Page 52 of No Greater Sorrow

“The Messenger has the key! We can’t get Merit out,” Aleja shouted.

A few nearby Principalities looked eager to disobey the Messenger’s orders, but they were wary to approach the Authority struggling to pull one of its wings out of the mud with the Messenger crushed somewhere underneath.

“I know what to do,” Val yelled back.

Nicolas palmed the Umbramare stone in his free hand as he chased Val and Violet toward the forge. He had the strength to summon them one more time, but the intense pain accompanying each breath told him whatever defense he was able to muster against the approaching enemies would be lacking. And he was right. The darkness he called up was weak—thin as a morning fog.

Orla had recovered, at least partially; the voids she summoned this time were small and numerous. With a wave of her hand, she sent them scattering across the darkness like a minefield. One of the Principalities trying to pull the Messenger out from under the Authority lost a chunk of his shoulder to a spot of pure oblivion.

“Oh. Hey, Nic,” Merit said flatly, as if he wasn’t bound by chains in an increasingly chaotic Astraelis camp. “I already told them, the?—”

“The Messenger’s key isn’t literal. It’s magic. MagicIinvented.” Val’s words were nearly slurred from the speed with which he’d gasped them out. His hands shook as he reached for the chains. “I’ll just need a moment. Aleja, your sickle, please.”

“We don’t have a moment,” Orla began before fire rose around them in a massive ring almost engulfing their party. The air filled with the stench of burning feathers. Nicolas and Orla may have exhausted their gifts, but Our Lady of Wrath had not. A Throne passed over them, but with the flames licking its stomach, it didn’t dare descend.

“Take the sickle off my belt. I won’t be able to hold this for long,” Aleja said through gritted teeth as Garm barked, his voice rough and monstrous.

“Another second, please,” Val replied. “I just need to find…”

“There’s a weak spot. The third link from my right wrist. I can sense it, but I haven’t been able to break through,” Merit told him.

Nicolas’s eyes shot to Aleja again. Her palms were raised, a sheen of sweat on her brow. When his chest hurt then, it had nothing to do with the poisoned tattoo seeping into his blood. His High General. His consort. His wife. She may not have had her memories, but she was still entirely herself, even when they were surrounded by danger. Itachedto look at her.

“Got it,” Val said. There came a sound of chains hitting the ground, but Nicolas was too busy searching the sky to look.

“Everyone, get your Umbramares ready. When Aleja’s fire drops, we need to get out of here as fast as we can,” Nicolas said.

“They’re going to chase us,” Orla muttered. The dark surface of her Umbramare stone flashed red as fire reflected off of it.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Orla said, voice sharp. She knew his limits as well as he did.

“Yes. I’ll be fine. Aleja?”

“Sorry, I can’t?—”

Nicolas threw the Umbramare stone against the scorched ground, his arms flying to Aleja’s waist as her flames extinguished. She smelled of cloves and citrus, as she always had, even in their nameless kingdom by the sea.

The Umbramares were not alone as they tore across the landscape. With the fire gone, the Throne was no longer anxious about flying low to the ground. The Umbramares were faster, but the Throne kept at their heels until Garm turned his massive head and snapped, taking a chunk out of the Throne’s leg. It screeched in pain and banked up.

But that was not the only danger left.

The earth cracked and one of the Umbramares stumbled, sending Val and Violet tumbling. Aleja reached for Violet as they passed, but the ground shifted again. Nicolas’s last thought before he hit the soil was that the damned Principalities always fought from a distance. His second was that if Aleja was hurt, he wasn’t going to leave this place until he had the Messenger’s blood on his sword.

He turned, spat dirt from his mouth, and summoned his wings.

Keep running, you fools, he thought, but for all the simmering resentment between himself and Orla, he knew she would never leave a wounded soldier behind on the battlefield. “Aleja, get the others and go,” he growled.

“No fucking way,” she said, wiping mud from her brow. The flames engulfing her hands were a weak yellow and pale blue; her magic would be useless against the row of Principalities that appeared on the ridge, but the Throne must have remembered the pain of her fire and kept away.

“What are we going to do, Nic?” Aleja said, sounding truly afraid for the first time since they’d left the Hiding Place.

Somewhere, the Messenger shouted, but her words were muffled—incoherent.

The Principalities raised their hands in unison. He’d seen this technique on the battlefield before; in a moment, spires of rock would rise to impale them, and any who were spared the initial onslaught would be separated from each other by a labyrinth of stone. If Nicolas wanted to stop it, he had no choice but to use the last ounce of magic left in him.

There wasn’t time to raise his full power. He gathered what darkness he could, willing it to solidify, andpushed. But this wave of magic was not the only one that went out. A flash of pale feathers came from Nicolas’s right. For a dreadful moment, he believed one of the Principalities had flanked them from the rear.

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