Page 83 of Each Their Own Devil

“Oh, who knows?” The Messenger sighed with exasperation. “I don’t want to spend the last moments of my life talking about that little cretin. But understand this: the fig you gave her wasn’t entirely what you thought it was. In a human, a fig from the First Tree grants immortality, but Violet took two Otherlander Trials. She was already changed, even if not completely. Who can say what eating the fig did to her? I’m sure she’ll come crawling back eventually. The Astraelis realm isn’t exactly kind to outsiders.”

Aleja’s throat tightened. “I—I need more information.”

The Messenger tilted her head, her voice softening. “You’ll get more from my son. Please, tell him that I chose this. As much as he despises me, I want him to know I walked into my fate without fear. He’s always been afraid, my dear Val—even of me. If I have any wish for my son, it’s that he, like you, will break his chains.”

Aleja rolled her eyes, bitterness creeping into her tone. “You could just tell him that yourself.”

“No,” the Messenger replied, a wistful smile tugging at her lips. “I can’t. There’s too much distance between us. But he’ll listen to you.” Her voice turned sharp again. “Now, please, Wrath, stab me. This conversation is becoming insufferable.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“You will,” the Messenger said simply. “Sometimes, I think I may know you better than you know yourself. A bit of Astraelis wisdom before I go: if you can’t sympathize with your enemy, you can’t beat them. Are you sure you’re strong enough to push that blade through my sternum? I don’t want this drawn out longer than it needs to be.”

Aleja hesitated, her voice cracking. “If you weren’t already dying, I don’t know if I’d be able to do this.”

The Messenger shrugged. “Yes, you would. You’re the Dark Saint of Wrath. The villain. I don’t pretend this battle will have fixed the rift between our kinds. Nor, frankly, do I want it to, but do try not to let my son be slaughtered any time soon. Go on, then. Do it. We’ve had our sad goodbyes—blah, blah, blah. If you feel guilty, you can do something dignified with my body.”

“I’ll toss you in that weedy garden behind your house,” Aleja muttered.

“That sounds nice. Thank you.”

“Are you ready?”

“And you callmetedious?”

Aleja sighed, gripping the blade tighter. “Any last words?”

“I’ve already said the ones that matter.”

She moved before she could allow herself to hesitate any longer, and the Messenger did not flinch. It was easier, Aleja thought, to do this to someone who was not struggling. The blade sank through bone as if the Messenger’s sternum was soft flesh, and even then, she did not scream. For a moment, Aleja was back in her first Trial, hacking the heart out of her younger self, but the pain of the action this time was different.

As blood poured over her hands, Aleja wasn’t sure she had ever felt an emotion so complicated. She did not love the Messenger, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to hate her either. In the darkest corners of her heart, Aleja could even understand the fear that had driven the Astraelis to isolate themselves, to hoard their knowledge, to shun the very Tree that had granted them power in the first place. It was dangerous toknow. It was painful.

If Aleja hadn’t known these fragments of the Messenger’s life—that she loved abstract art; that she drank her tea with honey and lavender; that she still pined for a husband who had betrayed her centuries ago; that she had loved her son so deeply, she had made him hate her so he could survive—it would have been easier. It would have been simpler to crack open the Messenger’s sternum, to look at the knotted, dark pomegranate of her heart, and not understand all that it had contained. Love and pain. Fear and hate. Quiet wonder.

All of it gone now—except for what might linger on the other side of the Third’s realm.

16

ALL THE OPEN DOORS

“Chains are not broken by strength, but by the will to see beyond them.” —The Book of Open Doors,Book VII: The Return to the Threshold

Amicia had never been a particularlyloud presence in the palace, preferring to stay within the quarters reserved for her when she wasn’t suppressing her power. But her absence felt strangely disorienting, like the loss of a home’s faint background noise—a dripping faucet or an electrical hum so pervasive, you forgot to notice it until it was gone. Now that it was, Aleja couldn’t shake the uneasy stillness.

None of the other Dark Saints had spoken Amicia’s name to her, though Aleja suspected they’d seen the tremor in her chin each time she noticed an empty plate setting or caught sight of one of Amicia’s devotees wandering the palace with red-rimmed eyes.

“It’s not your fault, dove,” Nicolas said, finding her staring at one of Amicia’s earrings carelessly left on a dresser in one of the palace salons. The emerald gem, the exact shade of Amicia’sirises, caught the sunlight and seemed to pulse with life. “It was her choice. If it hadn’t been for her?—”

“I know,” Aleja interrupted softly. She wiped her eyes, feeling safe enough to do so in front of Nicolas.

Each night, more memories came to her in dreams—not the murky, fractured impressions of her first weeks in the Hiding Place, but sharp, vivid recollections. When she asked Nicolas about them, his expression betrayed a storm of emotions he tried hard to mask. The memories felt oddly deliberate, as if her old self was carefully selecting what to reveal, gifting her insights when she needed them most.

In the last war, she had been forced to burn one of their generals alive to stop her from being swallowed by an Authority. The general had begged Aleja to do it, sacrificing herself to keep their enemy from gleaning valuable information. Aleja had never stopped being haunted by it. Just as she knew she’d never stop being haunted by that little emerald earring, abandoned perhaps in the heat of a tryst.

“Hey,” Nic said, his large hand warm and grounding on her shoulder. “Garm’s been begging for a walk all morning. He says he wants to show us something. Let’s get some fresh air.”

Aleja was too tired to walk but also too tired to argue. Lately, it felt like all she did was sleep, though the rest never seemed to reach her bones. Nicolas had sent Orla to search for Val, who had disappeared shortly after Aleja had returned to the First’s chamber with the Messenger’s blood on her hands. The Third’s cage had also been unlatched and was empty. “I couldn’t stop them,” Nicolas had said, though the emotions tangled in their bond suggested he hadn’t tried very hard.

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