The Devils

Brother Eduardo Diaz arrives in the Holy City expecting advancement, but Cardinal Zizka instead appoints him vicar of the secret Chapel of the Holy Expediency. Beneath a beautiful church, Diaz discovers his true flock: imprisoned weapons the Church uses when ordinary holiness is not enough. They include the necromancer Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi, the elf Sunny, the vampire Baron Rikard, and other monsters kept under tight control. At the same time, a thief called Alex is caught by debt collectors and unexpectedly claimed by Duke Michael of Nicaea as Princess Alexia, the long-lost heir to Troy. An oracle ritual and church certification make her claim official, and Child Pope Benedicta I binds Diaz’s dreadful company to escort Alex to Troy and see her crowned.

The mission begins badly. On the road from the Holy City, the party is attacked at an inn by forces serving Eudoxia’s sons, including monstrous hybrids created through forbidden experiments. Balthazar is forced by the papal binding to save Alex, the veteran Jakob of Thorn is apparently killed and then rises again because he cannot die, and the werewolf Vigga is released from a locked wagon to slaughter the attackers. Duke Michael survives but is gravely injured, and he warns that the party’s secret route may already be compromised. With no safe return to the Holy City, Alex chooses to keep going toward Troy.

Traveling in disguise among pilgrims, the group becomes less a collection of prisoners and guards than a tense, ugly family. Alex begins bonding with Sunny, who is lonely, practical, and repeatedly saves her life. Diaz, out of his depth with monsters and politics alike, learns that his bookkeeping and library skills may matter as much as bravery. Vigga, violent and unstable, develops a dangerous intimacy with Diaz. Their pilgrimage is betrayed by Bishop Apollonia of Acci, who tries to sell Alex for reward and relics, but Rikard uses overwhelming vampire glamour to wipe the confrontation from the pilgrims’ minds. In Venice, the crime lord Frigo agrees to provide passage to Troy only if the Chapel first robs a cursed illusionist’s house. Inside that house, Balthazar secretly tries to use the magic there to break Benedicta’s binding. Alex realizes his betrayal, forces Diaz to command him to stop, and the trapped companions emerge shaken by visions that expose their guilt and self-hatred. They recover Frigo’s white box and earn a ship east.

The sea voyage ends in another disaster when Duke Constans ambushes them with a war galley, hybrid sea-creatures, and a phrenomancer. Alex and Sunny climb into the rigging to escape the boarders. Vigga is unleashed in wolf form. Below decks, Balthazar and Baptiste kill the mind-controlling sorcerer. On the burning deck, Jakob cannot beat Constans fairly, so he turns defeat into a mutual killing by trapping the duke on his own blade. The ships sink, scattering the group across the coast.

The broken survivors struggle separately through a countryside already torn by war. Diaz and Vigga follow Alex’s scent; Balthazar and Baptiste use the standing stones near Niksic to try to track her; Jakob and Rikard become entangled in a border conflict between Count Radosav and Countess Jovanka. Jakob prevents a battle by insisting on negotiation, while Balthazar’s summoning of the demon Shaxep proves a startling point: even a Duke of Hell cannot break Benedicta’s binding. Alex and Sunny, meanwhile, are hunted by Duke Sabbas and his werewolf tracker. Their bond deepens into romance as they flee through a burning town and later reunite with Diaz and Vigga. At the ruined abbey of Saint Demetrius, Sabbas finally corners them. Sunny sabotages his men, Balthazar raises the dead, Jakob rides in, and the fight ends when Balthazar, prompted by Diaz, rips up an ancient plague pit beneath the abbey and drags Sabbas and his followers into it. The victory costs dearly: the group is exhausted, maimed, and more entangled with one another than ever.

When they finally reach Troy, Alex is received in triumph. Duke Michael, Lady Severa, and Grand Patriarch Methodius XIII publicly recognize her as heir, and Troy’s grandeur convinces even the skeptics that the throne is now within reach. Diaz uses the imperial archives to destroy the nobles’ legal challenges one by one, giving Alex real leverage. Yet success creates a new trap: to stabilize the empire, she is expected to marry her surviving cousin Arcadius. Under this pressure, Alex confesses privately to Sunny that she is not the real Princess Alexia at all. She says the true Alexia died years earlier and that she stole the coin, the name, and the identity because she could not bear being nothing. Sunny still urges her to remain and do what good she can. Alex is crowned, which fulfills the Chapel’s binding and forces the devils to leave Troy at once.

That apparent ending collapses immediately. On the wedding night, Arcadius and Alex begin to reach a pragmatic understanding, only for two of Alex’s handmaidens to reveal themselves as magical assassins and murder him. Alex raises Troy’s blue warning flame, and the departing Chapel turns back. Rikard reveals that the binding never compelled him at all because, as a vampire without a soul, it had no hold over him; he returns by choice. Inside the palace, Alex discovers a letter proving that Cardinal Zizka and Duke Michael used her as bait and intended Michael to profit from Arcadius’s death. Michael drops all pretense and tries to kill her. At the same time, Severa is exposed as another enemy. In the Athenaeum, Balthazar learns why: Empress Eudoxia did not truly die but transferred her soul into Severa’s body, preserving herself through the very experiments that ruined Troy.

The palace coup becomes a series of desperate parallel battles. Jakob duels Michael before the Serpent Throne. Rikard saves Alex and Sunny on the Pharos but is horribly burned destroying the murderous handmaidens. Balthazar frees Vigga from Severa’s magical control and fights his way through guards and failed monsters from Eudoxia’s laboratories. Vigga destroys one abomination only to lose herself afterward. Michael finally confesses that he poisoned Alex’s mother and set Troy’s civil war in motion for power. Before he can kill Alex, Jakob rises again from apparent death and drags Michael off the tower into the sea. Balthazar refuses Eudoxia’s offer to join her, and she escapes alive. The cost is terrible: Baptiste dies trying to stop wolf-mad Vigga, and the Chapel is left battered and grieving.

In the aftermath, Alex confronts Zizka with proof of betrayal, but Zizka admits everything as political expediency and still demands control of the devils. Alex keeps the throne, begins bargaining for support between East and West, and makes Diaz her chaplain. Jakob survives and refuses Alex’s offer to become Troy’s war leader, believing that war always turns him back into a monster. Sunny and Alex part in sorrow when Zizka takes Sunny, Vigga, Balthazar, and Rikard back into Church custody. Diaz remains in Troy, where he and Alex try to imagine a better rule built from compromised victories. On the return voyage, Balthazar realizes that service still means chains and begins plotting again, this time armed with the secret of Eudoxia’s survival. In the final scene, Cardinal Zizka summons Mother Beckert and the mysterious Caruso to the Holy City, signaling that the Thirteenth Chapel is already being refilled for whatever comes next.