Chapter 44
I half-expect Nyatrix to storm from the room right then, all shadow and ruin, as much a weapon herself as the sword she carries. Instead, she sheathes her blade. Her wings blink out of existence, and some of the darkness leaves her face, the feral gleam quieted. She approaches me, soft and slow, and kneels at my feet.
“Ophelia,” Nyatrix murmurs. “There is something I must ask of you, but only if you can accept yet another burden.”
I don’t hesitate. “I am stronger,” I reply, reaching for her gloved hand, “than anyone thinks.”
She smiles. “Let me at least speak of what I would lay at your feet.”
The rest of the room disappears. It is just me and my dark salvation, both of us gilded in the candlelight.
“Go on,” I whisper.
“You may have noticed,” Nyatrix begins, uncharacteristically shy, “that the Sepulchyre honors our Beloved Dead in specific ways. The Ossuary Wall. The reliquaries. The bone fetishes. The skeletons of great warriors strung up like banners.”
I swallow hard and nod. It is not a practice I understand, nor one I feel I ever will, but I would devour a world for this woman. Birth her a new one. Again and again until everything was to her liking, until the sun hung perfectly in the sky, until the moon rose just as she wished.
“If I should fall,” she whispers, looking up at me through her helm, her eyes a storm, “toss me into the waves. Leave me to the elements. Dispose of me. Let no bone of mine hang in these halls.”
Distantly, I register Agrippina’s sharp intake of breath. I grip Nyatrix’s hand harder. “You will not fall. But yes. Whatever you wish. Anything you wish.”
“The Sepulchyre has taken enough from me,” she whispers hoarsely. “Do not let them desecrate me, too. At least in death, I will no longer be theirs.”
I lean forward, resting my skin against the cool metal. “Should you fall,” I murmur, wishing with every fiber of my being that no such thing will happen, “you will at least be free.”
Three final words clamor in my throat, but my tongue refuses to speak them. I cannot bear the idea that Nyatrix may not return my feelings—for I am, I realize, falling in love with her. Perhaps I have already fallen. And yet I say nothing; more cowardice, I know. But I cannot bear the weight of another unrequited love.
Nyatrix stands and reaches out for me, her gloved fingertips brushing my chin. “Perfect,” she murmurs. “Completely perfect. You are a revelation, Ophelia.”
And then she turns, claps Agrippina on the shoulder, and disappears out into the corridor. I slump back against the chair, my heart pounding even though I could swear it has been torn from my chest and is now affixed to the armor of the wolf prowling the halls of the Conclaves, seeking blood and recompense.
It is my desperation, perhaps, that creates a crack in the old papyrus a few bells later, written in the rushed, uneven hand. The sheer terror I feel pounding through every vein in my body, the way my mind twists between visions of Nyatrix dead or the Host recapturing me or this entire city laid to waste, compacted into something small and sad that will fit in the First Son’s mouth—it all urges me onward, faster, faster, faster.
“Sails,” I almost shout, startling Agrippina, who is transcribing the papyrus to enable me more time with it before its absence is noticed.
“What?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at me.
“This word,” I yell, stabbing a finger at the manuscript. “It means sail! Or something close—a noun, maybe, or the verb. The means by which a ship moves across the water.”
“How are you so sure?” Agrippina asks, a tender kind of hope in her voice.
“I can’t believe it took me so long to realize,” I exclaim, digging my fingertips into my hair. “Renault, he’s been researching shipbuilding for many anni. We just translated—no, I just translated—an old folktale that uses a ship as a metaphor.”
I’m not sure if what I’m saying makes sense, and I don’t take the time to ask Agrippina, instead turning back to the papyrus. Using that word, I can confidently transcribe two more characters into our modern version of Ceremonia. My hands shake, trembling more with each character.
An enormous, echoing boom sounds somewhere in the distance, causing me to knock over the inkwell. Agrippina catches it, staining her fingertips black. I look up to thank her, and her face is pale, corpse-white in the dimness of the evening.
“What was that?” I ask.
She swallows hard and shakes her head. “Keep going,” she offers as a reply, sliding the half-full inkwell toward me.
I nod, unsteady, and do as she says. My lettering won’t be legible to anyone but myself, but it doesn’t matter—I just keep going, untangling this knot of language and time and death.
Finally, I sit back, scanning the words my mind hasn’t been able to read as a whole just yet, only parse out individually, one character at a time.
W e are leaving the only home we’ve ever known with our Creatrixes.
There is no hope here on Sylva any longer, not with the First Son. We’ve tried to show the truth to the Host’s people, but they will not see sense. So we’ve gathered up our Sepulchyre Court and we’ve prepared ourselves to set sail into the unknown.
We are all accounted for, save for our great warrior Petronyx, whom we have not recovered following a recent battle near Lumendei’s outskirts. She carried one of the last goddess-forged weapons, the World-Eater. With her husband three fortnights in the grave and no known heirs, one of our court’s oldest bloodlines may be at an end. We can only hope neither she nor the blade has fallen into the Host’s hands. And our Beloved Dead we must leave behind as well. May they understand, and may they hold back the tide of the First Son’s bottomless ambition.
Moryx’s priestesses have instructed us to destroy all knowledge of shipbuilding, a desperate hope that the First Son might not follow us across the waters. We do not know if anything awaits us. But we cannot stay here.
He is so hungry. He will not cease.
We must get the Creatrixes far from His seeking jaws. They worry He wants to devour them, just as He did His siblings. If He manages such a thing, there might be no stopping Him at all. With His ability to command so many bodies at once, His vast mind somehow looking out from every single pair of eyes, we cannot curtail Him. A god. A gestalt. A horror.
We cannot sacrifice any more of the Sepulchyre to His jaws, to this Sundering, to this war. We cannot save this world. So we must find a new one.
The Creatrixes have already diminished themselves, a pale shadow of what they were, and we cannot stand for any more. They’ve left one last shred of salvation for the people of this continent—should any of them find it within themselves to rebel, to stop this madness, a hidden power will strengthen them. Guide them.
Avatars, they’re called. Vessels of the Creatrixes’ power, sleeping until the right time. I find myself skeptical of this for a number of reasons, but for the people of the Host who know nothing better, I pray it’s true. I pray they have a fighting chance at anything.
But it’s time for them to find their own way out.
“ A gestalt,” I whisper, my hands beginning to shake. I glance up at Agrippina, my heart pounding. “Agrippina. He’s a gestalt .”
She startles, leaning across the table toward me, one hand clenched like she might snatch this truth out of the air and shove it back into the papyrus, where at least we will not know of its terror.
“It cannot be,” Agrippina replies in a low, hoarse voice. “Ophelia, how would we ever kill Him? How would we know whose eyes He is looking out from?”
I close my own eyes, my jaw grinding, and think . The strangeness that consumed Renault, that feverish heat of his skin. The way Carina rebuked me despite so many anni of love between us. The pack-like behavior of the High Ecclesia in the Devoriarum.
And then, all at once, I understand.
“The High Ecclesia,” I say, opening my eyes. “Agrippina, the High Ecclesia. Of course . The High Ecclesia is the First Son. That’s why there’s no Fatum left. Because He either made them part of the Ecclesia or feasted on their long lifespan, their power. That’s why the Tithing started—because He ran out of Fatum.”
There’s more, I realize, additional implications of the words in this papyri, but Agrippina speaks before I untangle it, shattering my fragile concentration. “All those High Ecclesians,” Agrippina mutters. “All those bodies, one mind. Even a powerful Fatum might not be able to contain Him, not on their own. But an entire cohort?”
“Not just the High Ecclesia,” I say in horror. “Mainly Them, yes, but who knows how many of the Host He’s puppeting, peering out from their eyes?”
The scene in the Devorarium barrels into my mind—that pale corpse-light, that widening eye, Nyatrix brought forward like a sacrifice. I fly to my feet, reaching for my cane and almost knocking it over by accident.
“Agrippina!” I shout, feeling like I might crawl out of my skin, half-mad with revelation and terror. “He didn’t know Nyatrix existed until she was captured. He thought He’d devoured all the Fatum left in this world. He wants her .”
Agrippina rises to her feet, pale as the undyed linen of her apron. “In the name of the Creatrixes, He will not have her,” she mutters.
“Can you get me to Nyatrix?” I ask, tugging on one of the spare sets of Cult robes she left in our chambers a few nights ago. “The Mater Dea are healers, aren’t they? Surely you go to the front lines during attacks?”
Agrippina goes even paler, if possible. “The Host hasn’t attacked us like this in so many anni,” she mutters, one hand clenching into a desperate fist.
“Well, they are now ,” I shout, stuffing the papyrus into a deep pocket of the robes. “Agrippina, get me to Nyatrix. You have to get me to Nyatrix. He knew she’d defend her people. He knew she wouldn’t forsake me. All of this is a trap for her.”
She nods, though I can see she’s shaking, and pulls the door open, revealing the shadowed chambers of the Conclaves. I snatch my cane from the wall and take a deep breath, pleading with my body to cooperate, just this once.
“We’ll reach her,” Agrippina tells me as we slip into the dark. I drape the lace veil over my head, pulling the billowing hood up, too. “We’ll reach her in time, Ophelia.”
The way she speaks—so sure, so even—reassures me as I limp through the winding corridor beside her. Something that might be hope blooms in my chest, and I nod, pushing my body into a stiff-legged jog despite the pain.
“Oh,” I say, looking over my shoulder at her. “I’m not sure if you’re Sepulchyre. If any of us are.”
Agrippina’s sure stride falters, and I consider that this may have been poor timing. “What?” she asks weakly, taking a tight turn into another claustrophobic corridor.
“That papyrus,” I reply, wincing in pain when I take a bad step. “It says the Sepulchyre Court left with the Creatrixes almost a hundred anni ago. So who, then, are we?”
T he Sepulchyre’s seat of power is burning. Instead of weak sunlight and pale, shimmering dust, the place I walked through just a few days ago is marred with smoke, blood, and rubble. People race past us, fleeing toward the sea—the same place the real Sepulchyre went, all that time ago.
Though it pains me not to stop and help wounded people, Agrippina and I keep going, following the sound of crashing weapons and shouted commands and terror.
“They really did breach the wall,” she whispers with horror as we slow to a walk, surveying our surroundings. Buildings are toppled. Fires burn. A Hexen races down an alley up ahead, in pursuit of a meal, no doubt. Through the black fog, I see a glimmer of bronze, and my stomach drops.
Without a word, Agrippina grabs my sleeves and drags me into a winding side street, so much like the one Nyatrix and I strolled down beneath a calm sky when I first arrived. It feels like a thousand anni ago. It feels like it happened to someone else entirely.
Agrippina weaves through the streets, more than once shoving me into the shadows as Host knights march by, clearly searching for something. Someone , I fear. We creep into the city center, navigating through rubble and fallen bodies of both Sepulchyre and Host. Or whatever we really are.
I push these revelations from my mind. They are useless. I am looking for only one person. One woman. One wolf of a woman who says my name like it’s a prayer strong enough to heal the Sundered Lands.
From behind the hunched shoulders of a villa torn in half, I peer into the fray of the worst fighting. Mysterium hums hard enough to make my teeth rattle. The mortals on both sides, I see, are mostly using simple Blessings to strengthen their armor, guide their weapons—which means that thrum is from something else entirely.
An equus races out of the pit of bloodshed and corpses, and I recognize him instantly. Argento. He is a thing of legend, surging forward with singular intent, his long, loose mane a dark banner against the night sky. And on his back—the Lupa Nox.
Her helm is gone, her braid streaming behind her. Her sword isn’t drawn, I can see, and for a long moment, my mind can’t process why she’s running away .
“She’s luring something after her,” Agrippina whispers in my ear from where we’re crouched. I swallow, tightening my grip on my cane. “Someone.”
The next moment, a tall, narrow figure steps out from the battle. Its head swivels beneath a draped veil like a bloodhound. My stomach sours. Another figure follows, pauldrons winking in the firelight, gauntlet-covered hands looking more like claws. Their vestments are tattered, soiled around the hems. My throat closes off as I watch them, moving pack-like through the dust. The tiny glimmer of hope I dared to harbor flickers, a single flame in a gust of wind.
“The High Ecclesia,” I whisper, my stomach twisting when a third stalks out from the fray, dragging someone by the scruff. A Sepulchyre soldier. The High Ecclesia, still facing forward, in the direction Nyatrix galloped, takes one hand and rends the soldier’s head from her body.
Agrippina chokes behind me, and I swallow back the nausea, trying to track Nyatrix through the chaos. Hoofbeats echo on stone somewhere nearby, but there’s so much dust, the Godwinds pouring in from the Sundered Lands and bringing that thick black sand with them. Soot and blood and despair fill my nose.
I’m so focused on finding Nyatrix that when hands close around my shoulders, I can’t imagine that it’s anyone but Agrippina—until I’m pulled from behind the rubble and tossed onto the shattered slate stones below. I roll and cough, spitting out blood, trying to pull myself up with my cane. Before I can, my gaze alights on something that strikes horror into me.
“Agrippina!” I shout, trying to crawl toward where the woman who loved my mother, who claimed me as her own, is bleeding out on the street. With a howl, I steady my cane on the broken stone and haul myself to my feet. Then I break into a staggering run, the quickest I can make this body move, toward her.
“No, no, no,” I whisper, placing my hand against the hole torn into her throat. Her chest flutters like a moth’s wings, her mouth open and gaping. I rip the hem of her robes off, applying pressure to her throat. Tears race down my face, and a scream barrels out from my chest.
Cold, metal claws close around the back of my neck, and I’m pulled from Agrippina, dangled in the air like a ragdoll. The chain of my Saintess Lucia medallion snaps—I do not even know why I still wear it—and the golden trinket plummets to the ground. I slide my hand down the length of my cane, tighten my fingers, and stab backwards with all my might. But I only meet more metal, more undead flesh.
Smoke and screams surround me, my eyes burning from the foul air, as the veiled face of a High Ecclesian appears before me.
“Good,” They say in a hoarse whisper that makes my skin crawl. “Let Us dangle her, Our pretty little bait.”
“Nyatrix!” I scream, swinging my cane in every direction I can. “Stay away. Nyatrix, if you can hear me, stay away . He wants to make you a weapon.” My throat burns with the words. There’s no time to explain the gestalt, no time for my theories, but this she will understand above all else.
This, I know, she fears above all else.
Gauntleted fingers slide into my mouth, gagging me. I writhe and kick, desperately trying to evade the High Ecclesian, but it’s no use. I am a single crippled foundling trying to disobey God.
Two more High Ecclesians appear from the billowing smoke. There are ten, I know. If I’m right—if my racing, tumbling mind has produced anything of value—They won’t all be here. He’ll hold some back, keep Them in Lumendei, preparing to devour Nyatrix in that same failed ritual I disrupted. With her, He’d reach eleven Ecclesians—terribly close to the subject of His pursuit, the perfect and sacred Twelve. My stomach roils as I wonder if there might be some wretched way for the First Son to force Nyatrix into birthing His last and final Ecclesian.
A messiah, the Catechemisa would surely say. Bile surges up my throat.
I thrash harder as that perverted Mysterium—the same thrum but the frequency of it all wrong—washes over me. One High Ecclesian, taller than the rest, the outline of Their corpse almost visible through Their veil, hefts a massive spear.
I try to scream Nyatrix’s name again, try to tell her to stay away; I want more than anything for Them to impale me with the spear instead and for all of this to end. I want to say that They can have me, that I’ll endure the rest of my life under His and Renault’s thumb. I’ll repent. I’ll undergo the Baptisma again.
Anything if it means she lives.
But the truth of it is all over so fast. I never realized this from Physica Hall, not truly. It takes me so long to mend wounds, to heal bones, to nurse someone back from the brink. It’s astounding, I understand now, how quickly a body can be broken. Even one as glorious as hers.
Nyatrix bursts from the smoke on foot, more magnificent than ever. Two beats of her inky black wings send dust and rubble flying into the High Ecclesians. They stumble back, and she flips the blade in her hands, its darkened silver length shining in the light of the fires like the only truth in this world of lies.
Her gaze slips to me. Just for a moment. The barest of seconds. It should be inconsequential. It should mean nothing at all. But, I suppose, so should have the first time she looked into my eyes and I into hers. And that was anything but meaningless.
All I see is her, glorious and indomitable in her fury. But then the spear, that horrible thrum, that elegantly engraved breastplate shattering into pieces. She collapses to the ground.
I scream, I think. Someone is screaming. Everyone should be screaming.
The High Ecclesian closes Their cold hand around my throat as I fight to race to her, my wolf of a woman. Even with a horrible weapon sprouting from her chest, Nyatrix manages to pull herself up to her knees. Sweat races down the side of her face, that silky dark hair matted to her skull like a helm.
With a scream, she lurches up onto one knee, balancing herself to stand. My apocalypse. My salvation.
Two of the High Ecclesians approach, slowly, deliberately, Their vestments flowing in the roar of the Godwinds.
“We won’t damage her too much,” comes a voice at my ear. Bile churns in my throat. “You’ll see her again. But she must die first, so she can be remade in Our image. As you all must.”
The towering frames and rippling cloth of the High Ecclesians block my last view of the Lupa Nox, the woman who freed me, the woman whom I should’ve admitted to loving. It would have been an easy thing, cradled in her arms, her hands on my body. Just three words. But I held them back.
And now she’s gone, another corpse on the street. Just more bones in a city of death.
The High Ecclesian holding me tosses me to the ground and, by my hair, drags me over to Nyatrix’s body. Up close, her eyes are empty, her beautiful skin already paling. I pull myself onto my elbows, reaching for her. The heavy hand of a High Ecclesian shoves me back down into the rubble, my chin bouncing off a cobblestone so hard my vision goes black for a moment.
Then the four of Them gather around her, speaking strange words that I don’t understand, the hum of that horrible Mysterium rising like a tide all around us, my teeth rattling in my skull. Some kind of a preparation, a preservation, I fear, for finishing what He started back in the Devorarium, bathed in corpse-light, pinned under the gaze of that eye-wound. He’ll want to take her back, I know, somehow—I know it fiercely and without question. He’ll need the power of Lumendei, the depth of the people’s belief, the perverted sanctity of that unholy Church.
She asked me to toss her into the waves, and I will do so even if it kills me.
I spit out blood and drag one hand across my lips. With desperate fingers, I reach for the top of a broken piece of a once-grand building. Once, twice, then I manage to grab hold.
My body screams in pain. My heart breaks and breaks and breaks, even the tiniest pieces finding a way of fracturing again as I stare at Nyatrix’s crumpled form. I’ll die here, I imagine, this horrible sight the last I’ll ever see. There’s little point in my feeble resistance, I know. But with a howl building like a storm in the back of my neck, I drag myself up to stand.
Because I’m so very tired of being on my knees.