Page 14 of No Greater Sorrow (Our Lady of Fire #2)

“Hey.”

Aleja hadn’t realized that she’d fallen asleep, the chair in the medical tent stiff against her back. Nicolas’s voice woke her from a dream in which she had been wandering through a field full of fig trees.

His silver eyes watched her. “You’re here,” he said simply.

“Of course, I am.”

“We got Merit back?”

“We did.”

“Who died?”

“No one died.”

Nicolas sighed, pushing his head into the pillow. The night was quiet; there were no crickets at this elevation, only the sound of the Avisai, and the occasional rustle of the night watch making their rounds.

“The Messenger is going to retaliate,” he said softly. “We’re not ready. I need to get up, I need to?—”

“Tad and Orla have been preparing the troops all day. We’re fine for now. You need to rest.”

“I can’t .”

Aleja pressed her hands against Nicolas’s shoulders as he tried to sit up. “Don’t,” she said sternly. “Half the army saw you passed out atop an Umbramare. They may believe you were injured in battle, but the Dark Saints know better. If you’re going to try to convince them you’re fit to lead until the war ends, you need to wait until you can stand on two feet without looking like you’re going to fall over.”

Nicolas closed his eyes. Aleja did too. She felt a finger brush against her cheek, but it was gone by the time she brought her hands up to capture it.

“What’s our next move?” she said sharply, knowing that if she leaned into his touch now, she would crawl into the bed beside him until the medics shooed them out in the morning.

“We need to reach the Third before they do. We have to warn him before the Astraelis finish the chains.”

“How do we do that?”

“Val said they had it all wrong. They were attempting to summon the Third through death when they should have been doing the opposite. I have an idea.” Nicolas’s voice was sharp and raw from the astringent vapors trapped beneath the tent’s heavy linen.

She waited for him to gather his strength and continue.

“We visit someone lighting the black candle. We save someone who wants to be saved. Aleja, I will need your help. The more magic I use, the faster?—”

“But you’re not supposed to help those so close to death. Won’t the Second…?” She trailed off. It seemed ridiculous to worry about what the Second might do if Nicolas flouted the rules again when it seemed as though he might not survive this punishment in the first place.

“It’s the Third we must worry about right now. We need to go as soon as possible, before they finish the chains, and it becomes dangerous to draw him out.”

“But Nic, you’re—” She stopped herself. “I want to help you, but I don’t know how.”

“Come lay with me for a while?” he asked, and her anger slunk away like a feral cat who had lost a fight. Aleja waited for her inner voice to scold her, but all was silent as she kicked off her boots and crawled beneath the sheets that Nicolas held up for her.

She felt the heat emanating from him but stopped herself from touching his chest, instead placing her hand on his hip.

He murmured, “The only time I feel better is when you’re close.”

“Stop it. I’m supposed to be mad at you.”

A curl of smoke lifted away from one of the candles by the bedside and hovered above them like a curious ghost.

“I’m really fucking sorry,” Nicolas said. It was nothing more than a breath against the top of her head.

“I love you,” she told him. “I’ve loved you in every life I’ve ever lived, and I’ll love you in every life that comes after this. But I’ll only forgive you when I know you’re going to stay with me, because I can’t have it any other way, Nic.”

“I understand,” he said. “And if I’m cursed anyway, I might as well tell you that I love you back.”

She threw her thigh over his, wishing she could press her ear to his broad chest and listen to the thrum of his heart. Aleja remembered their nights of frantic, desperate sex in the weeks before her meeting with the Second. They had been beasts. Monsters. Tearing at one another like they wanted to open each other up and crawl inside. The longing was quieter now, but just as morbid. She would not be satisfied until they had the chance to die together, long from now—their bodies decaying into one indistinguishable pile of bones.

His fingers grazed her jaw, her throat, her sternum. She didn’t pull away as his hand drifted lower, cupping one of her breasts and circling the peak of her nipple with his thumb.

“I cannot believe you’re trying to get laid now .”

“You were away for a very long time, dove. Want me to grovel some more?”

“Not this time.”

He pulled her closer. The heat of his body was intoxicating, and Aleja was thankful that her inner voice remained quiet. When she shifted, she felt Nic’s half-hard cock pressed against her, but she didn’t move to touch him, nor did he do anything but sigh at the sudden pressure. And, gods, she wanted to give in. She missed the sweet ache as he filled her—something that made the following pleasure even more intense. It was intoxicating to be wanted this much, even when their love had already set so much on fire.

Nicolas pressed a soft kiss to her throat, but when she stiffened against him, he dropped his head back to the pillow, interpreting her stillness as rejection. In truth, Aleja wanted to drag his hand toward the wetness between her legs and ask him to fuck her as the snake tattoo writhed on his chest—a macabre symbol of how he’d failed to stay away even after their love had destroyed him once before. And Aleja might be weak, but Our Lady of Wrath couldn’t be. Not now, when she was so close to Sainthood. So close to the day when she would place a horned crown on her head and assume her full power.

Yet the memory of Nicolas slumped over on an Umbramare made her feel like she was the one whose heart had been stolen from her chest. Her nipples hardened beneath her tunic as she pushed an arm between them, and Nicolas made a choked sound when she cupped his erection through his trousers.

“I thought you—” he began.

“We’re not about to fuck,” she said, decisive aside from the tremor of need in her voice. “But you look extremely pathetic on this healer’s cot. I can’t help but feel sorry for you.”

He said nothing as she undid the tie on the loose pants one of the medics had changed him into. When she wiggled them down his hips, his cock was fully hard and flush against him. She stifled back a moan, as if his pleasure was shared between them; it gave her an idea, pulling her back to a memory that the past few hours had left her too frantic to explore.

“When we were in the Astraelis camp, I felt you through the marriage bond,” she whispered.

“I was panicking. I had to find you.”

“Can we only connect like that when one of us is in danger?” she asked, recalling that Nicolas had known about the dreams she’d had of his hands roaming her body.

“No,” he said, dragging the single syllable out, as if he’d worked out what she was really asking. “Any intense situation will do.”

“A situation like this?” she asked, letting her hand brush lightly over his cock before pulling it away again.

His hips bucked to meet her a second too late. “Yes. A situation just like this.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I did tell you, remember? What do you think prevented me from sleeping those nights? All I could think about was touching you, tasting you, fucking you. You never seemed to want to speak of it again, so I didn’t bring it up.”

“You can feel it when I come? And I can feel it when you do?” she asked, letting her eyes linger on his cock. She missed the weight of it in her hand but restrained herself from reaching for him.

“When we allow the bond to flow freely between us, yes.”

“Did we used to do that a lot?”

“It is extremely pleasurable.”

Aleja slipped her hand beneath her waistband. Her pussy was warm, sensitive, as she grazed her folds with her fingertips. Nicolas’s eyes remained unblinking, as if he was afraid to miss the sight of her knees falling open.

“Come on, Knowing One. Let me watch you touch yourself. While you’re at it, show me why Otherlander marriage bonds are so special,” she told him. Her gaze stayed latched on his as she circled her clit, back arching off the thin mattress.

She did not expect the sudden wave of pleasure as Nicolas’s large hand wrapped around his cock. His sensations layered over her own, but gods , it was more than that. She felt his desire for her, the way he longed to watch her fingers plunge deep inside, the way he wanted to press his face against her inner thigh and bite down hard enough to make her writhe. A deep groan escaped her— fuck . She hoped the medics weren’t lingering outside the tent.

“I’m sure they knew to scatter when you returned from the meeting alone,” he chuckled, catching one of her thoughts. “Maybe I should have held back at first.”

“No. It’s good . I’ll just—muffle my mouth with the pillow,” she managed, turning to the side to bury her face into the scratchy fabric.

But when Nicolas began to stroke himself, she realized how futile it was. It wasn’t just his desire mingling with hers now—she could feel his jolts of sensation. Especially when he watched her dip two fingers inside of herself, angled for the spot that always made her toes curl.

“Can I do that for you, dove?” he asked, voice ragged.

His face was in a drunken haze when she opened her eyes, as if he’d chugged all the healer’s pain tonics at once. The hand he used to stroke himself moved slowly, and through the bond, Aleja understood why. He wanted her so much he was already teetering on the verge of a climax.

“No.” It took all her willpower to say it when all she wanted—all she needed —was to pull him against her. Brief disappointment crossed his features before she continued. “Not tonight. You haven’t earned it yet.”

The words were said with no malice—not when they were so connected that his desire for forgiveness was strong in her mind, made sharper and more intense by lust. But the part of Aleja that would have given in had died during the first Trial. Now, her glass heart lay buried beneath the Second’s mountain.

Nicolas nodded in acquiescence, and Aleja forced her eyes to remain open when she returned her attention to her clit. Her orgasm was going to come too strong, too fast, and when combined with the feeling of his hand on his cock, now stroking firmer and more quickly, Aleja thought her whole body might shatter from the sensation.

“That’s it, dove. Let yourself— please —I need to?—”

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.

* * *