. “I’m still commanding an army—or some of it, at least. I’ve given an excuse for my absence, but that can only stretch for so long, considering the mutiny brewing among my soldiers. I need to be back on the front line this evening. It gives us just enough time to make it to the First Tree and back.”

“How far is the tree?”

The Messenger set her teacup aside next to a sculpture that was definitely not human in origin. Like the furniture in her home, it bent and curved in ways that were both natural yet extreme. “That depends.”

“What do you mean ‘that depends’?”

“I mean that Astraelis magic will be as unfamiliar to you as Otherlander magic is to us. The First Tree mustwantto be found. We can ask it to appear for you, but ultimately, the tree will decide how and when to meet you. I know only the direction to ride in.”

“Wonderful,” Aleja said flatly. “I don’t think a Throne will tolerate me on its back.”

“I have other means of transportation. Let us go before either of our sides does something so spectacularly stupid that this fight is lost before it has begun.”

I don’t have a choice, Aleja realized, with the sort of fatalism that she had felt before stretching out her arm and striking her bargain with the Second. She had done the most dangerous thing she could to save Nicolas and she would do it again. Her husband would do the same thing if their positions were reversed.

“Fine. Let’s go,” Aleja said.

“Don’t you want breakfast?”

“I thought you said time was paramount.”

“There’s always time for breakfast.”

“I agree,” said Garm.

Aleja’s eye roll was exaggerated enough to ache. For a moment, she understood everything Orla had ever said. “I’m surrounded by fools. We’re all going to die.”

The Messenger’smounts were so staggeringly beautiful that Aleja could not help how her mouth popped open.

“You liked them before too,” the Messenger said, her voice oddly gentle. “You never let your soldiers kill them unless absolutely necessary. The Otherlanders once stole one, but I don’t believe they ever managed to tame it. I reckon it died in captivity. They only eat honey of the bees that pollinate the First Tree.”

Two shining creatures stood in the field before them. While the Umbramares resembled horses, these were closer to the massive elks Aleja had often seen in Violet’s pictures from her remote hikes in the Pacific Northwest. Like the furniture and sculptures in the Messenger’s house, their antlers were…improbable. Once they left the creature’s skulls, their tips were too numerous to count, knotting together in strange ways.

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