Page 3 of No Greater Sorrow (Our Lady of Fire #2)

2

THE GLASS HEART

“The Otherlanders excel at glamours, concealments, and illusions. Those particularly skilled in the art cause not just psychological distress but physical harm to their targets.”

—Excerpt from Ten Myths of the Otherlanders by Emiel Nasir.

“Looks like I’m going into this Trial with a vial of water, and you’re going in… with a puppy,” Violet said. She wasn’t exaggerating. As they entered the chamber, Aleja’s eyes were immediately drawn to a small figure huddled atop a stone pedestal. The creature did not resemble a Doberman, but rather a very small version of the hellhound that’d once crushed Aleja’s lungs.

Two glowing eyes blinked open.

“Aleja?” the creature asked.

Tears sprung to her eyes. It was unmistakably Garm’s voice.

She rushed forward, scooping him into her arms. Garm wiggled, trying for a better angle to lick her face with his rough tongue. “Stop, stop!” she laughed.

It had been so long since something purely good had happened—since she’d been able to feel such unguarded joy. A part of her wished she could run back to the cave mouth and show Nicolas that not all was lost. As she placed Garm back on the ground, she watched as he transformed into the Doberman shape she was familiar with. He looked much younger than before. The two brown spots above his eyes rose as he gave another happy yelp.

“He is pretty cute like that. I think we’re supposed to go through there,” Violet said, examining her prize. Red liquid sloshed slowly inside the vial, more like blood than water.

Aleja looked up. The chamber opened into another hall, lit softly from beyond what she could see.

“What is this place?” Garm asked. He circled Aleja’s legs, as if he could barely contain the nervous energy in his bones.

“It’s the first Trial. I chose you as my weapon,” she told him.

“Good,” he said with a sort of gravitas that was strange coming out of a puppy with loose skin and large paws he seemed unsure how to manage.

Aleja’s relief at their reunion was chased away when Violet uncorked her vial and took a sip of water. Violet shuddered, closed her eyes, and wiped her face before putting the vial into her purple backpack.

“That tastes exactly as bad as you think it would,” Violet said.

“How long will it last?” Aleja asked. Already, Violet’s cheeks were fuller, her eyes brighter.

“I have no idea. The well water from the cult’s village usually made me feel better for a few hours.”

Garm trotted ahead of them as they moved into the hallway. The air changed as the slow-moving cave dust was replaced by a scent reminding Aleja of trees and a distant ocean. Above the tall stone walls, the sky appeared complete with a reddish full moon, hovering low and looking too heavy to rise.

“It’s a labyrinth. Can you sense anything, Garm?” Aleja said as they came to a fork in the path. The stone walls were too smooth to propose boosting Violet up so she could scramble atop one and get a look at their surroundings.

“Nothing. It’s very still,” the puppy said.

“Let’s go left,” Aleja said.

The walls blocked sight of any movement apart from the small dog trotting ahead of them, and the sound of his low panting was enough to make Aleja smile despite the nervous buzz around her heart. “What do you think we’re supposed to do?” she asked Violet.

There was no answer.

Aleja whipped around, braids slapping her shoulders, but Violet was no longer behind her.

“Violet? Garm, where is she?” There had been no other turns, nor any boulders or trees for someone to hide behind.

His nose twitched, but he shook his head. “I can’t smell her anymore.”

Aleja doubled back and tried to remember Violet’s lessons on the basics of tracking—a young woman who had a bad habit of hiking alone knew how to look for evidence of bears. But there was no grass to be trampled, no dirt in which to leave tracks.

This is your Trial. If the Second has deemed you do it alone, you have no other choice, said her inner voice.

Aleja didn’t listen. With Garm at her feet, she pushed on, though she soon realized that she should have already passed the hall from which they had come. Aleja broke into a jog as the stone walls took a sharp bank to what must have been north, judging by the moon. “Violet!”

Her own voice echoed back in answer, but before she could call out again, she reached an exit. Ahead lay more mountains, although they were not the jagged cliffs of the Hiding Place. A calm bay surrounded by low green hills reflected the moonlight like thousands of tiny stars. Her boots sunk into damp sand as Garm too struggled on his short legs.

Aleja took her sickle off the belt loop, but as far as she could tell, she was alone. Crickets droned in the rhododendron bushes, undisturbed.

“There’s a path here,” Garm told her, sniffing at the dirt.

“Great. Guess we have no other choice,” she muttered. The trail banked downhill as it turned toward the bay, and she spotted a few unlit cabins. I feel like I’ve been here before , Aleja thought.

You’ve lived many lives , her inner voice said. Perhaps this is a place from one of them.

Can you tell?

Of course not. I only know what you know.

“We should check out those buildings,” Aleja told Garm. Despite the calm, the fire inside her swelled just enough to make her palms warm. The Second wouldn’t have sent her to a place with no danger. The persistent quiet was worse than an outright attack. There had to be something here that could trap or kill her.

“I’m small now. I’ll scout ahead. Wait here,” Garm said.

“But—”

“It’s okay, Aleja. No one will spot me.”

She crouched behind a boulder to wait. Garm was only gone for a few minutes before he reappeared on the trail. “There’s something you should see.”

He led her to the nearest cabin, where curtains fluttered out of an open window like ghosts trying to escape. Aleja flattened herself against an exterior wall and listened, but all she heard was a whisper in a language she couldn’t understand. She crouched to peer in. What she saw nearly made her fall back into the weeds sprouting from the unkempt garden.

The thing inside had Aleja’s reddish-black hair and vestiges of her face—her plump lips, her round cheeks—but skin sagged on its bones, hanging in ghoulish sheets the color of a dying plant. As it shuffled through the cabin, staring at an object in its palm, even the weight of its tattered clothes seemed too much. Aleja gave a soft gasp and dropped lower.

“What is that thing?” she hissed at Garm.

“It smells like a corpse,” he told her.

Great. Her corpse, from the look of it.

The creature spun in Aleja’s direction, but only seemed interested in the object tucked into its palm—a shard of bright red glass.

You know you’re going to have to get that, don’t you ? said the voice in her head.

Yeah, yeah, I get the gist. Shut up, I need to concentrate.

If you insist .

“Garm, can you distract her?”

“Sure, Al. Why?”

“Because I need the shard of glass in her hands.”

Garm whined and sat on his haunches. “It has the smell of the Second’s magic on it, Aleja. Are you sure that’s what you’re here for?”

“Do you have any other ideas?”

“Nope!” Garm said brightly, wagging his tail. “I’m a puppy, I have no ideas whatsoever. I’ll lure the corpse-you away.”

“It sounds dangerous when you put it like that.”

Before she could say anything else, he disappeared. Aleja’s thighs burned from huddling beneath the window, but her body snapped to attention when she heard a soft bark. The corpse took a few hulking steps toward the black dog in the doorway, its attention never completely leaving the red shard in its hand.

What’s her deal? Aleja asked her inner voice.

You’ve had three lives, Aleja. This must be the woman you would have been if not for a snake that lunged for your ankle as you bent to drink from the river after a long hunt .

Why would the Second want me to see this?

How am I supposed to know ?

The corpse shot forward, toppling a candle on a small table next to the bed. Depending on how she looked at it, that black candle had either saved Aleja’s life or doomed her. In another timeline, in another world, she would have succumbed to the snake bite. Her husband would have mourned her, and she would never have been reborn.

And that makes you angry with him ? said her voice.

No. I’m not angry about that. I would have done the same.

Why ?

Because… because I care about him. He’s arrogant and cynical, and he doesn’t understand when to leave well enough alone, but fuck, I care about him.

Yet you’re still angry ?

Yes. Because he lied to me. Again. Why the hell are we having this conversation now when the corpse is getting away?

That, Lady of Wrath and Fire, is entirely your fault .

Aleja took off after Garm and the corpse, but hesitated to use her magic, having no idea whether that would destroy the shard. Hopefully, Violet was having a more pleasant time than chasing a dead version of herself through an abandoned Mediterranean village.

She ran past empty market stalls, overgrown gardens, and a hunter’s cabin outside of which hung butchered animals like stuffed toys stripped of their innards. Though the corpse was slower, it knew the ruins. It weaved around a toppled log pile, hopped over a mess of mummified vegetables, and then veered left as the ground became too muddy to traverse. As the corpse barreled forward, it shed bits of skin and clothing, as if the still air of its cabin had been the only thing to keep it from disintegrating.

They headed to the bay, which reeked of rotting kelp and sea salt. Garm was already crouched and growling on the bridge ahead of the corpse. The corpse’s skin may have been sagging and brittle, but the two dark eyes that stared from its skeletal face were exactly like Aleja’s own. It glanced between her and Garm before returning its attention to the red shard of glass in its hands.

“I hoped this day would never come,” it said in Aleja’s voice.

Aleja pulled herself out of the mud. “What do you mean?” she asked.

The corpse regarded her with sad eyes. “I am the last vestige of… you . The first you. The person you were before you knew of the Knowing One and his Dark Saints. Before you were a soldier, then a High General. Before you took another person’s punishment as your own, so you could die and be reborn.”

Garm flattened himself against the bridge. In this body, he was not nearly as intimidating as he had been, but Aleja would take an ally where she could get it.

“If I hand this to you, it’ll mean I’m well and truly dead. No one remembers me, Aleja. I lived in a kingdom by the sea. I hunted hares while my husband went to train in the war camps so that our people could fight an enemy on behalf of a king whose name we hardly knew. I loved the color red and the stray dogs that wandered into town from the ruins on the hilltop. I despised the taste of fish so much that I taught myself to hunt. If you take this from me, all of that will be gone forever.”

“People remember,” Aleja said quietly. “Your husband remembers. I remember.”

“You’re wrong,” the corpse said with a ghoulish smile. “You relinquished your human lives to become Dark Saints, and later, him, the Knowing One. Nicolas is no longer the husband I once had. The one who learned to pluck my quails, even though he hated poultry, and who shook with fear when he was conscripted into the army, but did his duty anyway. Did you know that all he ever wanted to do was draw?”

Aleja swallowed. Her throat burned. This isn’t real . The Second is testing you. Take the shard and survive, and make sure Violet survives with you .

“You’re just a dream,” she told the corpse.

“Of course I am. I am you without war, without betrayal, without lies, without death. The last dream of your true self. Take this shard, and you will never see me again. It is the price the Second demands if you want to cross this bridge.”

“And if I decide to get around you instead?”

“Try,” the corpse said. The smile remained on its face, but with the skin sagging around its mouth, the expression appeared more like a grimace.

Really ? said her inner voice. Take her shard and run, Aleja . This is an illusion . You just said so yourself.

I don’t think she’s going to let me.

Why would you say that ?

Because if I were her, I’d want to survive.

Aleja readied herself, and Garm sprang to his feet, sensing the mood had changed. A sphere of flame engulfed her hands, but the corpse watched, unbothered. It wasn’t until she sent her first torrent in its direction that Aleja understood her real test.

There was so much pain.

The corpse grinned behind the wall of fire because it was already dead and could feel nothing. But Aleja’s nerves—usually dull to her magic—were withering. She was on her knees before realizing she’d fallen, screaming into her hands as Garm circled her.

“I’m not gone yet,” the corpse laughed. Aleja forced herself to look up, barely perceiving the scene in front of her. What hair the corpse had left was burned away. A chunk of white bone gleamed beneath scorched skin.

Prove yourself. It’s only pain. There is nothing to fear, only to endure.

Aleja forced out another wave of fire, and it felt like there was a great rose bush blooming inside her. Sharp thorns pushed through her organs, her limbs, her boiling eyes. The touch of tears against her cheeks was unbearable. She could hear herself screaming, though the sound was distant.

It was a wonder she heard the corpse laugh, “One more time, Aleja. Destroy your old self completely.”

The words were spoken by something skeletal, hollow, and colorless, except for the red shard it held in its hand.

“I can’t,” Aleja whimpered, slumping to the ground. Every pebble digging into her was a new torture. Garm growled wildly at the corpse, but she couldn’t see him through the tears in her eyes.

Are you really going to fail your first Trial ? This is your easiest challenge .

She forced herself to raise her hands. They shook so much, she knew she wouldn’t be able to aim, but it didn’t matter. What remained of the corpse was directly ahead of her.

Aleja let her magic go.

Ash filled her mouth, leaving a bitter taste.

And then, the pain was gone. Garm licked her hands, but she didn’t recoil. Aleja opened her eyes, unsurprised to see a skeleton in front of her, yet taking a relieved breath all the same. The shard rested on a heap of finger bones, as if the corpse had held it tenderly as its body fell apart.

“Are you okay?” Garm asked as he crawled into Aleja’s lap.

“Yes. I… we need to get the hell out of here. Come on.”

Her legs shook as she reached for the shard, glad for the gloves after all. Aside from a single ragged edge, where it’d been broken off from a larger whole, the glass was intact. “I’m guessing we’ll need to find the other pieces,” Aleja said, tucking it into her backpack.

She felt weak, reeling, but the need to leave this place and the skeletal corpse was great enough to propel her across the bridge. It hurt to swallow, but worse was the taste in her mouth. Bile and bone dust. Burning flesh and old death.

This path was more apparent, and Garm trotted in front of her, sniffing the air. As they moved uphill, the glittering bay soon disappeared. Aleja tried to think of anything aside from the corpse that had spoken in her voice. She thought of Bonnie’s cookies—more chocolate chips than dough. Violet humming punk songs in her too-pretty voice. Nicolas making sketches that he never let anyone but Aleja see.

“Garm,” she said softly. “The Second claimed that hellhounds are created from the souls of those who can’t fulfill their bargains with the Knowing One. Is that true?”

The dog shook his head, too-large ears slapping against his cheeks. “I made my bargain with a Knowing One before Nicolas’s time. I lit the black candle because… Hm. There was something about a farm. Perhaps I wanted it, or I already had it and didn’t want to lose it. She granted me my wish, but when the time came to collect, I couldn’t give her what I’d offered even if I wanted to.”

“You really can’t remember?”

“No, although I don’t think she killed me. It was some other magic that did it.” The words made Aleja think of the snake tattoo spreading across Nicolas’s chest, but she kept her mouth shut. Garm didn’t need to know about that yet. “And then, I was in the Hiding Place, but I was like a ghost. I couldn’t speak to anyone or touch anything. That lasted for a long while until Nicolas made me a body.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, not quite knowing what it was she was apologizing for.

“Oh, don’t be,” he said as his tail wagged again. “Everything before I became a hellhound feels like a dream. Hey! That looks like the palace.”

Aleja recognized the valley and the building growing at its center like a nascent cathedral. A distant thud vibrated through her bones, low and deep, as if it was the pulse of a great heart tucked beneath the earth.

“Where is everyone?” Garm asked as they descended into the grounds.

In answer, a flash of light came from the foothills of the Second’s mountains, briefly illuminating the gardens, and spiraling across the sky in a burst of red and orange. Fireworks.

“I don’t know. Let’s keep going. I want to get this over with.”

Aleja had walked this path before, but couldn’t recall it branching off in so many directions. Another firework burst overhead, reflecting in Garm’s eyes as he turned to her for an indication of what to do next.

“The palace,” she said, knowing that was where they were meant to head. She’d already seen her first home. Now it was time to see the second. “Come on.”

Aside from the paintings, the halls were empty. Some, she recognized, though their varnish was glossy and fresh. Her Persephone was missing, but she nodded hello to the centaur and his hunting party, and the bathing nymphs luring a knight into their lake. Despite the palace halls always shifting on a whim, Aleja usually ended up where she intended, yet she could tell right away that this would not be the case today.

Luckily for her, she’d thought to bring a hellhound.

“Anything, Garm?”

“It seems strange, but…”

“What is it?”

“I smell you in the distance.”

“Lead me to it.”

As Aleja followed him, she heard weeping. Fire grew inside of her, but she kept it from reaching her hands. If this test was to be the same as the last, she wasn’t sure if she’d have the strength to feel like she was burning alive again.

You’ve done it to others. Now, you understand the power you wield. It’ll be even stronger once you’re a Dark Saint , said her voice.

The crying grew louder. Aleja guessed what she would see when she turned the last corner and entered the room where the woman wept, but it was a shock all the same. This woman did not look like a corpse. Her reddish-black hair was tied in elaborate braids that secured a horned crown to her head. Red ribbons looping around the crown matched the color of the simple tunic dress she wore over black leggings.

She snapped to attention as Aleja entered. The war had taken a toll on her past self. Khol around her eyes ran in lines down her guant cheeks. She did not seem to notice that Aleja looked exactly like her, nor that a plume of fire escaped Aleja’s fingers at the sight of her doppelganger.

“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you come in. What do you need?”

“What’s wrong?” Aleja asked.

“We won the war,” the woman said, wiping her eyes.

“They’re celebrating outside.”

“I know. But I’m going to die tomorrow.”

This conversation had never happened. In the past, Aleja had snuck away in the night without a word to anyone—not even her husband or her friends among the Dark Saints.

“It’s going to be okay,” Aleja said, not understanding this challenge. She’d expected this woman to run from her as the corpse had, or attack when she realized Aleja was here to claim another shard.

“No, it’s not. It’s going to destroy my husband. He needs me.”

“He’ll survive. And one day, the two of you will find each other again.”

“A pretty thought,” the woman said with a tense smile. “You needn’t concern yourself with it. I’m sure they’re missing you at the party. Were you looking for something?”

Aleja reached into her bag and pulled out the shard. The woman’s smile flattened as she regarded the object. “Oh. I’ve been searching for that everywhere. Who are you?”

“I’m just passing through,” Aleja told her, wondering if she should back away as the woman stood from the bench and looked her up and down.

“Passing through with my heart in your satchel? Give it here.”

“I can’t. I need to find the second piece. It must be in the palace somewhere. You could help me.”

“Help you?” the woman snapped. “You’re a thief. Hand it over.”

Garm knocked Aleja to the side as the woman pulled in the flames from the candles lining the room’s walls. Aleja had never seen her power used this way—had never realized she could control flames that didn’t come from herself. If it hadn’t been for Garm, she would have been trapped.

She ran as a ball of fire crashed through a pillar that shattered as if hit by a wrecking ball. “Fuck! She’s so powerful. What do we do?”

“We need the shard! Where would she keep it?” he barked.

“The bed chamber above the throne room!”

The palace’s maze-like halls refused to make it easy—nor would the previous Lady of Wrath. Aleja’s shoulder exploded with pain, but she pushed on blindly. A passage opened to the left and she took it, no longer certain where she was heading, only that she had to get away.

“We’re lost,” she moaned, biting the inside of her cheek. The ache in her scalp she could ignore, but she was afraid to touch what must have been a swathe of raw flesh on her shoulder.

Garm slowed to match her pace. When Aleja was able to calm herself, she couldn’t hear the thud of boots on the marble floors behind her. “We may have lost her for now,” Garm said.

“Doubt it. She knows the palace better than I do. We need to find the throne room.”

The paintings on these walls were older than those in Aleja’s time. The flat oval eyes of medieval icons stared down at her, but none had the symbolism she was accustomed to. They were paintings of the Dark Saints, she realized, spotting one with very dark red hair and her left hand raised, a curl of fire rising from her index and middle finger.

“The smells are all wrong, but I know this hall. Follow me and move fast,” Garm said.

Aleja tried not to look at the wound on her shoulder, seeping blood and plasma down her arm. If she survived this, it would be another scar to add to her growing collection.

“Look,” Garm said, pointing with his muzzle. “That statue is familiar.”

Aleja hadn’t realized she was dizzy until she stopped walking. “We can’t be far now,” she said, slumping against one of the marble pillars as the satyrs danced around her like she was the center of some celebration.

It would be a funeral if she didn’t get out of here soon.

“Your shoulder looks bad. Are you okay?” Garm asked.

Before she could answer, the room exploded. Garm threw his body over hers, but in this new form, he was too small to shield her from the flames. She heard his yelp and smelled burned fur as the statues around them shattered. If it wasn’t for the pillar, which held out despite the rush of heat, they both would have been incinerated.

“Go! We need to move,” Garm barked.

Smoke filled the room. Aleja could not see the woman but heard her laugh in response. “This is my kingdom, thieves.”

But the Dark Saint didn’t expect the chunk of marble Aleja threw at her face. The woman fell back, clutching her temple, and Aleja and Garm took off again.

The throne room doors were such a relief that Aleja let out a scream as she slammed against them—a primal sound, born of fire and blood. She hardly registered that the space was not nearly as empty as in her time. Red flowers bloomed in tall vases, bright as celestial bodies in the darkness. One of the vases bursted, filling the room with the scent of caramelized honey but Aleja did not stop.

Garm reached the door to the upper chambers first, and Aleja slammed it shut behind them. Seconds later, it shattered. Splinters burrowed into the flesh of her shoulder, as her eyes shot to the painting of her and Nicolas above the bed.

The war had already tarnished it; slashes cut across their bodies, and the word WHORE screamed out in red paint. But there was the shard, embedded at the center of Aleja’s portrait. She scrambled for it, nearly losing her footing on the bed. A second later, the shard was in her hand as a furious Dark Saint watched from the smoldering doorway.

“Put that down,” the woman said.

“I need it,” Aleja panted.

“So do I,” the woman said. It was almost… a plea, as if she hadn’t been the one shooting torrents of fire at them a few seconds ago. Aleja looked up, half expecting a wall of fire to hit her in the face, but the other woman only seemed stricken.

“It’s my heart. If you take it, I’ll lose everything. I’ll lose my life. I’ll lose my friends. I’ll lose my husband.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have any other choice.”

The woman’s lower lip twitched. This was the last night of her life as a Dark Saint, as the High General of the Knowing One’s armies, as a wife, as a confidant, as part of the Hiding Place’s family. “Please,” she whispered, so quietly that Aleja could only tell what she said by the shape of her lips.

“Come on,” Garm said, tugging Aleja’s pant leg with his mouth. “We should get out of here.”

“I’m sorry,” Aleja murmured again as they passed. Though the Dark Saint made no other attempt to stop them, Aleja didn’t fail to notice the silent tears streaming down her face, nor the blank expression behind her eyes, as if the enormity of this loss had been enough to break her.

The woman did not answer, and when Aleja turned back to the throne room…

Once again, she was between the high stone walls of the labyrinth. A gust of wind blew snow off the mountain tops. Whatever scent it carried was lost beneath the smoke lingering on her clothes.

“Aleja, your shoulder,” Garm said.

Her plain leather tunic had not protected her as armor could. It looked like something had taken a great bite of flesh from her upper arm. The sight of it made her retch, and though her stomach was empty, her ribs squeezed her torso painfully. She smelled of copper and something reminding her of the rain-soaked gloom of the Pacific Northwest—rotten mushrooms, perhaps.

“Any sign of Violet?” she panted.

“No, but I smell warm candle wax. This way.”

Aleja pulled the shards from her bag. The two she’d collected fit together at one jagged edge, but it was obvious a third was missing. “Fuck,” she muttered, wondering how the hell she was going to take another step. Garm nudged her leg, and she winced. The pain was already so intense and widespread that it was the only sensation she could grapple with.

“Come on. We need to keep moving,” Garm said.

“I can’t.”

“You must. I promised the Knowing One that I would take care of you. Come on, Aleja. Walk .”

Do it , said her inner voice, so sharply that Aleja jumped.

Everything hurt, but at least she was upright again. “Which way?”

“Follow me.”

She barely perceived the walk. Left, right, left, left, then a backtrack of a few yards. Eventually, Aleja looked up, reminding herself that she wasn’t in a dream.

Her childhood home rose in front of her. Two rows of palm trees lined the driveway of the sprawling Miami estate, which sat awkwardly among the mountainous terrain of the Hiding Place. Aleja took a slug of water from her flask; her throat was raw from smoke, and it felt like pouring sand into her mouth.

The front door was unlocked—the long foyer empty. A Spanish guitar played somewhere in another room, and she recognized the melody as one of her great-great-granduncle’s. A large painting of him and his brothers with the Knowing One looming behind them was the focal point of a living room filled with opulent furniture.

“Where are we headed?” Garm asked, as took the lead.

“A bedroom on the second floor.”

“Why?”

Aleja took a breath. “Because I know who we’re looking for. She’ll be there.”

Empty hallways. Empty rooms, filled with slowly moving smoke as if candles had just been blown out. She hulked forward on instinct, with a desire to escape this place once and for all, but when she reached the broad oak door that led to her old room, she could hardly bring herself to try the knob.

What if I can’t do this ? she asked the voice in her head.

You have a choice. Do it or die. Which do you want ?

Aleja placed her hand on the knob and twisted it.

Inside, a girl sat on the floor with an enormous book in her lap. Aleja recognized it. It was a catalogue of the Prado Museum in Madrid written entirely in Spanish. Back then, she couldn’t understand more than a few words of it, but there was only one TV in the house, and that was usually crowded around by her cousins. And her uncle—the current patriarch of the Ruizes—did not approve of young witches reading fiction.

“Oh! I didn’t realize anyone was home,” said the girl who looked no more than sixteen. She was at the mid-point of a tiresome journey she didn’t know she was on—her grandmother’s death a few years behind her and the path to escape a few years ahead.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Aleja said.

“Is that a puppy ?” the girl asked, pushing the book aside. “Oh my god, I’ve always wanted a dog. What’s his name?”

Garm dove into her lap before Aleja could stop him. The girl laughed as he licked her face.

“That’s Garm. One day, he’ll be yours,” Aleja said.

“Are you serious? I thought I wasn’t allowed to have a dog.”

“Not yet, but soon.”

“That’s amazing! Are you one of my cousins? I don’t think I’ve seen you around before, but there are so many of us. People are always coming and going.”

The other facsimiles of Aleja had been like versions of herself she only knew secondhand. But she remembered the small person sitting in front of her. She remembered the scratchiness of this rug against her bare feet when she stumbled out of bed in the mornings. She remembered the pictures on the walls, cut out of travel magazines that her cousins brought back from their vacations. Glossy images of Florentine streets, globs of gelato, cathedrals, and long lines of sunburnt tourists waiting to enter museums.

“Hey,” Aleja said quietly. “I’m looking for a piece of glass. It’s red and smooth, except for one jagged edge. Have you seen it around the house somewhere?”

A strand of hair fell over the girl’s eyes as she tilted her head. “I know what you’re asking about, but…”

“Where is it?”

“It’s here.” She pulled her collar aside. What Aleja saw reminded her of Nicolas’s tattoo, but instead of black, it softly glowed red. The veins on the girl’s chest flared in time with her pulse.

Garm’s forehead wrinkled as he looked at Aleja. “What does it mean?”

Aleja couldn’t feign ignorance. The final piece of the heart was less metaphorical than the others, buried deep within this girl’s body. So far, the Trial had been about destroying Aleja’s past selves, which was easier to do when she didn’t share their memories.

“Is there any way to get the shard out?” Aleja asked, already knowing the answer.

“Get it out? I can’t. It’s my heart,” the girl said.

Aleja closed her eyes. The nerves in her shoulder felt like fraying electrical cords, sending jolts that made her spine seize. “This is fucked up. I’m not doing this,” she whispered.

The Second demands it. Do you want to be trapped here forever ?

“Fuck the Second.”

I agree, but that doesn’t change the situation. This girl isn’t real. You are . You have friends and a lover who will die if you don’t unhook that sickle from your belt loop right now . If you can’t do this, how will you send your soldiers into battle ?

Aleja knew her inner voice was right; this was just an illusion. Yet it didn’t stop her hands from shaking as they fumbled for the clasp that held the sickle to her belt.

“What’s that?” the girl asked.

“It’s a sickle. Sometimes, it’s called a reaping hook. It’s usually a farming tool, but this one has magic. Do you want to take a closer look?”

For the first time, the girl seemed wary of Aleja’s presence. “I know what a sickle is. Why do you have it? The uncles don’t let us into the rooms with the artifacts.”

Garm moved off the girl’s lap, sending another sorrowful look in Aleja’s direction. Never once taking her eyes off Aleja’s weapon, the girl uncrossed her legs and pushed herself to the edge of the rug.

“Why do you have that?” she asked again.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t want to do this,” Aleja said.

The girl’s eyes widened. She shook her head in shock and disbelief. Then, she ran.

Aleja was faster. Her sickle easily sliced through the pool cue the girl picked up to defend herself when she made it to the game room downstairs and stumbled to her knees.

* * *

“FUCK YOU,” Aleja screamed, throwing one of the vases full of bright red flowers, like those she’d seen in her vision of the throne room. “Fuck you, Second. I don’t want your fucking powers.”

The estate’s windows shattered, leaving shards glimmering on the floor like geodes. Garm sat silently in the corner, ears and shoulders low, watching as she threw anything that could be thrown, including portraits of her ancestors ripped from the walls, a six-string guitar that crashed against the curio cabinet with a pained twang, and a bright red stone that rolled into the hallway beyond.

“Aleja, we should go. You did it. This Trial is over,” Garm said, as if he were speaking to a child. It was strange to hear this tone of voice coming from a puppy with skin loose enough to carry him by.

She said nothing. The Aleja that had entered the labyrinth knew what it was to kill, but with a burst of fire, before they had a chance to beg for their lives. Before they looked at her with unguarded fear. She might be going back to her room at the palace, but she would not be returning as the same person she’d been this morning.

Go on, little villain , said her voice, gentler than usual. Don’t let the Second see how he fazed you.

All around her, the broken house glittered. Aleja investigated her satchel, where the shards of glass had fused together after being reunited—a translucent heart splattered with opaque blood.

“Come on,” Garm said, nudging her thigh with his muzzle. “I can lead us out of here.”

If Aleja had thoughts while she followed him out of the estate, she couldn’t voice them. The memory of the girl’s pained screams clung to Aleja like an animal on her back, its teeth sinking into her neck.

“We’re here,” Garm barked, bounding the last few yards to an arched passageway that looked like it led back to the caverns.

“Where’s Violet?” Aleja asked. The pain in her shoulder was a pressing ache, and the heat of it whispered of infections to come if she didn’t clean and bandage herself soon.

“I can barely smell her. Maybe she found another way out.”

Aleja turned back to the labyrinth. “Can you track her, Garm?”

She expected her inner voice to chide her for turning away from the exit, but there was silence aside from Garm’s nails clicking against the gravel path. “This way. I don’t think she’s far,” he said. The dog picked up his pace and Aleja struggled to keep up, knowing that if she faltered and lost sight of him, she might not make it out of the maze alive.

Something thudded up ahead. A deep sound, like stone meeting stone.

“Violet!” Aleja called. She had no idea where the rush of adrenaline came from when every part of her body and mind felt deflated. As a woman’s scream reverberated through the tunnels, Garm turned a corner and she ran to follow.

Aleja saw Violet first, slumped on the ground with her arms crisscrossed by gashes. Although the black armor had protected her torso, Violet struggled to breathe, as if it was too tight. A mass of wings and eyes was forcing its way through the narrow passage behind Violet. An Authority, like the one that’d almost killed them both just weeks ago.

Aleja didn’t stop to think. The well of magic within her was nearly exhausted, but she managed to draw up a spear of flame that shot over Violet’s head and into the Authority’s wings. It let out a hiss as a clump of its feathers burned away.

The passage was too small for it to easily squeeze through. Aleja sent another wave of fire and rushed to Violet’s side, hauling her up. “Garm, lead us back to the entrance!” she snapped.

Stone crumbled behind them as the Authority wrenched one of its wings free, filling the corridor with the smell of burned hair. Chasing Garm, they ran together until the arched passage appeared in the walls up ahead.

“Go,” Aleja said, pushing Violet forward.

Violet was the first to cross beneath the arch, then Garm, and finally, Aleja.

She took one last look at the Authority before tumbling into the darkness. Its hundreds of eyes were bright, and gleeful, as if it couldn’t care less about the human women escaping the hungry mouth hidden somewhere beneath its wings.