Chapter 27
“ S ee?” the Lupa Nox says, the arch of her dark brow visible in the glow of the candlelight.
I don’t—can’t—answer, because in truth I barely understand what I’m looking at.
After walking for what felt like ten bells, we’re beneath the sands of the Sundered Lands, down in some buried place Nyatrix navigated to with unerring accuracy. And even though this place is painfully empty, even though I’ve never been here before, it is strangely and horrifically familiar.
Before me, an elegant white arch curves up into a carved ceiling, decorated with faded frescoes. Swathes of sand grace the tiled floor like tiers on a gown, but the gold-threaded marble is the very same I’ve trod upon all my life. I sweep my gaze around the chamber, spying moth-eaten velvet bunting in a deep burgundy I know all too well.
Nyatrix watches me, her eyes glittering. Only two large lamps by the arch are lit; I fear the additional familiarity I would find with the help of more light. I swallow hard, my mouth dry as the Sundered Lands’ deadly, undulating hills. I stand in the middle of a ruin, in the far reaches of abandoned soil, and yet everything I see could easily be found within Lumendei. No, more than that—it is Lumendei.
I dare not speak this thought aloud. Instead, I shuffle forward, leaning heavily on my cane, once again mindful of slipping on the marble. Nyatrix follows me like a specter, snatching one of the lanterns from its hook on the wall as I make my way through the arch.
On the other side is a larger chamber, its floor a stunning mosaic. At home, there are a few mosaics here and there, mostly in the Saints’ sacred grottos. But I’ve never seen such an enormous one. The time and cost it must’ve taken to create such a thing boggles my mind.
“Look,” Nyatrix instructs as she walks out ahead of me, her long strides carrying her to the middle of the chamber. My palms go slick, my heart a drum in my throat, as I force myself to follow. I watch as she kneels, putting her palm flat to the mosaic, swiping away dust and sand. Then she holds the lantern aloft, head cocked toward me.
I know that I am about to see something that might destroy me. I wonder how different it would feel to walk to the stake, or if it would be exactly like this. If there is perhaps no difference in the undoing I would face from the High Ecclesia or the Lupa Nox—if both would just as readily bring me to my end, only by diverging paths.
I could turn away, refuse her, go back to the chamber where she pulled bedrolls and water casks and dried meat from a hidden trunk. Perhaps I could lie down, close my eyes, and wish all of this away. Maybe when I open my eyes, the only thing I’ll see is my mother’s face as she removes that false panel in our cottage, her smile bright as she tells me it’s all over now and there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.
But I can no longer be a child cowering in the dark, seeking the simple mammal heat of another. Freedom is a knife sinking deeper and deeper into my flesh with every step I take.
When I draw even with Nyatrix, I pause, my breath too heavy for having taken a few simple steps. Her gaze meets mine and holds it for a long, stretched moment. Then she casts her attention to the floor, to the mosaics lit by the sputtering flame of the lantern.
There, in large, ornate lettering, each glyph the length of my arm, is a single word: LUMENDEI. Beneath it, in a looping font that gracefully hooks into the letters above, reads another damning phrase—THE HOLY CITY OF SEMPITERNUS.
I clench my jaw so hard that pain lances through my mouth, my fingers clutching at my cane. It is not enough to keep me aloft. I sway, dark spots clustering across my eyes, but before I can slam into the hard tiled floor, powerful arms catch me.
“No,” I whisper, the single syllable strangled and desperate. It must be a trick, I tell myself, though I clutch at Nyatrix’s forearms anyway, tears beginning to blur my vision. My breath comes shallow and fast.
“I’m sorry,” the knight tells me, one hand smoothing over the back of my head, her fingers hesitant. “Truly, Ophelia. I am sorry.”
My mind races as I stare, open-mouthed and gaping, at the mosaic. But not just the lettering—also the stained-glass ceiling above me, sand blowing to and fro across its surface, the weak moonlight illuminating all-too-familiar shapes. I stretch my neck, glancing down the corridor, which is studded with black iron candelabras, the old ghosts of beeswax candles dripping from each arm.
“There was . . . another?” I finally manage to ask. That chasm in me—the one that opened in my chest when the truth of the Saints emerged—widens, hungry and fathomless.
“Yes,” the Sepulchyre warrior tells me. The heat of her floods through my garments, bringing warmth to my face. “The First Son built this city when the Fatum split. It was a long time ago. Those who did not wish to follow His quest for eternal life stayed in Liminalia. The rest came with Him here.”
I am almost too weak and weary to process her words. I want to grab onto a kernel of the old world, clutch it tight against my chest. But everything falls through my hands—there are no garnets or beeswax or swathes of velvet or dew-studded blooms here. Just sand and dust, trickling through my fingers, formless and lost.
“You’ve been lied to your whole life,” she continues, stroking my hair in a way that makes my blood pound harder. “It’s not your fault.”
“What if all of this is the lie?” I demand, pushing her away with both hands, though my effort barely sways her. “A monument to falsehoods, built by the Creatrixes to fool their followers?”
Nyatrix inhales sharply against me, her chest heaving into my back. She’s silent, like she’s actually considering what I’ve said instead of immediately dismissing it. “I suppose that could be,” she finally says, and there is no mockery in her tone. “Though it seems like a lot of effort, especially during war.”
We were always told that the First Son begged the goddesses and the Sepulchyre to leave His holy city at the edge of the world alone, and war only broke out when they refused. There was never any talk of an old Lumendei. A first Lumendei.
I force myself to glance around, huffing a tear-strained breath. Everything I see is damning evidence. Just like the rotten, ruined thing my beloved city became when Nyatrix pulled the blade from its cage.
“I can’t even trust my own eyes any longer,” I whisper, tears dripping down to my lips. “Nothing feels real.”
“I know,” Nyatrix says, surprising me. “I’ve seen a few escapees from Lumendei go through this process. It’s awful. And I’m sorry you have to do it.”
My heart nearly stops at her words— others have gone through this? People have escaped from Lumendei, the place I thought a paradise? I dig my fingers into her forearm, my mouth agape as I try to form the words to ask the questions hammering away at my ribs. No—none of this can be true. I have fallen headfirst into the wiles of the Lupa Nox, corrupted by diaboli. There can be no other explanation.
Suddenly, Nyatrix pins me to her chest and pivots, graceful as anything, to face the archway. I do not trust myself, so I dismiss the mad, foolish vision of six Host Knights, their armor gleaming in the lamplight, framed perfectly by the sweep of the white arch.
But then one removes his helm, and I find myself looking at Renault—who is here, breathing, perfectly alive . His usually immaculate auburn hair is tousled, plastered to his forehead by sweat. He is not a corpse rotting on the floor of the Devorarium, half-consumed by the High Ecclesia.
Which means he must be here to take me home.
My body tenses, mind white with panic. Renault’s fingers on the hilt of his drawn sword tighten. Two of the knights point bows at us, arrows nocked.
“Foul beast,” Renault spits. “Release my betrothed, or I shall slaughter you like the swine you are.”
Nyatrix doesn’t hesitate. Within a split second, maybe less, she scoops me into her arms like I am a child and sprints into the darkness of the chamber. An arrow ricochets off the marble floor a hair’s breadth from her feet, but we’re gone before anyone can bend another bowstring.
In the dim light, I can just make out an alcove in the wall. Nyatrix runs toward it, her legs devouring the distance across the vast hall, dodging broken pieces of wrought iron and the carcass of an old statue. When she reaches the alcove, I realize it is one of the Saint’s grottos—much like what lines the Spine back home. My heart trips in my chest as she sets me down gently inside.
“Get behind the statue,” Nyatrix whispers, so low I almost don’t catch it.
My body moves to obey her, my cane already reaching out to prepare for my next step. But my eyes catch on the engraving at the feet of the statue first.
SAINTESS LUCIA, the chiseled words read. Next, I see flowing, embroidered robes, more familiar to me than my own face, and a thousand feelings overtake me at once. But Nyatrix’s powerful arms guide me into the slim, shadowed space behind the statue, where I lean against the dusty wall. I hear the harsh sound of an arrow striking the marble outside the grotto and meet the Sepulchyre knight’s eyes for the briefest of seconds.
Her dark gaze is gleaming, half-mad and feral, as she turns and leaps toward the approaching knights. I clench my jaw, hands curling into fists, as I peer around Saintess Lucia. The wan light of the moon catches on their armor, rippling like molten bronze in this tomb of death and memory.
Nyatrix goes for the archers first, cutting through them as though they are nothing. I catch a glimpse of her behind one just before he drops his bow with a startling clatter, his hands going to his throat. His mouth opens, eyes wide, fingers desperately trying to staunch the flow of blood from the wound she soundlessly sliced open in his neck. When he collapses, I hear another clatter and turn to see the other archer has met a similar fate.
They both lie on the marble, heaps of shining armor and flowing blood. The remaining knights close rank, swords drawn, Renault’s barked commands ringing out in the corridor. I crouch lower behind the statue but cannot bear to take my eyes off Nyatrix. For a heartbeat, I lose her in the sweep of sand and shadow—then there’s a gleam of blackened silver in the distance.
Something rolls on the marble floor, tracking a dark trail as it goes, and I realize with a burst of nausea that it’s a severed head. I let out a shaky breath, looking for Renault. I find him a moment later, taller than the rest, the silvered light catching on his auburn hair.
The clash of swords draws my attention as one of his brothers-in-arms exchanges blows with the Lupa Nox. She lures him away from the remaining two knights and then drives him back, half-heartedly dodging strikes. She’s toying with the knight, I realize, like I’ve seen a cat play with a mouse. Of all things, heat blooms low in my stomach, curling around the nausea in a way that makes my entire body tremble. If she loses, I will have no choice but to return home, to face the High Ecclesia, come what may. I’m unsure if that’s any worse than accepting the supposed truth the Lupa Nox offers. Any better.
The soft rustle of feathers, amplified by the empty space, ripples through the corridor. Nyatrix’s black wings spread, wide and terrible and lovely. My breath catches. One beat of her powerful muscles sends sand and dust flying into the knights’ eyes. They draw back, coughing and sputtering, and try to close rank again. But they are only men, foolish enough to request an audience with Death Herself.
Nyatrix descends on them like a plague, moonlight turning her sword to pure silver and haloing her dark, silky hair with a pewter crown. My knees go weak beneath me, heat sinking its teeth into my skin. She is the most terrible and beautiful thing I have ever seen. And yet the knights—my betrothed at the center—seem oblivious to her unearthly splendor, advancing toward the Lupa Nox in what looks like a calculated, rehearsed attack.
She takes on all three of them at once, fending off blows with deadly grace, as though this is mere child’s play.
“You thieving bitch,” Renault spits, his voice carrying. “Cease this foolishness.”
I find myself half-rising from my hidden crouch, one hand clawing at the side of the Saintess’s statue, the other curling into a tight fist. That deep, dark pit in me—anger, supposedly, not sadness—rattles viciously, like it’s trying to tear itself out from under my skin and into the world. The thrum of something —not Mysterium—slips through the air, tinny in my ears after the deep silence of the buried city.
Instead of answering my betrothed’s vile words, Nyatrix finds a gap in the plate armor and skewers one of the knights on the point of her blade. All at once, it’s chillingly clear she could’ve done that from the very beginning. Even after the fight with the Hexen, even after carrying me for bells and bells across the Sundered Lands.
“I am Renault of House Amadeus,” my betrothed shouts, but the tremble in his voice—something I’ve never heard before—betrays him. “And I command you to stop .”
For a moment, all is painfully still. There is little more than the hoarse rasp of my breathing and a faraway trickle of water. But then the space fills with the melodic sound of Nyatrix’s laugh—a dark petal falling to the earth, the velvet of a bat’s wings spread against a midnight sky.
Heat pools between my legs. I need to pray. I long to sin.
The final knight at Renault’s right chokes suddenly and falls to his knees, armor clanging against the marble. It takes me too long to see the point of Nyatrix’s stolen blade sticking through his throat. She withdraws the sword, and he collapses, just another corpse among his brethren.
The Lupa Nox returns to the ground and folds her wings, standing before Renault. He pants, sweat dripping down his brow, as he stares at her in terror. She cocks her head at him, the side of her mouth lifting, but there is no kindness in her near-black eyes. She is, yet again, more wolf than woman, and my pulse is violent in my veins.
I watch, every muscle in my body contracted into knots, as she takes a long, lazy step toward my betrothed. Toward the man who asked me to serve as his assistant in the Sanctum despite the disapproval of the head scribes. The man who risked the reputation of his Noble House to save me. The man whom I know I could never trust again but to whom I certainly still owe some degree of allegiance.
So when the sharp edge of Nyatrix’s blade comes to rest at his neck, I have no other choice. In a clumsy stumble, I burst out from behind the statue, my breathing ragged.
“Stop!” I shout, fear cascading down my spine. “Nyatrix, stop !”