Chapter 38
T he next morning, the sun seems to push through Liminalia’s ever-present cloud cover more than before. And for the first time in many days, I rise with it, swinging my legs over the side of the bed to do the stretches Headmistress Magdalena taught me so many anni ago. I feel different, I think.
Last night, Agrippina and I did a ritual. I wanted to banish the emptiness sitting wide and vast in my belly, but Agrippina thought we should fill it instead. So with Nyatrix called away on duty for the evening, we made a special tea from Agrippina’s vast selection of dried herbs. Flowers and leaves and stalks meant to bring warmth, encourage pleasure, settle heartache. She had me drink the entire pot—which felt so wasteful—but said it was important that I feel full. Filled to the brim with life and growth.
I’m not sure if I’m fixed. I don’t know if I ever will be. But this morning, I feel lighter. Strange how emptiness in the right place makes you feel so heavy.
I’m leaning to the side, stretching my hip, when a knock sounds at the door. “Come in,” I call.
For some reason, I’m expecting Agrippina. But it’s Nyatrix who strides in, all midnight-black and glinting silver chainmail. She wears a different sword than the stolen blade, its handle wrapped in worn leather, tucked into a sheath. My heart clenches all the same.
“Could we speak?” she asks, approaching the end of my bed. Her eyes sweep over me, like she’s trying to determine how fragile I am. How broken. If a single touch will send me into shattered pieces on the floor.
“Yes,” I say, my stomach fluttering.
She nods and enters the room, sitting down on the edge of my bed. Murky gray light spills through the stained-glass panels, painting the floor with long swathes of blood-red. She looks tired, I notice. Formidable as ever, yes, but exhaustion clings to her.
“The Centurion Primus is unwilling to wait any longer, Ophelia,” she says. “It’s the Votum or the Expurgo. Today. I highly recommend you choose the Votum.”
My breath catches in my throat. Agrippina told me about the Expurgo a few nights ago—the dangerous ritual most Lumendites seeking refuge in Liminalia have no choice but to undergo. In Centurion Lucretia’s republic, she warned me, the rite has grown increasingly dangerous.
I close my eyes. I barely know if I even want to be the Avatar. I know I’d like to kiss Nyatrix. I’d like to work in the greenhouses with Agrippina. I’d like to find a softer, quieter part of this world.
But perhaps there isn’t one. Perhaps my God already devoured it.
“The Votum, then,” I say, trying to sound strong. Trying to be half as strong as Nyatrix. I glance up at her, and it’s impossible not to see the Lupa Nox as she was the night we fled. All vengeance and terror with that stolen blade in her hands, wings spread behind her. Death Herself, I’d thought to myself more than once.
“Did you tell your Centuria about the sword?” I find myself asking her, chewing on my bottom lip.
“Of course not,” she replies. She sounds so tired and it makes me yearn to take her in my arms. “Lucretia already believes I’m little more than a weapon the goddesses sent for her to wield against our enemies. Nearly everyone else is terrified of me. Remember, I’m Moryx’s Avatar, in their eyes.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, shifting my weight, trying very hard to stop thinking about the fact that we’re essentially sharing a bed. “This is Liminalia. Your people honor the Creatrixes. Shouldn’t they think you glorious? A goddess walking among mortals? Shouldn’t they throw flowers at your feet and pay you homage? Shouldn’t they worship you?”
Like I want to , I do not say—only by biting the words off the tip of my tongue. But she watches me as I speak, those eyes so sly and all-seeing, something moving across her expression that I can’t name, though it makes the blood pound between my legs.
“No one, not even the Host,” Nyatrix says, speaking slowly, “wants their god to walk among them. The First Son doesn’t, does He? He uses the High Ecclesia instead. Gods are terrible things, even to the people who worship them.”
There is more, I can tell, that she is not saying, though her body speaks loudly enough—the curled fingers, the shortened breath, the way she avoids my eyes. The way her exchange with Agrippina the other night over dinner was so short, terse, loaded with weight.
“Did something happen, Nyatrix?” I ask her, as delicately as I can. “When the Sepulchyre’s goddess walked among them, returned in a Fatum form?”
Her gaze snaps to me, that thunderstorm in her eyes simmering, like the gale is about to begin. She examines me in a way that makes me feel as though she can peer into my soul—the way the First Son claims He can, weighing my sins and my good deeds, deciding my fate.
But it’s just the two of us in this room, the Godwinds softened to a mild hum, and though I’m probably being fanciful, the Lupa Nox seems to relax when it’s just the two of us. Like her hackles go down, her teeth suddenly not so sharp.
“Yes,” she says hoarsely, one hand dragging through her hair. “I . . . I was very young, barely a maiden by mortal standards. I’m a foundling of sorts myself, I suppose, given by two Fatum warriors to a mortal couple before they went into battle with the First Son. They never came back, so I had none of my own people to guide me.” She pauses, swallowing hard. “Things were fine for many anni. But even when the battles of the Sundering quieted, the bloodlust in me did not. About thirty anni ago, there was a training exercise. And I . . . I lost control, Ophelia. I do not even remember it, not truly. Just this . . .” Nyatrix presses her lips into a firm line, shaking her head.
Gently, I reach across the bed and brush her fingers with mine. Her gaze slides to mine, and her mouth parts. I nod, wanting to encourage her. She carried me across Cursed lands, liberated me from the Host. The least I owe her, I think, is to help with the weight of her own burdens. No matter how much their jagged edges may bite.
“There is something inside me,” Nyatrix says, looking away. The weak sunlight of the Sepulchyre city slinks in through the window, pulling out shimmering shades of cobalt in her hair. “Sometimes it demands to be fed. With blood. With death. Who knows? Maybe the Avatars are real. At least then it . . . it might not be my fault.”
She swallows, glancing down at the blanket, tracing nonsensical patterns in the fabric with her fingers. “I killed eight of my fellow soldiers before I came to my senses,” she says hoarsely. “No one could stop me. I’m not sure if anyone even tried. I just . . . rampaged. After that, after a week of funerals, I bound myself to the Centuria. It’s an old Fatum custom. A serious thing. It helped leash . . . whatever it is inside me. The Centuria’s military commanders tell me where to go. Who to kill. And I do it, oathbound as I am. I can step outside their commands. I’m not mindless. But it’s not easy, so the oath helps hold whatever’s inside me back.”
Nyatrix swallows hard and finally looks up at me, her eyes soft and seeking—seeking something from me , I realize. “But everyone remembers,” she says. “And now you know.”
My heart races. I’ve known since I first laid eyes upon the Lupa Nox that she was capable of such things. It is terrifying to imagine—of course it is. But it is not unthinkable. Besides, who am I to judge, having served the vile purposes of the First Son, having excused so many terrible things all my life?
“Now I know,” I murmur, “and I do not see you any differently.”
Silence descends, delicate as anything, and I think if I do not break it, I will instead lean forward and bring my mouth to hers.
“Compared to you, it should be abundantly obvious I’m no goddess.” I laugh, gesturing toward my leg, hidden beneath the sheets. “No Avatar. Were I imbued with the tiniest scrap of such power, do you think I’d be a cripple?”
Nyatrix examines me, suddenly so very serious, her attention heady and intoxicating. I draw a deep breath, painfully aware of the stonewashed linen across my arms, the bedframe pressing into my back, the silk nightgown drawn taut across my breasts.
“I think,” she murmurs, her gaze dripping across me like honey on the comb, “I would have little trouble believing you are a goddess reborn.”
My entire body goes still, and the moment stretches. I want to close the meager distance between us and taste her kiss, to feel her long locks between my fingers.
But from down the twisting spiral staircase, a crisp knock sounds at the domus’s front door.
Nyatrix releases a hiss, languidly getting to her feet. “That’s our escort,” she says, straightening her blouse. “For the Votum. Are you ready to go?”
I inhale sharply. “I don’t have much of a choice, Nyatrix, do I?”
She looks at me, her eyes filling with a bottomless sadness. “No, little dove,” she breathes. “Not this time.”
B arely a full bell later, I ride a pale equus through the ruined, dust-gowned streets of the Sepulchyre’s city, following a woman in a blood-red cape. The fabric bleeds out into the gray landscape like a wound. Perhaps that’s all there is—blood to be spilled, blood to be taken, blood to be let.
“Centurion Primus Lucretia,” I begin hesitantly, “did not seem very happy about my cane. My limp. Did you not tell her?”
I feel Nyatrix’s scowl even though I can’t see it. I slide my fingers deeper into Argento’s thick black mane as she looks up at me from the ground, where she leads the equus I’m astride.
“No,” Nyatrix says as Argento turns his massive head toward her. “It was a calculated decision. Let her underestimate you.”
I swallow, listening to Argento’s hooves against the sandstone pathway as I examine the Centurion up ahead—her gray hair in a severe knot, her collar of bones, the sword on her waist, the soldiers in silver chainmail flanking her on both sides.
I can’t stop replaying the Centurion’s reaction as we walked down the steps of Nyatrix’s domus: her eyes locked on my cane, the way she flatly demanded if I was the suspected Avatar, as if nothing could be more absurd. How Nyatrix’s expression went dark at the Centurion’s inquiry, her lip curled in distaste.
“Do you find my cane shameful, too?” I ask in a near-whisper.
Nyatrix startles at my words, almost tripping over her own feet as she twists to look at me. Her expression is open, guileless. “Gods, no, Ophelia,” she replies, reaching one hand up to brush my knee, where it lies against Argento’s side. My entire body lights up like a Feast Day bonfire. “Of course not. I just know Lucretia and . . . well, like I said. Calculated decision.”
I don’t respond, instead studying the abandoned city as we pass through it. Decaying doors feature faded floral designs and rusted ironwork that must have been intricate many anni ago. Elegant sandstone buildings rich with carved details—the same curving, asymmetrical style that seems popular here in Liminalia—line the main avenue we’re trotting down.
This place, once, must have been so beautiful. Now there’s little more than dust coating the elaborate stained-glass windows depicting blooming vines and two entwined women I imagine must be the Creatrixes.
“Why did your gods leave you?” I ask, keeping my eyes trained on the Centurion and her soldiers. “You said they left of their own accord.”
Nyatrix heaves a sigh before she answers me. “The Creatrixes understood that He would destroy everything for more power and that if He managed to eat of their divine bodies and drink of their blood, nothing would ever be able to stop Him. So they diminished themselves, scattering most of their power into the Votum instead.”
I turn this over in my mind as the city fades into ragged hills and dusty brush. Without the looming buildings, I can see that mountains rise like broken teeth off to my left. On the right, the rampart walls cage us in. That just leaves the Umbraxan Moors and the Cult of the Mater Dea’s Conclaves ahead of us. And somewhere, between here and there, perhaps, my childhood home. The site of a massacre.
“And what do you think of all this?” I ask Nyatrix, in the same way she might were I explaining my beliefs.
She scoffs, adjusting her grip on Argento’s reins. “Our goddesses abandoned us, and we celebrate it like it’s some benevolent thing,” Nyatrix replies, her tone sharp. “He holds all the power. He’ll devour this entire continent just as soon as He can. If the Votum ever existed, the time has long passed for it to make any difference. In the height of their power, the Creatrixes couldn’t stand against Him. Why would some scrap of their gifts make a difference now?”
I stroke Argento’s silky neck, running my fingers over the musculature. “Where did they go?” I ask, surprised at how wistful I sound. “Could we get them back?”
The Godwinds come roaring down the stone path, battering us. I pull my cowl tighter, holding an arm up to protect my eyes.
“We don’t know where they went,” Nyatrix says when the gale dies down, an unexpected undercurrent of grief in her voice. “Or if they even still exist in the same way they used to.”
At least, perhaps, her gods do exist, though. Somewhere. In some version of what she expects. At least in place of her god there is not a gaping wound, a milk-white eye, a corpse-light.
“I suppose,” Nyatrix begins hesitantly, “that I do understand it. The Creatrixes leaving, I mean. If I thought for a moment that the Host could make me a weapon to serve them and wield me against my own people...”
She falls silent, distant, and I fight the urge to fold at the waist, to reach down and touch her skin and tell her that she is much more than a weapon to be wielded. Instead, I avert my eyes away from the knight, staring toward the horizon.
In the distance, I can see the sea cliffs—sweeps of glimmering gray grasping at the sky. Built into them, Agrippina explained to me, are the Conclaves—the oldest part of Liminalia, perhaps carved by divine hands, a vast network of halls and chambers and courtyards, all hewn from the granite rock face clinging to the edge of the world.
“I might,” Nyatrix continues, surprising me, her voice soft and jagged at once, “find a way to break myself apart, too.”
I lose the battle with myself this time, reaching my fingers forward to brush her shoulder. I watch her gloved fingers tighten around the reins, and from my vantage point on Argento’s back, there’s no missing her sharp intake of breath. I want to say something to her—that everything will turn out all right in the end—but any words I summon to my tongue are flat, false, utterly unbelievable. Perhaps this is why it was so easy to cling to the Host, why even with that horrible, ever-present twist in my gut, I still convinced myself everything was all right.
Because this world is uncertain and full of terror, because mothers hide children behind hidden panels and then perish on the steps of their own homes, because people must endure being the last of their kind, because the land fades and dies all around us like we’re in a never-ending winter. I wish I could still believe in Caelus, in that promise of eternal life, of a softer place after my body’s death where my soul may flourish forevermore.
Otherwise, there is only what I can see, what I can touch. It’s clever, I realize, though the understanding sinks in my stomach like a stone. Without the reassurance of an afterlife, wouldn’t I fight until I am battered and bruised to make this world better? Wouldn’t anyone?
Nyatrix grips Argento’s reins and pulls him to a halt by her shoulder. Then she turns to look up at me, and whatever awaits me on the edge of Liminalia’s moors fades away entirely as I meet her eyes. “We’re almost there,” she says, raising her voice over the Godwinds. “I promise I will keep you safe.”
Something hums in my marrow. So much uncertainty lies before me, behind me, beside me. But not her. Not this. “I know,” I whisper, and I believe it.
Nyatrix offers me a small smile before she turns away and cues Argento to walk forward. She looks back at me less and stops speaking entirely as the terrain becomes rougher. The closer we get to the Conclaves, the more the Godwinds pick up, until I understand why Argento is outfitted in a leather face covering and why Nyatrix instructed me to wear hose beneath my dress and bring my borrowed cowl.
These Umbraxan Moors are a lonely place, all gnarled trees bent at the waist from the endless winds. The soil looks parched, devoid of life, only a few dark bushes managing to find any nourishment in the soil. There are no copses of white birch trees, no river running through the lush green land like the shimmering shed skin of a snake.
Nothing looks familiar at first. It wouldn’t. The God I’ve spent my life worshipping devoured everything I knew. And yet, the longer I look, the more I perceive something about the curvature of the landscape, the placement of the sun in the sky, and the sea in the distance, that makes my heart beat strangely. When I glance down and find scattered ruins rotting into the earth, I avert my eyes, clenching my jaw. It’s a relief, if I’m honest, when we pass under the grand arches of the Conclaves.
Two massive pillars stand on either side, made entirely of skulls. The long-dead faces leer at us as Nyatrix leads Argento past. The arch reaching over my head is made from more bones, inset with glittering words spelled out in garnet jewels.
The old, strange Ceremonia takes me a long moment to decipher. Then I realize the blood-colored stones read, Without death, there is no life . Unease skitters through me, automatic, though this time I question how much of it is mine and how much of it is just what’s been beaten into me by the Host.
Up ahead, a courtyard sweeps across the ground in a wide oval of more glittering, pale gray stone. The crash of the sea replaces the howl of the Godwinds. At the edge of the courtyard, the Conclaves rise in a great sweep, climbing the mountainside. No, not quite—the Conclaves are the mountain, and the mountain is the Conclaves. Two massive, arched doors covered in deep red varnish and studded with black ornaments are pushed slightly ajar. Gathered at the top of a series of wide, shallow steps is a cluster of hooded figures.
For a moment, my good knee clamps into Argento’s side, my hands curling tight around his braided mane. But I blink the fear away and force myself to look. These hooded figures bear no gold masks, no spindly height, no gauntleted hands that look more like claws; instead, their shapes and sizes vary. Everyone is dressed in the same black robes, though at the hem, the color melts into a deep garnet, as though the wearer has stepped in blood. Upon their heads, the members of the Cult of the Mater Dea wear black lace veils—sheer, delicate, their features visible beneath the sweep of fabric. Silver chatelaines with scissors and candle snuffers and keys hang from ornate metal belts. The smell of resin and black honey slips from between the open doors, tickling my nose.
And there, I realize, are the steps from my dream. The very ones the Cult fellows are gathered upon—those wide, shallow, stone steps where I sat beside my mother as she plucked petals from asphodels. My heart lurches, and for a moment, the smell of sun-warmed stone and rich soil sweeps over me. But it is only a memory; any physical counterpart of my dream-place is long dead, long since Sundered.
Lucretia halts at the base of the stairs, her red cloak suddenly garish. Two Cult fellows peel off from the group and move to greet her, speaking in low tones.
“Ophelia,” Nyatrix murmurs from my side, startling me. “Are you ready?”
I turn to look at her, my heart climbing into my throat. “I’m not sure.”
She smiles at me, a sad thing, none of that slinking heat and dark amusement. “We rarely ever are, I fear.”
I let out a long, trembling breath, and then I nod. She helps me off Argento—yet again making me feel weightless, burdenless—and pulls my cane from the loop attached to the leather pad on the equus’s back. I steady myself, trying to stand as tall as I possibly can. Then, at the Lupa Nox’s side, I make my way to the Conclaves’ door.
I find a surprisingly warm greeting there. Yes, these people are dressed in the colors of death and wear bones gilded in silver about their necks, but they also tell me they knew and loved my mother, or that they never met her but have heard so much about her. Most important, I think, are the soft greetings of “Welcome home.”
To my delight, it’s Agrippina who escorts us—me, Nyatrix, Centurion Lucretia, and her soldiers—into the vast atrium of the Conclaves. At either end of the enormous chamber, hearths stretch nearly to the ceiling, fires blazing in their open mouths. Black iron chandeliers hang down from the domed roof, filling the space with light and the scent of beeswax.
The click of my cane is muted by the beautiful woolen floor coverings—faded, worn, but still rich with depictions of the Creatrixes, of the sea, of symbols I do not understand but feel myself drawn to, somehow. A few more women, dressed in dark robes and veils but without the blood-red hem and the winking chatelaines, mill about the space. Novices, I presume, those who have not yet taken their oaths.
Agrippina asks us to wait a moment, and so we linger; I examine the walls as Nyatrix and Centurion Lucretia exchange terse words. I see what I think are Saints’ grottos, or something similar, so I take a few steps closer, peering through the candlelit gloom. My heart plummets into my stomach when I realize that instead of statues, I’m looking at skeletons—bodies preserved instead of returned to the Lord, gilded in metals, their bony hands wrapped around weapons, tattered leather armor still clinging to their shoulders all these anni later.
Nyatrix must hear the pathetic gasp I make, for she turns toward me. With one quick look at my face, then at the object of my attention, she sighs and closes the short distance between us. “Bodies of great warriors,” she explains, gesturing toward the alcoves. “Brought back from the fields of war and given honor in the halls of the Conclaves.”
A terrible thought rushes into my mind. “Are . . . are your parents here?” I ask in a trembling whisper.
She pales—which surprises me—and shakes her head. “No,” Nyatrix replies. “Their bodies were not recovered.” She pauses, her gaze slinking back to Centurion Lucretia, who is speaking with her soldiers. Then, in a lower voice, just for me, she murmurs, “Thank the Creatrixes.”
I look up at her in surprise. “Do you not approve of this ritual?”
Her lips press together in a firm line. “I think,” she replies, looking over her shoulder for a moment, “that if someone gives their life to a cause, we should not also ask for what remains of their death.”
She swallows hard, and I imagine we are thinking the same thing at the same time—that Nyatrix’s body might one day grace one of these grottos, as though she is but a fresco or a sculpture.
“Though, Ophelia, many warriors want this. It’s seen as a great honor among our people,” she adds with a shrug.
“But you do not,” I say hesitantly, watching her face, studying the way her sharp jaw clenches, the muscles feathering.
“No,” she murmurs before turning back toward our strange little party as two Cult fellows approach. “It’s time, I think.”
I square my shoulders and lift my chin. I try to be the woman my mother might have raised me to be. Then Nyatrix’s hand brushes mine, and it’s like I am suffused with her indomitable courage.
Her fingertips stay pressed to the back of my palm until the Cult fellows lead me away into the belly of the Conclaves to determine if a piece of a long-lost goddess lives in my chest, or if the broken shards between my ribs are just the same as anyone else’s—grief, loss, and the remnants of who we might’ve been if this world were softer and less hungry.