Chapter 24
“ Y ou would dare,” snarls the High Ecclesia as a single being, the same words leaving ten throats at once, “move against the Holy Lord, the One True God?”
Nyatrix flips the sword in her hands, testing its weight. For a split second, her gaze strays to me, and then her attention is back on the High Ecclesia, somehow both keen and casual at once. Like she’s waiting to see who strikes first, or trying to decide if it should be her. A laugh escapes her mouth, low and slinking. It should be horrifying, I think, that sound, and yet it makes my pulse pound in a way that has nothing to do with terror.
She casts her gaze behind each shoulder, examining her wings. Some power still holds her slightly aloft, her feet just off the ground, though her wings do not beat. Experimentally, she flexes them ever so slightly. Just that small movement causes a powerful down-thrust, propelling her higher into the air and nearly flattening me back to the ground.
“It seems I’m winning, though, doesn’t it?” Nyatrix says, settling the sword into her dominant hand, the other stretching out. Toward me, I realize.
Does she think I’m going with her?
The High Ecclesia holds preternaturally still. Behind Their tight ranks, I can just make out a sea of armor and weaponry rippling in the low light. Fear grips me, and I frantically grope around the slick marble for my cane. As I struggle to my feet, I notice something that almost sends me back to my knees.
The neat stonework of the chamber walls is barely more than rubble now. The cases and cabinets are intact but covered in mold, the wood sagging. Trembling, I look up to find the vaulted ceiling is gone—instead, the night sky greets me, stars winking like this is all a joke that I’m too stupid to understand.
Even the marble dais I stand upon is cracked and crumbling, weeds snaking through the cracks. I watch, dumbfounded, as tiny violets poke through the brown weeds, blooming right before my eyes.
But then the smell of rot overtakes me suddenly, so thick and heavy that I retch.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper miserably to no one in particular, though a secret part of me hopes Saintess Lucia might finally answer.
“Return the blade,” booms the High Ecclesia. It is not a request.
I force myself to inch closer to Nyatrix and face Them. Their vestments are mottled with stains and mold. The glorious embroidery upon Their chests is falling apart, bare threads dripping down like spiderwebs, beads missing, the ones remaining cracked and dull.
Though Their hoods remain, Their masks are gone. And that is how I find myself staring into the face of ten corpses. Their eyes are sightless, milky and rotten. Any features They may have once possessed are long faded—skin sunken in, bones jutting out. Barely more than skeletons in flowing, tattered robes.
My entire body shakes. I cling to my cane, eyes darting between the High Ecclesia and the small army at Their back. Between my people and the usurper. The wolf who strolled into my pasture of lambs and tore flesh from bone, leaving me with little more than a carcass of a world.
Time grinds to a halt, and I remember when Nyatrix first tried to tell me the truth of things. How I pitied her, immense sadness rising against my breastbone for the way the world was nothing like she thought. Grief rises in me like a tide, something sharp-toothed beneath the currents.
And then I reach out and take Nyatrix’s hand. Her fingers close around mine instantly, her larger palm enveloping mine. She pulls me into her body, tucks me against her ribs, and then, all at once, we are airborne.
Chaos erupts in the Crypta. High Ecclesian shrieks fill the air, heavy as lead. They move as one single organism again, Mysterium crackling at Their fingertips, reaching toward us like hungry vines. The Holy Guard is too busy looking dumbfounded about the ruined room or gaping at their armor and weapons, which are no longer gleaming bronze—instead, they are dull and rusted, pitted with pockmarks.
Then we are in the Spine—above the Spine, really—and I look around with a horror-tinged sorrow that makes nausea boil in my stomach. The stained-glass ceiling, the marble floors, the rich banners and beautiful arches—all gone. The Spine is, like the Crypta, little more than rubble. The moment Nyatrix pulled that sword free, everything I loved about Lumendei fled—or perhaps, even worse, had never really been there at all.
Nyatrix swoops around a crumbling tower—Militaire Annex, I think—and plummets toward a relatively intact battlement. The ground rushes up at me, and I turn into her shoulder, my body tensed for impact. With a grunt, she catches herself on the landing, though shock jolts through me. After a few unsteady, running steps, she manages to throw her wings out behind her and come to a halt just at the edge of the battlement.
I raise my head from her shoulder, asphodels clinging to my senses, and look out. Dawn breaks over the far horizon. The Sundered Lands stretch like a wound. Rubble pokes from wind-worn soil, the broken teeth in a shattered jaw. To our right, the sea shimmers. These things, at least, are the same as always, which brings me some strange relief.
But then my gaze catches on a new horror. Around the curve of the battlement lies the edge of the gardens. My solace, my refuge, the one place I felt near-normal. Where I begged Saintess Lucia for my Sainting. Harvested blackberries with Carina. Cultivated roses with the novices.
The gardens are no place of beauty now. Brambles crawl across the rotted ground instead of neatly trimmed hedges and flowering bushes. A few crooked lines in the soil look like potato plantings—even though that’s where the lemon trees grew. I can only see part of the gardens from here, I know, but it is quite plain to me that, like the Crypta and the Spine, everything I loved is a lie.
“Do you see now?” Nyatrix asks. Her voice holds no triumph. Just a bone-deep weariness that I feel in my own body. “Do you understand, Ophelia?”
“No,” I admit, tears escaping my eyes, filling my mouth with horror and salt. “I don’t understand anything at all.”
Nyatrix sighs. “I have to go,” she replies, her gaze locked on the horizon. “I will take you with me, if you want. To Liminalia. It’s better there. I promise. Not perfect but better than this. And you’ll be free.”
I choke back a sob. Free? What even is freedom? The freedom to scavenge this rotting corpse of a world? Is that better than a gilded cage?
Before I can answer her, a shout rings out from the far edge of the battlement, back toward the Spine. I turn, my blood melting to ice in my veins.
A man—a soldier—stands there, a bent and battered sword in his hands. “Stop!” he commands, moving a few strides closer. I recognize his voice—how it’s haunted my nightmares—before he even steps out into the wan dawn light.
“Sergio,” I whisper, my voice raw, my eyes fluttering closed, the terror and the pain becoming too much to bear.
“Release her at once,” Sergio commands, turning his head just slightly, as if to check for his fellow soldiers. But there is no one, just the sweep of night and a crumbling corridor. “That woman is mine .”
The pit of darkness in my belly boils, steam rising up my throat until my face is hot, my tongue laden with poison. I’m about to open my mouth and scream all the things I’ve always wanted to say to Sergio, liberated by the best warrior of my people’s enemy. But that’s when I feel naked steel slide against my neck. I choke in a breath as her fingers close, vise-like, around my shoulder.
“If you come any closer,” the Lupa Nox growls, “I’ll kill her. And then, of course, you .”
So much, I suppose, for freedom.
“Let us go, Sergio,” I urge him. My pulse pounds in my ears like war drums, my palms gone slick and hot. “I’ll go with her. Nyatrix, I’ll go with you.”
Sergio takes another step closer and then holds still. I can see his too-light eyes darting about the space, the hungry curl of his mouth. Still, no one comes to his assistance, though I can hear the thud of footfalls and the clang of weaponry in the distance.
Nyatrix’s hand closes tightly around my waist a split second before Sergio charges. His teeth are bared, his rusted sword raised. Fear overtakes me entirely as I watch him—the Imperator, the leader of the Holy Guard, a commoner so undeniably skilled in combat that he was raised to a position typically reserved for Noble Houses. The man who has made my life a living Inferna, his power wielded undeniably and absolutely.
In a single, lazy downbeat of her wings, the Lupa Nox lifts us a few strides from the ground and flicks out her sword as if to bat away a fly. I shrink closer to her, preparing for Sergio’s strikes, for his violent flurry of steel and fury.
Instead, as Nyatrix settles us back onto the ground, I find myself looking at the Imperator, crumpled on the ground. He’s slit from navel to throat, entrails seeping out from the red-black wound in his belly. His head lolls to the side, blood hemorrhaging from his neck.
“Are you all right?” the Lupa Nox asks.
I don’t answer. What is there to say? My single greatest problem, a man gone mad on his power, disposed of with a single swipe of her blade.
“I think so,” I finally manage.
Shouts echo out from the ruined halls, and Nyatrix shifts her weight.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her breath ruffling the edge of my braid, speaking just loud enough that I can hear.
And then she explodes into movement. With one powerful leap, she twists and propels us to the edge of the battlement. Both of her arms close around me, and I feel the whoosh as she opens her newfound wings. My heart plummets into my stomach, and I bite back a scream.
“I’m sorry, Ophelia,” the Lupa Nox repeats. All the world holds still for a long second before she jumps off the edge of the crumbling pile of stone.
And then I am falling.
F allen , I suppose, just like the pontifex warned. The Lupa Nox brought me to my knees with that glowing fawn skin, the sharp planes of her face, those thunderstorm eyes, the wicked curve of her mouth. And then I Fell the rest of the way on my own.
It is not easy to think about falling when I am flying. Beneath me, muddy trenches pockmark the barren land, defensive structures sutured into the brown earth. Nyatrix clutches me to her chest like I’m some sacred prize, not a lamb she was willing to slaughter only a few moments ago.
A heavy wind buffets us—the Godwinds, I realize, a powerful, unrelenting vortex left behind by the War of the Sundering. I feel Nyatrix’s chest muscles tense and fight against the hard leftward tilt. She grunts, pulling me even closer, her long-fingered hand cupping the side of my face as if to protect me from the battering winds. I do not know why she bothers.
“I’m going to land,” she shouts over the din.
I say nothing. What is there to say? What choice do I have? What choice have I ever had?
The scorched grounds reach up toward us, and I can think of nothing but graves. I wonder, if I asked nicely, would Nyatrix find a soft, green spot and lay me down there? Let the soil fill my throat; let the flowers bloom on my bones?
Her landing is less graceful with the Godwinds grabbing at us, and she stumbles, going down on her knees. I squeeze my eyes shut, turning my face into her chest as I pull my arms up around my face. Asphodels fill my nose with their spicy sweetness as Nyatrix staggers, twisting her torso to take the brunt of the fall.
For a moment, we lie there in a tangle—the knight with her back pressed to the ground, my body flung across hers, my skirts wound about her legs. Her inhales are deep, quick pants, my chest rising with each of them as if her lungs were my own.
“Sorry,” she grunts. I try to pull myself away from the heat of her muscular form, my mind going soft and weak, but one of her powerful arms bands around my waist. “Let me help.”
I open my mouth to protest, but she’s already sliding out from beneath me. Down on one knee, she plucks my cane from the sandy soil and hands it to me. I clutch it against my chest, watching her with wide eyes, knowing full well how vulnerable I am in this position—laid out flat on my back, only her arm between me and the ground.
“What’s the best way to do this? I don’t want to hurt you,” Nyatrix says, peering down at me.
For a moment, I can only process the gray bruise of the dawn sky, the winds tugging at her loose hair, the intensity of her gaze. The stolen sword sits on the sand by her feet, and her wings have vanished.
“What?” I ask in a strangled syllable.
“Your back,” she says, her brow furrowing. “You flogged yourself. And you use a cane, which I assume is for a leg or hip injury? So how can I get you up without hurting you?”
Silence unfurls between us, nothing but the howl of the Godwinds across the sloping hills. The direction shifts in a sharp turn, and the wind thins to a whistle as it races through the ruins of a small stone structure about fifteen paces from us.
I don’t know how to explain to her that I don’t care about more pain. That all I am is pain, all I know is pain. Everything I ever loved is gone. I’ve abandoned my Church—willingly or not—and I have no idea if I’ll ever be forgiven. I don’t care about getting back up. I’ll stay down where I belong: in the dirt.
“Please,” I say through parched lips, watching the pale dawn begin to seep across the horizon. Is even the sky a different color than I believed? “Like I already said, just leave me.”
She moves then, wolf-like, her body hovering over mine, palms planted on either side of my shoulders, her arms caging me in. “I’m not going to abandon you in the middle of the Sundered Lands,” she says.
“Why not?” I ask, a sob tearing up from my chest. The words are barely more than pathetic blubbering—even more evidence that she should leave me behind. “You were willing to slit my throat not too long ago. Surely leaving me behind is even easier.”
Something in her face softens as I speak, her gaze darting away for a moment. With a long, low sigh, she slips one hand under the back of my head with a gentleness that makes no sense. It has no place coming from the Lupa Nox. It has no place in the wind-battered hills of the Sundered Lands. And it has no right to be wasted on something like me.
Her other hand wraps around my waist. “I’m going to help you sit up, all right?” she says. Unlike everyone else, Nyatrix waits for my response. She’s not telling me what she’s going to do to my body. She’s asking.
Slowly, I nod.
She does as she’s promised with minimal pain, lifting me into an upright position as though I weigh little more than a feather. I lean forward over my legs and, with my hands, lift my left one—which I cannot move independently—to shift it into a more comfortable angle.
I look around, shielding my eyes from the Godwinds with one hand. There is nothing but hopelessness before me. The stained horizon lies far in the distance. Presumably, Liminalia—the Cursed seat of the Sepulchyre—is out there somewhere, behind the sooty, sandy hills that rise and fall like headstones. In some places, old stone ruins peek from the earth. All this destruction, this horror, leaked into the earth by the Sepulchyre during the war.
I think of Saintess Lucia’s statue in the gardens. The morning dew clinging to heads of hydrangea, the sharp scent of freshly picked spearmint, the blackberry stains on lace sleeves, the orchards in their midsummer splendor. The garnet tears on her face and the Sainting I thought was upon me.
I cleaved and butchered so many things from deep within myself for a taste of that saintliness.
The sorrow devours me, as I always knew it would. A wild howl escapes my mouth, and I fold forward, wrapping my arms around my body. And then I weep in front of the Lupa Nox. Shame flushes me, my skin prickling hot and itchy despite the cold winds, but I cannot stop. She says nothing, though I think she settles down into a crouch next to me.
Finally, I raise my head, the Sundered Lands no more than a dark smear through my tears. Perhaps after I blink, I will be back in my chambers in Cathedral Hill. Perhaps all of this will be a dream.
Instead, it’s the Lupa Nox before me, her features gone sharp and serious, though there is a gleam in her eyes I don’t think I’ve seen since she discovered I flogged myself. Her beautiful mouth parts as she reaches out to cup my jaw. My traitorous body keens for her.
“Little dove,” she murmurs, those eyes searching mine again. This time—I cannot explain it—I think she finds what she’s looking for. “You’re not sad. Not really.”
I stare at her, my breath coming in uneven, heavy gasps, the Godwinds tearing at our clothes. She leans close, almost as if to kiss me.
“No,” Nyatrix says, her breath warming my skin. “You’re angry .”