Page 59 of No Greater Sorrow

They came together.

For an instant, Aleja believed she was dying; that perhaps by linking her body to Nicolas, she’d inadvertently been dragged into the curse of their unfulfilled bargain. But if this was what dying was like, she welcomed it. Her hands erupted in flames that Nicolas’s shadows clamped down on immediately.

She hardly noticed the slip in control.

Beside her, he too seemed overtaken by the sensation. He said something, but she was too deep in her pleasure to answer. When she was finally able to clear her head, Aleja realized it was her name chanted repeatedly, breathlessly, as if he wanted it to be the last word he’d ever speak.

As the sensations subsided and Nicolas’s mind untangled from her own, Aleja chuckled, the sound muffled by the lumpy mattress. He held out a soft square of cloth to her, which she used to wipe herself. Her gaze lingered on the pale beads decorating Nicolas’s abdomen until she handed back the towel and he wiped them away.

“That was…” she began, before laughing again.

“I agree,” he said, tossing the towel to the floor and squeezing onto the cot next to her.

“How did we ever get anything done back then?” she asked.

Nicolas gave her a sharp look. Aleja didn’t speak of her former life often, especially unprompted. But his tone softened as he said, “Because we had no other choice.”

The story of our many lives, she thought, feeling a hint of sorrow for her old self.

“What will we do when the Astraelis retaliate?” she asked quietly, after listening to Nicolas’s breathing for several minutes. They may have disentangled from the bond, but she’d spent enough time with him to know that he never fell asleep before her, as if he couldn’t settle until she was safely in her dreams.

He said in a voice equally low, “We’ll fight back like we always do.”

“And what will we do when the Knowing One can’t use his magic anymore?”

“We’ll have seven Dark Saints by then. Everything will be all right,” he told her, but something in his voice made it sound like a lie.

Aleja couldn’t be angry with him. The lie seemed meant to comfort himself.

* * *

“Wake up.Put your boots and armor on. We need to go.”

“What?” Aleja asked, blinking her eyes open; she was disoriented, even as the shimmering vials and herbal vapor of the medic’s tent sharpened into focus. Nicolas hovered over her, fully dressed, with a silver snake wrapped around his shirt collar like a heavy necklace.

A commotion erupted from somewhere in the camp and her heart kickstarted, jumping from the slow pulse of sleep to an uncomfortable race in less than a second.

“What’s going on? Are we under attack?”

Nicolas shook his head. “It’s just a drill. But one of our scouts has reported that the Astraelis troops nearest our border are more active than usual. We need to go.”

She pushed herself up, legs tangling in the sheets. Aleja kicked them off the bed and rose to search for her shoes. Garm was in the tent, but unusually quiet, watching them with his ears hanging limply to either side of his face.

“Go?” she asked, glad she’d slept in her socks as her clumsy fingers struggled to lace her boots. “What do you meango?”

“Someone has lit the black candle—someone on the verge of death. We need to answer them.”

Aleja rubbed her eyes, wondering if she was still half-asleep. She searched wildly for the gleam of her armor, before spotting it tucked beneath the blankets she’d kicked off the bed.

“But—”

“I’m the only one who can go to this person, and I might need your help. It takes a tremendous amount of magic to seal a bargain. The others can manage without us.”

She noticed the waver in his voice, and pressed again, “I can fight, Nic. Haven’t I proven that already?”

“Yes, but I need you to trust me now. This is our chance to warn the Third. If we don’t take advantage of it, it won’t matter whether we’re unable to stand against the Astraelis here. According to Val, they’re close to finishing the chains. This is our last chance.”

His words rang with reason, but her mind shot back to Taddeas—Taddeas, who had always insisted he didn’t want to be High General by the time the war arrived on their doorstep. Taddeas, who despised bloodshed and never wanted to be the cause of it. She’d been such a fool to promise him she would be ready to take his place.

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