Page 86 of Each Their Own Devil

“A leader who’s grown old and bitter,” Bonnie said, her calm voice cutting through the tension. “The question is, what kind of future do we want now? Do we need him?”

Aleja’s shoulders straightened. “We’ve averted the apocalypse, but the cycle isn’t broken. It won’t be, not while he’s alive. He told me to ‘break the chains.’ I think he wants this. I think he’s waited for someone to end it—endhim.”

Orla scowled. “And you think we’re the ones to do it? You think we can handle the fallout?”

“We’ve already handled worse,” Aleja said, her voice firm. “The Otherlanders don’t need the Second. They need a future they can build themselves. No more lies. No more chains.”

There was a long silence. Orla finally sighed, shaking her head. “Well, Wrath, it’s your call. If we’re doing this, it’s on you.”

“It’s always been on me,” Aleja said, meeting each of their gazes. “And I’m ready.”

The council deliberations stretched for hours afterward, voices rising and falling as doubts, fears, and grudging agreements filled the space. But once Aleja secured most of the council’s support—which now included not only Jack but a handful of Otherlanders from the hillsides she had never met, and even an Astraelis representing those in the refugee camp—it gave Orla permission to concede. After all, none of them had escaped harm from the Second or the wars that had ravaged their Hiding Place for millennia.

“I thought we were about to start our own civil war,” Aleja muttered one night as she and Nicolas lounged on one of the palace’s high balconies, watching the red sunset fade into a violet evening.

“We’re Otherlanders,” Nicolas said with a shrug. “We know when it’s time to fall from grace. Most of us came here from places where we felt we had to hide. The name of our realm isn’t an accident. And in the past few centuries, it’s felt like the Second’s cruelty has been the point. We’re Otherlanders because we’re people who decided not to be afraid anymore.”

“When should we do it?” Aleja asked, looking to the sky. The Throne had finally managed to fly close enough to the Avisai without being attacked, following their slow circles at a careful distance.

“Soon. Taddeas has been accompanying Val as close to the Second’s cave as they can get without rousing him. Val seems confident he’ll be ready to force the Second to appear within weeks.”

Nicolas’s fingers grazed the inside of Aleja’s knee, the touch so gentle it clashed with the darkness in his voice. “In the meantime, we wait. We rebuild. And we figure out how to teach the Astraelis some damn manners, because I saw one touching a painting in the palace the other day. He thought I was about to drag him out to the law for a public execution.”

“Oh?” Aleja frowned. “It wasn’t the Titian, was it?”

“The Bassano. That’s the only reason the Astraelis is alive right now. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to talk about it anymore tonight. Come here. Your skin is freezing.”

“No, it’s not,” Aleja laughed. Since the Messenger had pulled the Third out of her, Aleja’s body had felt as uncomfortably hot as Nicolas’s.

From up here, she could see beyond the foothills into the mountains. The sun had finally dipped behind them, and the stars were emerging—constellations Aleja now knew by heart.

“On thebalcony, Nic? Someone will see!” Aleja tried to pull away half-heartedly, as he slipped a hand beneath her jacket to cup one of her breasts. But, despite her chiding, her nipple tightened beneath this touch and a heat even greater than her baseline flared to life in her core.

“Let them,” he muttered.

“Maybeyouhave an exhibition fetish—” Aleja laughed again, but swallowed her own words once Nicolas coaxed her mouth open with his own. Once his hand trailed from her breast to her stomach, it slipped underneath her tunic so that he could trace the soft curve of her abdomen with his fingertips. Aleja was lucky that she had never be ticklish.

“Oh, maybe just this once,” she muttered against his mouth.

When he lay her down, all she could see was her husband’s face, intense in concentration on her alone, and his messy hair, highlighted by a streak of gray by his left temple, and the sky above them—as boundless and free as their world was about to become.

The Messenger returnedthe day before they were going to kill the Second.

Or, at least, Aleja thought that it was the Messenger, returning to life to get revenge. But it took only a second to realize the woman was far too small, and her mask was not the enormous, circular mandala the Messenger had always worn.Instead, it was dirty and uneven, as if it had been plucked off a corpse.

“You really shouldn’t be here,” Aleja said, annoyed that Violet had managed to sneak up on her while she was taking notes on one of the paintings in a lesser hall off the palace’s south wing. Aleja was almost certain it was an undocumented Fra Angelico. “There are plenty of Otherlanders and Astraelis here who want you dead, peace be damned. Who let you in?”

“Bonnie,” Violet said with a shrug, adjusting her mask. It was too large for her, covering her upper lip and leaving barely more than her chin exposed. “I went to see her first. No offense.”

“I’m offended by that mask,” Aleja said. “You eat one of their figs, and suddenly you’re out to rain righteousness on the world?”

“I didn’t say anything about righteousness,” Violet replied, unhooking the clasp that held the mask to her head—a clasp usually missing or glamoured into invisibility by the other Astraelis. She let her face show. Her skin was sunburned; the red of her cheeks made her green eyes stand out even more.

“The mask was originally to prevent this,” she explained, gesturing to her peeling face with her free hand. “And then—I don’t know—I found myself sleeping with it on. I wore it even in the shade. It’s more comfortable than you’d think. After so many years forcing myself to make my smile reach my eyes for my content, it was nice, for once, not to have to worry about it.”

“And the fig?” Aleja asked, turning to face Violet fully.

Violet’s clothes were in tatters, but she wore new shoes, distinctly Otherlander in style. She must have picked them up from Bonnie’s cabin. Aleja tried to summon anger for Violet—or at least annoyance for Bonnie, for enabling her—but couldn’t manage it.

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