Chapter 23
T he heavy iron-worked door closes behind us with a sigh, shutting out the mayhem unfolding in the Spine. Nyatrix sets me down with the same incongruent tenderness as before, her eyes keen and focused as the Mysterium-Blessed sconces begin to flicker to life.
“That should tell you a lot about your God,” she says, though only half of her attention is on me. “Only bothered to spell Their keys against use for people with Mysterium.”
I frown, my gaze sweeping out across the seemingly endless chamber. There are cabinets along the walls, low tables down the center, and absolutely no organization. At least, not that I can immediately identify—and such things are normally well within my abilities. Granted, I’m still breathless and reeling from our journey to the Crypta’s doors, the Lupa Nox dodging Holy Guard and Host Knights like a shadow, all while cradling me close to her chest.
“I don’t understand,” I manage to say, moving forward despite the pain sinking its jaws into my body. As I take a closer look, I realize the towering cabinets are mostly filled with scrolls. My heart flips inside my chest. I thought all the papyri of Lumendei were in the Libris Sanctum, not stored away in a place only a sacred few can enter. Perhaps they’re just duplicates, kept safe in case of a disaster. We know disaster well, after all.
“That’s how little your Church thinks of anyone without Mysterium,” the knight clarifies, stalking around to walk ahead of me, her brow furrowed, eyes searching. “You’re not just unworthy of the Mysteries, of your God’s favor. You’re not even worthy of being seen as a possible threat. And yet, here we are, aren’t we?”
Her words drip with condescension and barely contained outrage. In truth, I simply do not have the fortitude to consider the implications of what Nyatrix is saying. Not right now, while I try to find her a weapon so she can escape—and a way to explain why I helped her once she’s gone.
Can I say she bewitched me, the way men often claim? Will that absolve me of all my guilt, like it did for Sergio? I think I know the answer, and my fingers tighten around the handle of my cane.
I keep walking, knowing that the High Ecclesia could burst into this chamber at any moment. There’s a false sense of safety here—the familiar sight of scrolls carefully stowed away, the silence, the dust motes dancing in the air, the scent of old leather and even older paper. Just past those heavy doors, I know, is utter mayhem, alarm bells ringing loudly enough to shake the masonry walls. It won’t be long until they discover where we’ve gone.
We keep searching, Nyatrix growing more frenzied, yanking out the lower drawers of cabinets as if they might contain some Mysterium-Blessed dagger wrapped up in velvet. But even though I led her here— trapped her here, possibly—she throws no insults my way. Her hitched shoulders, the scowl upon her mouth . . . I know she is angry. But she holds it within her own body, makes it only her own responsibility.
“I’m sorry,” I say anyway. “This is no trick. I swear it. I just thought—I just hoped there might be something.”
“Worry not, little dove,” Nyatrix murmurs, her eyes sliding to meet mine across the low tables lining the center of the chamber. “There is something here. I cannot explain it, but...it’s like something is calling to me. Singing a song I didn’t even realize I knew.”
Gooseflesh races across my skin at her description. I have no idea what she means, or if she’s even telling the truth, but I have no other choice. I will follow her into the depths of the Crypta. Perhaps she will find something to help herself get out, or perhaps she will not.
The only light I’ll see again is the fire of the stake, anyway. It matters little to me. I should be afraid, maybe. But it is hard to fear death when I see nothing in my future, when pain already strokes my limbs as surely as any flame, when my vast, violent sea of sorrow may well drown me.
I follow the Lupa Nox, my fingers trailing along the dusty edges of massive shelves piled with papyri. There is no wonder or magic to this space, not the kind I find nearly everywhere else in Lumendei. The floors are bare, no embroidered banners winking with beads and gold thread hanging from the walls, and the sconces are wrought from simple black iron.
“Perhaps I should have more caution,” Nyatrix says, breaking the silence. “Following this song is precisely how I was captured in the first place.”
I glance at her in surprise, nearly tripping over my cane. “What?” I demand in a hoarse voice, my thoughts racing.
She only looks away from me and offers a grim nod. “Heard it out near the battlements,” she murmurs. “I had to follow it. I snuck into the city and unfortunately had a run-in with twenty or so Host Knights. Whatever it is, it’s not a Curse. Not Mysterium at all. Something else. Something I swear I already know.”
Fear courses through me, hot and sharp. The very thing that captured the great Lupa Nox, that set off everything, is what we are now seeking in hopes it might save us.
The back wall of the Crypta comes into view through the dim light. My stomach twists. I see no door, no secondary exit. Perhaps my life will end here, in this very place, choking on dust, looking at the manuscripts I’ll never read. That I was never permitted to read.
But then, I watch Nyatrix’s step break into something hungry just as I spot a dais in the distance. I push myself forward at the same moment a bone-rattling shriek echoes through the chamber. My throat constricts, and I turn to look over my shoulder.
The Crypta’s massive doors are now thrown open wide. The High Ecclesia is framed within the arch, backlit by the beeswax glow I once found so comforting. A phantom wind tugs at Their vestments, and the bronze armor of the Holy Guard shimmers behind Them, mirage-like.
“Nyatrix,” I say, my voice a strangled scream. I break into a limping run, my lungs burning. Up ahead, the knight stands on the raised, circular platform made of marble. The moment I’m within a few strides of the dais, the hum of Mysterium overtakes me. The closer I get, the stronger it is—just as powerful as what I felt back in the Devorarium before the High Ecclesia attacked Nyatrix. It makes my hair stand on end, like the thrum has entered my body and shaken me from the inside.
Nyatrix stands in the middle of the dais, moving in a tight, hungry circle. An ornate golden cage encases something—a sword, I see as I haul myself up onto the platform. The weapon emits a hum, too, like Mysterium but different. The pitch is lower, the melody darker, stranger, wilder.
Made of a shining black material, the sword’s handle is curved and elegant, debossed with a looping floral design. The blade itself is a dark silver metal with a sleek, slight curve to its end. Nyatrix’s hand hovers over the pommel as her eyes meet mine. I hold her gaze, time slowing to a crawl, before looking out into the chamber.
The High Ecclesia is nearly upon us. Mysterium crackles like lighting. Their vestments stir as though a storm has entered the Crypta, though there is no wind that I can feel. That corpse-light has returned, emitted from whatever lies beneath Their masks.
I am, I think, about to die.
I look back at Nyatrix. Perhaps I should behold something holier before I meet my God at the gates of Inferna, but I cannot stop myself—I am drawn to her. Her expression is magnetic, the slant of her eyes wolfish as she tilts her chin up, looking toward the High Ecclesia.
Then she slides her hand between the bars of the ornate gold cage, wraps her fingers around the sword’s pommel, and pulls it free.
Everything happens at once.
The High Ecclesia shriek in a piercing yowl that sends me to my knees, my hands clamping over my ears. The fall is jarring, the pain reverberating through my joints as my body slams against the marble. My cane clatters to the ground, just out of my reach.
I look up, sure that I am going to see a High Ecclesian’s gauntlet reaching for me, spider-like fingers outstretched, and then nothing at all. Probably nothing ever again.
Instead, from my knees, I take in a sight that my mind struggles to understand. Nyatrix is untouched on the dais, the sword drawn free of its cage, both hands wrapped around the pommel. It fits her fingers, I find myself thinking, like it was made for her. Like they were both created from the same darkness, the same nightmare of some long-forgotten goddess.
Impossibly, from Nyatrix’s back now sprouts a set of unearthly wings. Silvery-black and feathered, they span nearly the width of the chamber. She is otherworldly and deadly in her beauty. The Lupa Nox. Death-Bringer. World-Eater. The last of the Fallen. So many dark and terrible things, I think, my entire body thrumming.
And yet I would worship her instead of Him.