Page 49 of Each Their Own Devil

Garm gave another low huff but knew better than to protest when Aleja used this tone of voice. He shook off, the helmet shifting on his head, and Aleja scratched what she could reach of his neck through his armor.

“Anything else I should know?” she asked, turning to the Messenger again.

“I could not tell you more about what you will experience, even if I wanted to. I do not have the words.”

The distant cry of an Avisai echoed through the hills again, but when Aleja’s eyes shot to the sky, the clouds had already closed from the path of the last one’s flight. “Fine,” she said. “Garm, you have my permission to act as you see fit, if you think that Otherlander lives are in danger. But her—” Aleja’s gaze turned toward the Messenger. “You leave her to me.”

“Understood, boss,” Garm said, with a wag of his tail.

Aleja turned toward the tree’s mottled shadows and stepped forward. It was only a few strides until the temperature dropped as she entered the space beneath its branches, as if she had somehow passed the time from spring to summer to fall in a few steps. A shiver came from deep beneath her rib cage.

She was searching for fruit. What she should have been searching for was a serpent.

Being the child of Satanists, she had seen this imagery her entire life—a snake coiling around a fig tree. So many near-identical statues had been burned into Aleja’s mind that it took her a moment to register that the creature dropping out of the branches was in motion. It wasn’t until a thin tongue flickered out of its mouth that Aleja realized the branch she was reaching for was actually the scaled body of a viper.

“Ah, it’s been so long since I’ve had a visitor,” the snake hissed in a voice that sounded so much like that of the Second that Aleja felt as though she was briefly back in his cave.

“Hey,” she said, nonchalant. She had learned a few hard lessons these past few months, one of which being that it was never worth it to show an Otherlander—or an Astraelis for that matter—that you regarded them with anything other than boredom or bemusement.

“It’s been even longer since once ofyourkind came here.” The snake’s tongue flickered out between its fangs. “There is one great difference between the Otherlanders and the Astraelis. One great difference that causes war, that causes witch hunts, that has caused countless deaths. The Astraelis were able to resist my temptation. The Otherlanders were not.”

“Temptation?” Aleja asked to buy herself time.

“Yes,” the snake said. It slithered closer. Its eyes were the color of Aleja’s hair—a brilliant dark red that shone like two embers in its skull. “Knowledge is power, but too much of it is madness. The Messenger warned you to take only one fig—one that would return your memories—while the Third advised you to choose a completely different one. Yet there is a balance you can strike, dear Lady of Wrath.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know everything,” the snake hissed, lugging its big head back atop one of the branches. Its body was slow to follow, curving in a slow figure eight.

“Shouldn’tyoube mad, then?”

“Oh, I certainly am.” The snake flashed its fangs. “And yet, I still find it within me to protect this tree and the fruit that grows upon it. You have two choices, Alejandra Ruiz, Alexandra Rhodica, the Lady of Wrath, the Lady of Fire. This fruit—” The serpent’s tail touched a bright purple fig that looked sun-warmed and ready to fall from the branch. “…will grant you the knowledge you seek about the Avaddon, and that it may be inevitable.”

Aleja tutted, because she didn’t know what else to do. Aside from Val and the Messenger, everything else that had knowledge of the Avaddon shared the same sentiment, the Third included. But her mind had yet to catch up.

There was simply no way that everyone she knew and everyone she didn’t know, and every painting she had seen and every painting she wanted to see, and every book, and every piece of sushi and every slice of pizza, and every world-changing song that was still trapped in the mind of its songwriter, and every dog eager for its next walk, and every cat waiting for its owners to avert their eyes, and grape that would someday be wine, and every book that had never been checked out of the library, and every book that had been checked out of the library so many times that its spine was cracked, and every love letter that had ever been written, then burned, then written again with heavy editing, and delivered only after several long nights of contemplating, and every old movie that had been recommend to Aleja a hundred times and she had never watched but swore she would someday, would suddenly disappear.

“Are you listening to me, Lady of Wrath? That is one fig, but there is another,” the snake went on. It jabbed its tail at a fig that was darker red than purple, echoing Aleja’s hair. “This one will grant you all the memories of your old life. The life in which you believed so thoroughly that you could avert the Avaddonthat you sliced off your own finger. But of course, you could have both. Yes, the Messenger told you that is impossible, that it is a poor choice—a deadly choice, even—but she cannot help but lie to Otherlanders.”

“Hassheeaten more than one fig?” Aleja asked.

“The Messenger? No. Others, yes.”

“And what happened to them?”

“Who can say? Not one of them remains in the Astraelis realm.”

“Why is that?”

“If the First Tree grew in the garden of the Otherlanders, things would be different. The Astraelis have shut themselves off from knowledge; the Otherlanders have embraced it. I am only a snake, cursed to guard the First Tree until the moment in which it does not exist.”

Both fruits were ripe on the branch, deep red, deep violet, skin bursting so sweet-smelling juice could ooze—although it was too thick to drip toward the ground. “You’re a liar,” Aleja said, finally forcing herself to swallow.

“Perhaps I am,” the snake said, as it directed its head toward the upper branches and began sliding away. “Eat one fruit or both, it matters nothing to me. Once upon a time, some of the ancients nearly picked my branches bare, and…well, you know what happened to them. They became the Otherlanders. If I recall correctly, the first Knowing One who managed to sneak back here—she ate eighteen! Her name was Lilith. She wasmagnificent.”

Something rattled the leaves overhead and Aleja’s knees bent involuntarily, even though she was so deep within the dappled shadows of the trees that nothing could spot her from overhead.

“Forget everything I said,” the snake said, with long-suffering disdain in its voice. “You’ve hesitated for far too long. Ifyou can’t even choose one, then how can I expect you to choose both?”

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