Page 24 of No Greater Sorrow

She bit the inside of her cheek, half-wanting to spill her every emotion and half-wanting to shove it back behind the locked door in her mind.

No, it’s fine, really, drawled her inner voice.Happy to take another trauma off your hands.

“He made me kill three versions of myself. The first two were lives I couldn’t remember, but the last… She looked and sounded just like me when I was a kid. She had a shard of glass in place of a heart, and I had to cut it out of her. She ran from me. She fought back. Shescreamed.”

Nicolas no longer searched the paintings. When Aleja caught his eyes, their silver was the color of a blade. He’d stared this way at James Thomson, at Roland, at anyone who’d tried to hurt her. As if he wanted tokillfor her.

“Stop that,” she told him before he could say anything else. “We both knew what I was getting myself into. Besides, we’re trying to stop someone from killing the Second, so there’s no use standing around and looking like you want to beat them to it. By the way, I found the painting.”

Oh, look at you. I believe they call this personal growth, said her voice.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, she responded.

Nicolas sighed. “Go on, step into it. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Wait, what?”

“Give it a shot. You’ll see.”

Aleja did not know how literally to take this. She lifted a foot, feeling as though she was about to kick her way through the canvas, but her boot met the painting and kept falling. She scrambled to move her other leg in turn, but training with Taddeas had honed her response times. It wasn’t a graceful journey, but at least she didn’t end up flat on her ass.

Nicolas appeared behind her, unruffled. Like the painting, this realm was awash in blue light, but it was neither cold nor gloomy. Instead, it reminded her of a childhood habit from Miami where she’d walk into the ocean and lie down in the shallows. The salt had stung her eyes when she opened them, but she’d liked the way the world changed under a few inches of water. Back then, she’d wondered if this was how death would feel when the Knowing One finally came for her.

Before them was a wide river, just as the painting had shown. A low bridge led to a path bordered by mounds of dirt that were not large enough to be hills. All was silent except for the gurgle of the slow-moving water.

“Are there actual dead people here?” she asked. The stillness was unnerving, even though she hadn’t expected a horde of translucent ghosts in baggy clothes. Not even other witches claimed to know what happened after death.

“I’ve only seen a handful. They’re often the result of magic gone awry. Magicians who accidentally grant themselves immortality without realizing that their bodies will still decay, or those cursed to a similar fate. The Third is a psychopomp, not a jailer.”

Psychopomp. Aleja knew that word from her art history classes—something that guided souls from the world of the living to that of the dead. “I’m not about to run into my great-great-grandfather or anything?”

“It would be a pleasure, at least for me. I have some choice words for him. Let’s look around.”

“I’m guessing the Third doesn’t hang around under a mountain all day,” she said, falling in line after Nicolas as he made for the bridge. Although the air was cold, it wasn’t particularly unpleasant. She was reminded again of sitting beneath the ocean while the sun beat against its surface.

“No. And like I said, he and I aren’t on the best of terms.”

“You might be the Knowing One, but you have got to stop pissing off the few beings in the world more powerful than you. What did you do this time?”

He winced. “I’m not supposed to make bargains with those too close to death. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t made a few exceptions.”

Aleja’s mind shot to her grandmother, high up in the tower, trapped in a perpetual dream. And Jack, Taddeas’s husband, whom Nicolas had spared from death twice. It wasn’t as if she could pretend to be mad at him for that, but Nicolas’s refusal to comply with the Second’s rules seemed like a pattern.

Yet, you still gave up our memories and immortality for him, anyway, her inner voice said.

Shh, let’s have some quiet time now, she responded.

They walked. She was certain they’d crossed the same river at least twice, and the low mounds to either side never varied in height. Aleja was excited every time something new appeared, but that something usually turned out to be the rod of a femur jutting out of the ground or the curve of a skull nestled among high weeds.

“Damn,” Nicolas said, just before Aleja could ask what the hell they were supposed to be looking for. “He must really hold a grudge. The wards are keeping us out.”

“Can’t you message him somehow?”

“It won’t reach him if he’s not interested in being found.”

“Where did you last see him?”

“Your realm. Long ago,” Nicolas said. “He’d fallen in love with a human woman. The Third doesn’t have anyone watching over his shoulder like I do, but you can imagine why that was a terrible idea on his part. I offered to take her to the Hiding Place when she was close to the end. She refused, but I don’t think the Third ever forgot my attempt to help her. It must be the reason he let me take your grandmother, but now that the favor has been repaid, he’s apparently decided he can go back to being annoyed with me.”

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