Page 68 of No Greater Sorrow

“Val? He’s here?No. He’s a traitor. We have to?—”

“He’s in chains again. He claims he refused to return to the Astraelis realm with his mother. The Knowing One will decide his fate after the Trial.”

“And Violet?” Aleja asked, hating that she cared.

“Gone with the Messenger,” Garm told her, a mournful note in his voice.

Aleja felt ill again. She doubled over, but this time, the bile couldn’t make it past her throat. An acidic pain lingered inside of her, trailing back to her belly. “The Messenger could have killed me, but she didn’t.Again,” she said.

“Val claims there is much we don’t understand, but there’s no time now. We must get you to the Trial. An Avisai is already waiting.”

“Garm, I can’t—I’m too weak—and I lost my sickle.”

“You can do it because you have to.” Garm’s voice edged on a threatening growl. “Get up, Aleja. You still have a weapon, remember?Me.”

Aleja didn’t ask Garm how Nicolas was faring. She’d seen the way he paled while using the last bit of magic he had to flood Aleja’s veins with his shadows, so she would have the strength to keep the Messenger at bay for a few moments.

“I’m ready,” she said. “Let me… fuck. Let me get my boots on. Please, Garm, wait outside. I’ll be right there.”

“Of course, Lady of Wrath.”

She waited until his tail disappeared through the tent flaps before burying her face in her hands. Aleja had grown up believing she was about to die at any moment. She’d watched her aunt transform into a flock of crows. She’d spent years thinking that her grandmother was trapped in an eternal nightmare and six months believing that her best friend was missing in the wilderness.

She’d thought she knew what unbearable pain felt like.

And she’d been wrong.

No tears would come. Just a shocked numbness, as if her brain had shut down before she could process the reality of her situation—a sort of safety mechanism meant to spare her from breaking down completely.

Violet had betrayed her. Nicolas was dying. The Dark Saints lived, but for how long, now that the Third was with the Astraelis?

Stop, she eventually told herself.You can cry when you’ve survived.

She placed her feet on the cool ground, one at a time. A blister on her heel broke as she pulled her socks over it, soaking into the fabric as her boots followed. Aleja searched the medical tent foranythingsharp to take with her—a knife, a scalpel, even a pair of heavy scissors. But in the end, she couldn’t bring herself to steal supplies from healers who would need them desperately in the days to come, and all she found seemed useless, anyway.

Sunlight made her squint as she pushed the tent flaps open and stepped outside. Bonnie and Taddeas were a few yards away, huddled with Orla and the officer Silmiya. Aleja forced herself not to turn away from the blankets draped over dead soldiers. A muddy boot stuck out of one. She caught herself waiting for it to move, as if the person underneath would realize their foot was cold and pull it back inside.

To Aleja’s surprise, it was Orla who approached her first. One of her gold studs was missing, and the others were dulled by soot. “Sorry about your friend,” Orla said quietly.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Aleja said.

Perhaps she caught the way Aleja’s eyes scanned the camp for Nicolas because Orla said, “He’s waiting for you with the Avisai.”

“What if the Astraelis attack again while we’re gone?”

“They already have what they want. They barely even…” Orla looked over her shoulder and met Taddeas’s eyes; he gave a small nod, confirming some silent request. “They didn’t come here to kill us. Hellfire, I’m certain they took more losses than we did. Their only interest was capturing the Third.Somethingis going on, Aleja. Something we don’t have intelligence on.”

“And Val?” Aleja said.

“We’ll be creative when we question him. That’s not why I stopped you. Here. I want you to have this.” Orla reached to her side and removed a black-bladed sword from her hilt. It was nearly identical to the one Nicolas carried on his back.

“I can’t—” Aleja began. “I don’t know how to use it.”

“Maybe a part of you remembers.”

“But it’syours,” Aleja insisted.

Orla rolled her eyes. “It’s just a sword, Lady of Wrath. Merit has been churning them out non-stop since he got here. He’ll have a new one ready for me by this afternoon. Take it. It doesn’t take a healer to know that your magic is depleted.”

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