Page 51 of Each Their Own Devil

“That’s where you come in. I brought you to the Hiding Place for a reason, Taddeas. We’re going to lead the Authorities to you. Set a trap for them,” Nicolas said.

Taddeas parted his lips as if to offer a protest, but Nicolas caught a glint in his eye. It was a glint Nicolas had only seen when Taddeas was discussing military theory in a voice that gradually sped with excitement until he was waving his hands in a steady rhythm, as if he were lecturing back in one of his college classrooms.

“I’ll need at least ten minutes. Can you buy me that?” Taddeas asked.

“Ten minutes of getting chased by a monster that will absorb every bit of my knowledge about our plans and tactics if it eats me? Of course,” Nicolas said.

“You sound like your wife,” Taddeas said with a barely concealed eye roll, before he turned his Umbramare back downhill and clicked his heels against its side to spur it forward.

“You got a plan for this, Knowing One?” Orla asked, as they too urged their Umbramares forward. Both of the shadow-creatures huffed as they were pushed toward the battlefield, and Nicolas could no longer tell if the sound was eagerness or displeasure. The shadows carried with them a part of his mind, and he could control their feelings no more than he could control his own.

“Don’t die,” he said.

“I was thinking along the lines of you confuse them with your shadows while I use my voids to slow them down.”

“That’s good planning,” he told her. Although Orla had been one of the Dark Saints to flee the Hiding Place after the last war—in no small part driven by Nicolas’s actions to save Aleja—he had to admit that he had always enjoyed her company on the battlefield.

When it had been the four of them together—Orla, Nicolas, Aleja, and…Roland—they had worked together with a sense of wordless cohesion, with little that could stop their destruction.

Except, of course, for Authorities.

But an Authority was not the first to notice them. It was a Throne. Nicolas drew his sword as he urged his Umbramare toward it, but the Throne was not deterred. It charged toward Nicolas, teeth bared and already marbled with streaks of red blood.

“Forward,” Nicolas barked at his mount. “Don’t change course.”

His Umbramare and the Throne ran at each other like two jousters, waiting to see who would break first. He sent a shadow to wrap around the lion’s ankle, yanking it to the left. The quick lapse in balance was enough to make the Throne turn its head, exposing its throat—their greatest area of weakness.

Nicolas’s sword slid in quick and easy, as if it was relieved to finally be doing what it loved. With the Throne’s dying roar, other heads turned toward him and Orla.

“The Knowing One!” someone shouted. “Get the mages on him!”

Nicolas was forced to send out a field of shadows earlier than he’d wished, obscuring the battlefield in mottled darkness. The mages would need a few moments to find each other and summon a counterspell. Orla, visible only because of her bright hair and golden armor, shouted, “Stop showing off, Knowing One! Time to ride!”

The Dark Saint of Envy’s magic didn’t feel like that of the rest of the Otherlanders. Nicolas had to admit to himself that the power of the void made him jealous. Instead of sending a tremor through him, it was as if he were being yanked back by the gravity of a black hole.

He had to shout for his Umbramare to resist being pulled back into the pit of blackness that opened behind them—so dark and perfectly empty that it stood out even among Nicolas’s shadows. He glanced back long enough to see one of theAuthorities sucked into the darkness, feathers flying as its eyes swiveled wildly in surprise.

When Nicolas turned back to the battlefield, the first thing he was met with was a Principality with a raised sword. His Umbramare veered to the side, but the sword stopped mid-swing.

“Run, you fool,” Nicolas snapped as he passed, knowing he would have to reckon later with the fact that he had just intentionally saved an Astraelis’s life.

This Principality had the chance to get out of the way; others did not. As Orla joined him, Nicolas knew he could not risk another glance back, but the shadows looming over them revealed that both of the Authorities were in pursuit. The soldiers that didn’t dodge in time were violently knocked away by the Authorities’ wings.

“I hope Taddeas has a fucking plan,” Orla panted.

A voice rang out from the battlefield, so loud and clear that it must have been amplified by magic. “Their ranks have fallen! Flank them!”

He had been chased by Authorities before. He knew the acrid smell of their breath—like a mass of rotting fruit and corpses. Nicolas waited until the smell was overwhelming before yanking his Umbramare to the side. The uninjured Authority moved with too much momentum. The Principalities who had not managed to get out of the way turned their swords on it, but there was little their weapons could do, and they knew it.

“If you value your lives, steer it toward us!” Nicolas shouted, hoping his message would be heard by any Principalities loyal to the Messenger.

At least one mage in the crowd obeyed. A wave of shimmering golden magic diverted the Authority’s path. As it was pushed to the side, it sounded as though an enormous cloud of birds had taken off in a panic.

“No one back home is going to believe this!” Orla shouted with a delirious laugh.

“No one will hear the story unless we survive,” he yelled back.

When he summoned his shadows again, they were not a shroud of darkness, but a dark mass with wings and horns—just like the Second.

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