Page 62 of No Greater Sorrow

“But if you strike a bargain with the Knowing One, you’ll still be indebted tosomethingeven if it’s not the Astraelis,” said Aleja.

“Indebted is better than enslaved,” Louisa told her harshly. “It’s my understanding that the Knowing One does not take servants.”

“I don’t,” Nicolas said. “I accept your offer, Louisa Bardet. Your illness will be cured, your lifespan will be extended to that of a healthy human, and in exchange, you will give me your family’s fig.”

He held out his hand. Beside him, Garm rose to his feet. Gone was the friendly Doberman that trailed Aleja like a shadow; the light of a distant streetlamp hit his eyes, and they glowed. Aleja’s heart sputtered in her chest. SheknewNicolas now—knew that he might delight in the wicked getting their due, but he was never purposefully cruel to the innocent. Yet the sight of him with his hand out awakened something dark and primal within her. This moment was filled with magic, ancient and wild.

Her past self might have begged Louisa to run. To accept her fate or take her chances with the fig. But the Aleja of now felt a deep wave of relief as Louisa scrambled to her feet and took the Knowing One’s hand. It was then Aleja realized why Nicolas had wanted her to come. She felt the strain on their bond and realized he was drawing from her magic, just like he’d done in the world of the dead.

Aleja had expected Louisa to undergo an instant transformation, like an orphaned girl in a fairy tale whose rags became the clothing of royalty in a flourish. But Louisa only smoothed a crease in her coat and wiped stray mascara out from under her eyes. “Thank you. With the bargain fulfilled on both our ends, can I assume I’ll never see you again?” she said, dropping the fig into Nicolas’s palm as if they’d just finished an entirely normal business transaction.

“If you’re lucky,” Nicolas said grimly.

“Can I go?” Louisa asked.

Aleja had the same question. She was used to trusting Nicolas about the stranger aspects of the Hiding Place, such as the intricacies of Otherlander culture and magic that never made it into human books—but he hesitated for a moment before saying, “Yes. You can go.”

Louisa nodded and met Aleja’s eyes. “Well, that was easy. Good luck with your job training. It’s nice to see a young witch doing what has historically been a male position.”

Aleja furrowed her brow. She could have sworn Nicolas had mentioned female Knowing Ones in the past, but she’d only ever seen people resembling him depicted in the paintings and sculptures. “Thanks,” she said.

Louisa looked as though she was going to simply walk away and disappear into the night, as calm as she had been when the house of the person who’d tried to kill her was on fire. But when the clouds shifted and moonlight trickled into the clearing, it illuminated the dampness in her eyes. Her fingers bunched around the hem of her coat, as if she was desperate to hold on tosomething.

Aleja felt a sudden pang of sympathy. When the acute grief of her grandmother’s death had dulled, and Aleja realized she wouldn’t be dying as young as she’d assumed, the freedom had been disorientating. She’d felt like a housecat that had only ever seen the world through a window and was suddenly dropped alone on the streets of a bustling city.

“What do you want to do, most of all, out of everything in the world?” Aleja asked, earning a side-eyed glance from Nicolas.

“I don’t know,” Louisa said, wringing her coat in her hands again. “My parents were too poor to help me with pharmacy school, so I needed to work all the time to support myself. Then, came the diagnosis and Icouldn’tgo anywhere—not between my treatments, and… I like fashion. I guess I’ve always wanted to go to Paris.”

The answer was so familiar it hurt. Beside Aleja, both Garm and Nicolas were still, sharp-eyed, and intimidating. Aleja supposed she should do the same. But Louisa might not get the chance to go to Paris, just as Aleja would never make it to Florence, not if they didn’t win the war.

“Then, you should go,” she said. “As soon as possible. Borrow the money if you have to. Don’t waste this chance.”

Louisa hesitated before nodding. “I will. You’re very encouraging for an Otherlander.” She turned to Nicolas. “You should give her a raise. This experience was very satisfactory.”

And with that, Louisa turned and walked away, never looking back.

“Here, take this,” Nicolas said, holding out the fig to Aleja. “It’s useless to us Otherlanders, but maybe someday, you’ll want to barter with it.”

“Why would I condemn someone to servitude to the Astraelis?”

Nicolas shrugged. “You never know when it’ll come in useful. Consider it a reward for your first successful bargain.”

Aleja sighed and dropped the fruit into the small compartment in her bag where she also kept the locked ring box.

“What do we do now?” Garm asked.

“We hope that was enough to draw the Third’s attention,” Nicolas said.

They waited for a long time. Aleja peered at the swaying treetops, wondering if somewhere there were any missing person’s posters with her face on them tacked to the electricity posts—or if any true crime podcasters had taken up the case of two best friends who’d gone missing within six months of each other. She wondered if Paola was searching for her. Maybe her cousin had found the black candle in Aleja’s abandoned apartment and figured she’d been taken by the Knowing One after all.

The guilt would have crushed Aleja if she allowed herself to feel it.

“He’s not coming,” Garm finally said. “Should we go back to the Hiding Place?”

Nicolas looked hesitant. It was safer to encounter the Third here, far from the Astraelis’s reach. “Did you speak to Merit? Did he claim the chains weren’t done?”

“He wasn’t sure. But Val said he thought they were only on the cusp of it,” Aleja told him.

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