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

It had been nearly six centuries since Nicolas had seen his armies gathered for more than a training exercise.

Even calling them his armies felt fraught. He’d ascended to the title of Knowing One mere decades before the last conflict—hardly enough time for a farm boy turned Dark Saint to learn the intricacies of warfare with the Astraelis. If not for Aleja, Orla, and—he was loathe to admit—Roland’s instincts, it was possible the Hiding Place would have been wiped out under Nicolas’s watch.

“Orders?” Taddeas asked, his voice barely audible over the jostle of soldiers practicing formations. Theirs was a volunteer army; human, fey, and Otherlanders, drawn from the villages that dotted the Hiding Place—refugees from whatever worlds had shunned, rejected, or tried to destroy them in other ways. And as if sensing some coming violence, creatures had begun crawling down from the mountains to join them in the lowlands. A two-legged dragon with black wings circled overhead, its shadow gliding over the camp at regular intervals.

“Hold until the scouts return with information,” Nicolas said, trying to focus. Fuck, his chest hurt.

“If the Astraelis wanted to attack, now would be the time. I don’t like this silence. Why give us the chance to gather our armies and secure our wards? They’re planning something,”

“Agreed. Can you spare any soldiers to reinforce the fortifications? If the Astraelis attempt to breach our borders, we need to make sure it’ll cost them.”

“Stop with the infuriatingly calm act, Nic,” Taddeas said. “There are fewer soldiers than there should be. People here remember the brutality of the last war. You can’t blame some of them for not wanting to subject themselves to that sort of horror again.”

“In that case, I hope you don’t plan on fighting fairly.”

“Of course not. Any scouts who are captured are instructed to give false information before they’re killed. We already have dummy troops set up several miles downwind of here. Guerrilla tactics are going to be our only hope.”

“Good.”

Taddeas hesitated. “I’ve sent Jack to the fey realm. Amicia said he would be safe there.”

Jack was Taddeas’s husband. Nicolas missed his gregarious presence around the palace. “A wise choice, Tad. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Thanks. And Aleja is going to be okay too. She’s good. She’s smart,” Taddeas replied, as if he could see her reflection swimming in Nicolas’s eyes. Half his mind was still trapped in the moment she’d descended into the Second’s cave.

He should have told her earlier about the poison spreading through him—the punishment of a bargain, unfulfilled. But every time he’d pulled Aleja against him, and she huffed out a surprised laugh, Nicolas hadn’t found it in him to break her heart. Not again.

A sudden commotion came from below. In a flash, Nicolas had his sword in his hand. It erupted in dark flames, muting the brightness of everything around it.

“An attack?” he asked Taddeas, already scrambling down the ridge toward their encampment.

“I don’t see anything, but be ready.”

The Avisai continued to fly with no sense of urgency. With keen eyes like the Astraelis’s Thrones, they’d likely been a single species before the first war had separated their ancestors. The one overhead was black aside from its pale gray belly. Aleja used to love watching them swoop through the mountain clouds, their wings whipping up the snow at the summits when they dove low.

A slow wind beat against the tents of the makeshift encampment, and a flag bearing a coiled red serpent flapped irregularly like an injured bird. Soldiers stepped aside to let Nicolas and Taddeas pass, most offering the traditional salute of the Hiding Place, touching the index and middle finger of their left hand briefly to their left temple.

“What’s going on?” Taddeas asked Silmiya, a middle-aged woman in an officer’s uniform. She’d come to the Hiding Place long before the last war. Nicolas had not been the Knowing One to grant her refuge here, and if she was open about her past, it wasn’t with him.

“A group of scouts found an Astraelis close to our border. He claims to be seeking sanctuary,” she said. Silmiya wore her dark hair in a long braid, swept over her right shoulder. Like Nicolas, gray streaks decorated her temples. The colorful bangles on her wrist were bright against her brown skin, but stayed silent as she saluted.

“Is he alone?” Nicolas asked.

“As far as we can tell,” Silmiya said. “But the other side have tried tricks like this in the past. Although he’s submitted to our bindings, we haven’t let our guard down.”

“Good. Take us to him.”

Silmiya led them through the encampment, the sound of clanging metal and the heat of a forge triggering memories that’d haunted Nicolas for centuries. He drew his wings in closer to his back. Nicolas wouldn’t lie to his soldiers about their chances, but he wasn’t about to let them know he could taste death in the back of his throat, and it wouldn’t go away no matter how much he swallowed.

“Should I go fetch one of the librarians as well?” Silmiya asked.

The librarians had retreated deep into the mountains shortly after the creation of the Hiding Place. Most Otherlanders knew little about them, other than that they tended to a library carved into a massive limestone cave. They welcomed all into the library, but Nicolas couldn’t read their language even after becoming the Knowing One. When two librarians had descended from their home to help with the last war effort, he’d been shocked. As far as he knew, they were the first to leave their enclave.

“Have Red gather her books,” Nicolas said. The soldiers knew them only as Red and Gray, based on the color of the robes they wore.

“Yes, sir. The prisoner is in there.” Silmiya pointed to a non-descript tent, surrounded by armed guards. Most resembled humans or fey, but they were joined by a squat figure with amphibious legs and tremendously sharp teeth.

The tent’s interior smelled of the Astraelis. It was a pleasant scent, reminiscent of magnolias, honey, and fresh raindrops. Taddeas shifted and the sound of pebbles grinding beneath his boots joined the prisoner’s unsteady breathing. A large figure bound in meteorite iron chains huddled on the ground, human in shape if not size. The Principalities generally towered at least a full head over Nicolas, who was tall even among Otherlanders.

Despite the chains, the prisoner had his face tucked into the crook of his elbow. A shock of very pale hair covered his forehead. Nicolas had never seen an unmasked Principality before. Even in death, they used magic to conceal their true appearance.

“Please. My mask. My magic is suppressed by your bindings. I can’t perform a glamour,” the Principality said.

The mask lay in the dirt a few feet away. Even when soiled, it was a lovely thing, with six wings colored by a hint of pale blue. The wings continued pulsing gently, leaving an imprint in the soil like a snow angel.

“You have thirty seconds to explain why a Principality was sneaking around our borders,” Nicolas said, forcing down the urge to gather every shadow in the tent and send them down their prisoner’s throat—his preferred method of killing in the last war. It was the Astraelis’s fault Garm was dead. Garm may have shed, drooled, and only listened to orders when Aleja gave them or when it was convenient, but his absence hurt worse than the poison Nicolas’s own heart had cruelly designed for him.

Taddeas brushed the dirt off the mask with his sleeve before placing it at the prisoner’s feet. The cynic in Nicolas recognized the strategy. They were to play contrasting roles. Taddeas—reasonable, empathetic. And the Knowing One—intimidating, needlessly cruel. But Nicolas, who had appointed Taddeas as High General specifically to avoid war at all costs, wondered if Taddeas was just being kind.

With his hands bound, the Principality clumsily secured the mask over his face. The wings stiffened briefly before resuming their steady pulse. “I’m Val. Thanks for not killing me right away,” he said in a soft voice.

“I’ll be killing you in twenty-five seconds if you don’t explain what you’re doing here. I’ve already asked once and there is still much work to do around the camp. Don’t waste my time.”

The tent flap shifted as one of the librarians slipped in, dragging a wagon full of large books behind her. Red was very slight and looked mostly human aside from her owl-like eyes, which produced their own soft light so she could read in darkness. Her face was otherwise hidden by a thick woolen cowl covering her to the nose.

Val tilted his head, rustling the feathers of his mask. “There’s no need for torture. I’ve come to seek refuge. Isn’t that what you offer in the Hiding Place?”

“You won’t come to any harm if you tell us the truth. Why are you here?” Taddeas said.

“I’ve defected from the Astraelis army.”

“And you thought this would be the safest place for you?” Nicolas said, letting his wings fill the small tent.

Val’s expression was hidden by his mask, but the tremor shooting through his body was obvious when his chains rattled. “I haven’t come empty-handed. I have information that the Hiding Place needs if it’s to survive,” he stammered.

“Go on,” Nicolas said. Behind him, Red shuffled through the books in her wagon.

“The Astraelis haven’t attacked because they’re not interested in the Hiding Place. Not yet.”

“What are they interested in?” Taddeas asked.

“They’re looking for the Third—what the humans call Death. Their plan is to trap him.”

A silence fell over the tent, broken by Red as she hummed and searched for another book. It was too large for her to carry, and she had to lift a foot onto the wagon to balance the cover on her knee.

“Is that possible?” Taddeas asked, shooting Nicolas a glance. Taddeas was the youngest of the Dark Saints, but even Nicolas didn’t know much about the Third, aside from one of the strictest rules imposed on the Knowing One. Do not take someone too close to death or the Third will be angry . Indeed, Nicolas had felt a brutal wave of magic move through him as he’d whisked Aleja’s grandmother to her dreamworld when her heart failed.

“Theoretically, yes, though it has never been attempted. I would need to send Gray back to the library for more books,” said Red. Her index finger traced the length of a paragraph filled with shifting text.

“Why would they want the Third? Talk,” Nicolas told their prisoner.

“I was a junior officer. I wasn’t told every—” Val managed.

“ Talk .”

“I believe… it’s just a theory, but I believe they want to use him to kill the Second.”

Nicolas tried to swallow and found he couldn’t. Dark Saints had been killed in the past; Aleja had recently taken one down herself. Still, trying to kill the Second would be like trying to kill a storm, to kill a mountain, to kill the sky. When the world was new, the First of Living Things appeared, followed by the Second, who gave all beings the ability to think, desire, and know. Finally came the Third—Death, who took those gifts away.

“The Astraelis know they cannot win for good without wiping every Otherlander out. If the Second dies, the Hiding Place dies, as does everyone who exists via the grace of its magic. No more Second, no more Knowing One, no more Dark Saints,” Val went on, voice wobbly, as though he understood his thirty seconds had long passed.

“And they believe the Third has this power?” Taddeas asked.

“Yes,” Val said.

“Why would you tell us this?” Nicolas asked.

“Because I don’t agree,” Val said with such intensity that his mask went askew. “I don’t think the Second should teach our secrets, but I also don’t think he and his followers deserve to die for doing so. The Astraelis could combat him by divulging their own magic and philosophy to the humans. It’s not worth a war.”

“Who are you? Be truthful,” Taddeas said.

“I told you; I was a junior officer. After my first briefing about the Astraelis’s plans, I came here,” Val said.

“Is he telling the truth?” Nicolas asked Red.

“That is beyond the scope of my books,” the librarian said, mouth moving behind the thick cowl.

Nicolas looked at their captive. Val seemed nothing like the Principalities Nicolas had met before, who were usually self-assured and arrogant, with the magic to back it up. But they were just as capable of treachery as the Otherlanders. “Fine,” Nicolas said, after a long moment of consideration. “Let’s say you’re telling the truth. What would be their first move?”

Val took a breath. “They’re focusing their efforts on building a mechanism to hold the Third. To trap Death, you might say.”

“How?” Taddeas asked.

“That was beyond my clearance level. I was a scholar before I joined the army, studying energetic resonance and how it could be used in combat.”

“You helped develop their weapons,” Nicolas said in a low voice that caused the tattoo on his chest to ache. Astraelis weaponry had always been superior to that of the Otherlanders.

“I was a theoretical scholar, and no. My main subject of study was the First.”

Taddeas leaned on a small table near the tent flaps while Red searched her pile of books. A sharp note from a horn sounded outside, signaling for the night watch to take over.

“I find it hard to believe that any of you are allowed to study the First. From what I understand that sort of knowledge isn’t shared freely among your kind,” Nicolas finally said.

“It’s not. I was granted special permission because of my previous breakthroughs. I couldn’t do any direct research on the First, of course, though I did learn enough about the nature of our creators to know that killing the Second would not merely be a war crime. His magic is not just tied to this realm, but to that of the humans.” Val’s bottom lip twitched. “There would be a sort of… collapse.”

“Collapse?” Taddeas asked, but Red was already speaking, her owl eyes hidden behind a large leather tome.

“The Hiding Place, the Dark Saints, and the Knowing One would disappear in an instant,” she said. “And that’s not all. Most witches use the Second’s magic.”

“Witches would lose their magic?”

“Worse, sir. The death of the Second would cause a shockwave, you see. Think of a star exploding with one final burst of energy. It would kill every magic user at once,” said Red, flipping the book around and tapping a page with her thin index finger. It was meant to be a polite gesture, but only the librarians could read the shifting letters of their books, let alone the sentences that rearranged themselves continuously.

“I didn’t sign up to take part in a genocide. That’s why I’m here, even if it means betraying my own kind,” Val said. His winged mask sagged.

Nicolas and Taddeas shared a long look, this time not bothering to hide their silent conversation. Eventually, Taddeas gave a small nod.

“You’ll live for now. But make no mistake, you are our prisoner and will be treated as such,” Nicolas said.

“I understand,” Val said with obvious relief. “Thank you. I’ll help however I can.”

“We’ll see,” Nicolas said. He turned to the tent flaps to call for Silmiya. “Prepare a place for our prisoner to sleep. The chains stay on at all times.”

He barely heard her affirmative response or the way Taddeas called after him as he slipped from the tent. It felt like there was something perched on Nicolas’s chest, laughing in mockery as it dug its claws deeper. He wished Aleja were here. No matter what the Astraelis’s plans, Nicolas had no choice but to win this war for her .

He tried to take a breath, found he couldn’t, and stumbled into an empty tent with a dark interior. Focus , he told himself. It’s the only way you can keep her safe.

The pain in his chest was nearly unbearable, like there was a real snake coiled around his heart. It took a few moments before his hands stopped shaking, but when they did, Nicolas waved away the glamour that concealed his sword, tucked his wings against his back and walked out into the camp to command his armies.