Chapter 43
A nd so it goes, for days—daylight bells spent poring over the old texts Agrippina brings to our hidden chamber, the nights absorbed in Nyatrix, tumbling into the wide, open jaws of a black wolf with every moonrise.
When I’m working, she does stretches and drills, or works on a bracelet made of Argento’s hair. The braid style is complicated, and when I ask her about it, she tells me it’s taken many anni to learn. It fascinates me that a warrior as powerful and useful as Nyatrix finds the time for leisure; such a thing would never be permitted in Lumendei. All my life, leisure has been equated with laziness—or worse, wickedness.
In the evenings, she reads to me from Mare Regina , too. It’s a story about a woman pirate—a sailor of sorts, commanding one of Sylva’s forgotten ships, taking what she wants for her and her loyal crew. It’s strange; I grew up around so many books. I never thought them rare. But Liminalians adore these common clothbound tales, sharing them on a strict schedule. Lumendei scholae taught me that lawlessness ruled here. But these people have their rules, their morals. And they are willing to suffer for them, too, it seems.
“No, I think I’m going to figure it out,” I assure Agrippina one morning, tearing a round of salted bread in half. Steam curls lazily from the teapot’s mouth at my left, reminding me of hot springs—and the woman I’ve been entering their waters beside.
“No one’s been able to translate these papyri for many anni,” Agrippina says gently, watching me with a guarded gaze. “It would certainly be quite a boon to know more of what our ancestors held sacred. But there are no expectations, Ophelia.”
I shrug her off, fixated on a line in a new papyrus she’s brought me just this morning. Here in Liminalia, hidden deep in the Conclaves, my mind feels clearer, sharper, stronger—more capable than in Lumendei, somehow. No cloying words from Renault, no unsettling threats from Sergio, no incense from the Morning Devotions tickling my nose until my head hurts. Perhaps I’m a fool, but I feel in my bones I’m capable of translating these difficult papyri.
Many of the Cult’s fellows with a knowledge of the older languages died in the Tithing Massacre, leaving the Cult with a host of literature no one could understand. Lost language, it seems, is a shared theme between the Host and the Sepulchyre. So many bells I have spent in the Sanctum beside Renault, focused on uncovering the art of shipbuilding. It transfixed me for many anni, the idea of being able to find a world beyond Sylva, a place waiting out there on the wide seas where I might belong.
Instead, I birthed my own tiny world in the ancient halls of the Conclaves, with Agrippina and Nyatrix and the ever-present ghost of my mother. It is folly, surely, but I feel her here, as though some part of her still walks among the living, guiding me gently toward what I might need to know. Childish thoughts, and yet I let myself have them.
“Where did you find this one?” I ask Agrippina, unrolling the papyrus further. The others she’s brought me are transcribed, illuminated with gold leaf and lovely lettering. This one features scratched-out words and abandoned lines, written in what looks like a rushed hand, a date indicating it’s nearly one hundred anni old inscribed at the top.
Agrippina pauses, leaning back in the chair. A rare stream of pure sunlight breaks through the lingering clouds of Liminalia, highlighting her expression—all the lines in her face deepened, her lips pressed together.
“Your mother was working on this one,” she says finally, her gaze darting away as she smooths her linen skirts. “Just before the massacre.”
My heart leaps into my throat. “Do you know what she was thinking? Are there any notes? Why didn’t you show me this one immediately?”
At the far end of the room, Nyatrix rises from the settee and stalks toward us. Agrippina glances her way and then looks back at me, swallowing hard. “It’s a colloquial form of Old Ceremonia, your mother thought,” she explains. Her hands shake in her lap. “She was obsessed with it. We found it in an ancient section of the Conclaves that has long since flooded. It’s unlike the others, as you can see, and it seemed to have been intentionally preserved, purposefully hidden. I . . . She never translated a shred of it, not for all her incredible intellect, in the four or five anni she worked on it.”
“Seems all the more reason,” Nyatrix says, an edge of warning in her tone, “that you should’ve shown it to Ophelia immediately.”
Agrippina heaves a sigh, raising her hands toward her face and then dropping them back into her lap. She is clearly distressed, color flushing her lined cheeks. “It is so much pressure,” she finally says, leaning her elbows on the table. “You have just arrived, having come from terrible circumstances. Your time could easily be filled with simply recovering from a lifetime of enduring the Host’s horrors. To throw an enigma at your feet that your mother could never decipher?—”
“Agrippina,” I begin, trying to find the words. Nyatrix’s palms land lightly on my shoulders as she comes to stand behind me. Asphodel floods my senses, memories of my mother tumbling through my mind. “I appreciate your care. But I am so much stronger than you think.”
Nyatrix’s fingers flex into my skin, a gentle squeeze. “Just because your test said she’s not the Avatar, which I still find absurd, doesn’t mean she’s weak,” the Lupa Nox says to Agrippina softly. “She’s stronger than you and me both, I’d wager.”
“Well,” I stutter, blushing. “Don’t be absurd.”
Nyatrix moves her hand to the back of my chair, the other pressed against the table’s edge until she’s bowed around me, a shield, a refuge. “It is not absurdity,” she murmurs, her eyes meeting mine. “Farthest thing from it.”
I look away, back down at the papyrus. “I did manage to translate a character we had no reference for in Lumendei by cross-referencing it with other texts and taking a guess based on context,” I say. “I might be able to do the same here.”
Agrippina nods and gets to her feet. “Your experience with the Host’s trove of papyri could certainly aid us,” she says. She opens her mouth, hesitates, and then looks at me imploringly. “I am only interpreting the Votum’s trial the best that I can. I agree that what you’ve shared with me about the violets and that man’s hand is very compelling. What I’m trying to say is, I don’t mean to underestimate you, love.”
I smile up at her. “I know.”
“I’m just...” She looks away, toying with the end of her graying braid. “I’m just trying to do what I think Celia would want, were she here.”
I swallow down the emotions that scramble up my throat. “Thank you.”
Agrippina raises one hand and brushes a tear from her eyes. Then she straightens, tugging her apron until it lies straight across her torso again. “All right. I should be off. The Centuria’s watching the Cult closely, but I think with all the tension and leadership changes, we’ve managed to get them focused more on one another than us.”
Nyatrix waves a hand. “Let them eat each other alive.”
The two of them exchange more words—information about the Celeres and Argento, military movements and scouting parties, all gathered by Tiberius—but my attention trails back to the papyrus. An instinct from deep within me rises like a wave. This text is a firsthand account. Nothing else explains the lack of ornamentation, the uneven penmanship, the desperate tilt of the characters. I wonder if my mother thought the same.
I gulp down tea and shift my weight in my seat until the pain in my hip quiets. Then I pull my scrap papyri over from the side, dipping my quill into the ink jar. Nyatrix reminds me to eat, so I take a few more bites of the salted bread before beginning to make a sketch of the sections I can understand.
After what feels like only a bell or so, Nyatrix reappears at my side with a clay jug of fresh water and a light supper. I eat it absentmindedly, barely tasting the oil-soaked olives and spiced chickpeas. I’m absorbed entirely in the text, dismantling it character by character, trying to find the places I might slip in and capture understanding.
I think I am about to find something when I cross-reference this strange papyrus with another, older one Agrippina brought the day before. It’s a children’s story—like the text I helped break for Renault—and I had put it aside, but the narrative is easier to follow and may shed light on this new-to-me scroll.
Despite everything, there’s a strange peace to this process. I sit at the table by candlelight, the sun setting over the window, Nyatrix performing a series of stretches and exercises on the floor at the other end of the chamber. I could do this forever, I think, were the world softer, greener, safer.
The door bursts open, and I startle, knocking over the candlestick. Nyatrix, somehow, manages to leap up and grab the candle before the flame touches the papyrus. For a moment, I’m little more than pounding blood and desperate, beating heart. As my brain grasps that the papyrus is undamaged, I also realize Agrippina is standing before us, looking half-crazed.
“The Host is here,” she manages to utter, her voice high-pitched and strained. “They’re somehow driving the Hexen into the ramparts. Maxima is worried the Ossuary Wall might fall.”
I whip my head up to look at Nyatrix, who stands perfectly still, her eyes narrowed. “The Ossuary Wall withstood the War of the Sundering.”
“Nyatrix,” Agrippina says, crossing the room to stand just before the knight. “The Host is here . They crossed the Sundered Lands. For the first time since the Tithing Massacre, they are at our door, attacking us.”
Nyatrix’s jaw tenses, the tendons of her throat standing out in the low light. “Why?” she asks hoarsely, though her gaze darts to me.
Agrippina looks at me then, too, a horrid confirmation.
“What?” I sputter. “Why do they want me? There is no reason they should seek me like this.” I drop my head into my hands as a new horror makes its home beneath my sternum. “I won’t have people die for me.”
“It’s not just you,” Agrippina assures me, though her voice is still strained. “It’s the sword, too.”
Nyatrix and I exchange a long glance. A few nights ago, we decided to tell Agrippina the full story—the Crypta, the cage around the sword, the shattered illusion.
“I told Maxima,” Nyatrix groans, digging her fingertips into her hair. “Fuck. I told Maxima about it.” In the days we’ve spent hidden away, Nyatrix still hasn’t managed to figure out whether she can trust her commander—who she rarely questioned until now. Not even the information Tiberius has been feeding Nyatrix has helped her make a decision.
“She’s tearing the city apart looking for you,” Agrippina offers in a small voice. “Though I’m sure not just for the sword—she must also want you to fight. Even with the rest of the Celeres standing by, I am unsure of our chances without you. There are so many foot soldiers, Nyatrix. Triple or quadruple our forces.”
“You can’t give it back,” I find myself saying, holding Nyatrix’s gaze. “If they want it this badly, you cannot return it.”
I hear Agrippina’s sharp intake of breath and watch Nyatrix’s jaw tighten. She swallows hard, her eyes fluttering closed. “No,” she whispers. “So there’s only one thing to do.”
She turns to the trunk tucked against the wall and begins to pull her armor from it—quietly snuck into the Conclaves by Tiberius and a few of Agrippina’s trusted fellows. It’s the armor I’ve always heard about but never seen. Due to the late summer heat, she wasn’t wearing it when she was captured and taken into the Vincula.
It’s the armor they write about in Lumendei’s annals, in the records that might live long enough for someone like me to pore over them by candlelight, desperate for a scrap of the past, for the things we once knew but have forgotten. We are always forgetting, mortals. And when we do look back, we look to loot, to mine, to take. Never to understand. Never to learn.
“Nyatrix,” Agrippina warns. “Lucretia was murdered, and you disappeared. You’ll be taken into custody. You’ll be fighting the Host and the Sepulchyre.”
She’s not listening. Instead, she’s lacing up her boots—the ones that come to her knees, meticulously crafted from black leather, the waxed cotton ties tight against her long, powerful legs.
“I’m the last of my kind,” she murmurs, a sad, soft smile on her face. “It was always going to come to this, I suppose.”
I push myself up to stand unsteadily. “You cannot change what your people did by sacrificing yourself,” I protest, though I know all I really want is for her to stay with me. Now that I’ve found her, I cannot imagine losing her. I cannot stand over her funeral pyre or gaze upon her bones set into a glimmering, tiled grotto. I won’t.
“No,” Nyatrix agrees with a shrug, reaching over to the settee and grabbing her chainmail, dropping it over her head. “But I won’t let the Host take Liminalia, either.” She settles the metal over her shoulders and meets my gaze. The sun paints her eyes red before it slips beneath the horizon, plunging us into darkness. “And I certainly won’t let them take you.”
She motions for Agrippina, who holds her ground for a long moment, the two of them in some unspoken stand-off I don’t understand. But then Agrippina sighs, a pained understanding crossing her face, and she moves toward Nyatrix. Then, carefully, she helps the knight into her armor.
I watch them and cannot shake the feeling I am seeing Nyatrix’s corpse prepared for death. Agrippina pulls the oiled leather buckles tight, her fingers practiced. I fumble for words and find none. Not until Agrippina steps away, leaving only Nyatrix.
No. Only the Lupa Nox.
Her armor is silver, blackened with age and blood, the material sculpted and engraved to look like the proud chest of a wolf. Sharp pauldrons extend from her shoulders, glimmering in the candlelight. Two delicate slits, freshly shorn, run down the back. Under her arm, she holds her helm—a perfect replica of a growling wolf, teeth bared, ears flattened. The workmanship is surely Fatum, another thing lost, sacrificed on the altar of the First Son’s ambitions.
“I’ll go,” I whisper.
Nyatrix’s hearing picks it up immediately, and she strides over to me. “No,” she growls.
“Yes,” I reply, tilting my head back to look at her. “They want me. They want the sword. I stood by while the Host devoured so many foundlings, so many children, turning people who simply wanted to honor their god into fodder for the battlefield.”
“I’ll give them the sword before I ever give them you,” Nyatrix snarls, her eyes wild. “You have sacrificed enough.”
She steps back then, her hand going to the pommel of the Cursed blade. Her wings spring from her back, devouring all the light in the space, stretching across the chamber.
She is heartrendingly beautiful. My lovely apocalypse.
“The Host will take no more of you,” the Lupa Nox says, like it’s a vow, a hymn, a promise that will never become undecipherable like the papyri piled on the table. She hefts the sword into the air, gloved fingers closing around the handle. “They can have the blade.”
“Nyatrix,” Agrippina begins, but the Lupa Nox turns to her, the moonlight grazing the sharp, feral features of her face. Not mortal. Never mortal. Not even close.
“The First Son may take this blade,” she murmurs, striding forward, flipping the sword in her hands, “between His sixth and seventh rib. In His stomach. In His heart, if He still has one.”
She pauses, candlelight running like rivulets of gold along the intricate embossing on her armor. With one hand, she raises her wolf-helm and settles it onto her head. When she speaks again, it is a low growl, a dangerous purr from the back of her throat, the depths of her bones.
“ That is the only way this false god will take anything from us ever again.”