Chapter 45
B loody scrapes cover my hands. Bronze armor glints in the firelight. The Godwinds roar like an animal. The High Ecclesians have not yet noticed I’m standing, too focused on Their heinous work.
I wipe my hands on my robes, smearing blood all over the linen. I stagger forward a step, scouring the ground for a weapon. I almost stoop to heft a large rock, intending to slam it into the rotting skull of the closest High Ecclesian.
I don’t know what comes over me. Perhaps that strange monster slinks back out of my hidden room and bares its teeth, speaking to me in a language only the two of us know. But instead of a weapon, instead of death, that voice whispers a different song entirely.
I creep forward, a smear of bloodstained linen in a world of soot and smoke and sorrow, and place my hands on the nearest Ecclesian. Like I’m offering a Blessing, or perhaps revoking one. The tall figure turns in a whirl of torn vestments, and I tumble into Their arms, gripping Their chest in my hands.
This close, I can see Their corpse face beneath the billowing veil, the truth behind all the pretty lies. They— He —spits something, the words venomous, but it doesn’t matter. There are no Saints. No saviors. This god was never going to save me.
I shove my hands beneath the veil, my fingertips meeting the bone-dry skin of something that belongs in a grave. And then, I think, I scream. I throw my head back and howl, like I was a wolf this whole time, like everyone’s been fooled by the white feathers and curving breast and sweet song.
The skin beneath my hands changes—from dry fragments of barely-there tissue to the cold clamminess of a fresh corpse to living flesh, warm and pulsing beneath my touch. A scream joins mine, I think, raw and terrible, as the High Ecclesian tears off Their vestments and staggers out of my grasp.
In place of a God’s terrible puppet stands a Fatum—healthy and free, his eyes clear and bright. Beneath a threadbare tunic that might have once been grand, his shoulders relax. Something that I dare to hope is peace fills his expression, tears tumbling down his cheeks.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
Then he crumbles into ash, dancing to and fro across the ruined city. I steady myself and turn my head, blinking through the smoke, to find the three other Ecclesians doing the unthinkable: fleeing. Fleeing from me .
Their vestments are little more than smears in the night as They race toward the gaping hole in the Ossuary Gate. I watch, dazed, as They climb aboard what my addled mind thinks are Hexen—even though that cannot be—and disappear into the Sundered Lands.
My head spinning, I lurch forward, catching myself on hands, and watch in befuddled awe as the hard, dusty ground beneath me morphs into rich black soil. Violets bloom in a matter of seconds.
But all I want are asphodels.
“Nyatrix,” I whisper, dragging myself forward until I find my cane lying across the ground, its handle tucked beneath the abandoned cloth. I reach the place where she was slain, but there is nothing there except the stolen sword, shimmering in the war-light. No bloodstain. No wolf-like helm, no single trace of the woman I think I might have loved.
I turn, so heavy with grief and sorrow, and from the heavy smoke stalks a wolf. No—something else. Something new, or perhaps something very old. Though the Sepulchyre blade lies at my feet, wings arch from Nyatrix’s back. Soot is smeared across her face, like she dragged the back of her hand across her eyes and left a trail of deep, dark black.
Her hair is loose, her shattered breastplate gone, and her mouth is curled into a snarl that makes me weak in the knees. I tremble as the only god I could ever believe in prowls closer, her head thrown back as if to scent the wind for blood. For prey.
“Nyatrix,” I breathe, half a question.
Swords clash somewhere in the distance, screams echoing against stone, but for me there is only her.
“Ophelia,” she replies in the same voice, that glorious voice that can be velvet-smooth one moment and strained, rough, undone the next.
“You’re alive,” I gasp, stumbling closer to her. She catches me in her arms, one hand curling around my waist, the other cupping my skull.
“I told you,” she murmurs into my hair, “that you are a revelation.”
“What happened?” I ask, my mind utterly scrambled, the intensity of the pain sinking its teeth into my body making it hard to have a single coherent thought.
“You,” she says, her mouth curling into that dangerous knife of a smile. “You happened, Ophelia. I . . . It was dark. All dark. It was death, I am sure. But then your voice, calling me back.”
She kneels before me, holding me by my waist. The Lupa Nox—Moryx’s Avatar, I no longer have any doubt—tilts her head back, thunderstorm eyes capturing mine.
“And we both know I cannot resist you, little dove,” Nyatrix says, the words dripping from her mouth like honey. With her hands steadying me, I lean my cane against my skirts and take her face into my hands. She pushes into the contact like a love-starved thing.
And when we kiss, when her arms wrap around me, when I think about saying I love her, something happens. Whatever prowls in my inner chamber breaks free. My vision goes white, and I am airborne, perhaps in the clutches of a High Ecclesian, or perhaps something else entirely.
I find myself in the center of a meadow. Beneath my feet, the bloodstained dust is gone, banished by a lush carpet of impossible green, crowned in dew. The air is heavy with the drone of bees. I turn, only to find Nyatrix beside me, looking just as bewildered.
“Children,” booms a voice.
I startle. Nyatrix grabs my hand, her long fingers pressing into mine. Before us stands . . . I am not sure, not exactly.
A woman, maybe. Two women, really, but in one body, my vision constantly unsure which one to focus on—the one with long, flowing blonde hair and soft silk draped over the curves of her body, or the one with umber skin and a sharp jaw, her black hair shorn to her skull.
“Avatars,” says a gentler voice, “you are awoken.”
The meadow trembles around us, as if such beauty can barely sustain itself in our world of horror and strife.
“We lend you our power,” says the deep, rich voice, “but you must use it to destroy our child. I fear we could not.”
“Couldn’t bear it,” adds the other voice, the blonde-haired figure flickering stronger for a moment.
“And now our weakness is your mantle,” the other says, a note of frustration—disappointment, perhaps—in her voice.
“Goddesses,” Nyatrix says, letting go of my hand to sweep low into a bow.
I do not follow her—I’ve spent too long on my knees—and if these Creatrixes take issue with it, I dare them to voice it. A strange new bravery surges in me, like all my crippling doubt has been burned away.
“Together,” the Creatrixes boom as one, the word vibrating in my bones. My heart races, and I feel as though my chest may burst, that sharp-toothed creature inside me growing too large for my skin. “Together, you can end what we could not. But you must go now. Much is unsure and much we have diminished ourselves. How long we can grant you our gifts is unclear.”
Nyatrix rises beside me, a column of shadow and death in this lovely meadow. Perhaps we could just stay here, I think. No more war. No more hunger. Just a meadow and the taste of her blackberry mouth.
“Why did you leave?” the Lupa Nox asks, her voice catching. I turn to look at her, watching a single tear—diamond-like in the clear sunlight—roll down her cheek.
“We saw no other choice, daughter,” the woman with the shorn hair replies. “It is regrettable that your mother was left behind, the great Petronyx. Here, at least, is your chance to make her proud.” She pauses, lifting her chin. “Do not forget that once you have destroyed the old world, you must then birth a new one.”
The meadow disappears as if it never existed, leaving the two of us standing on the edge of a battlefield. For a long moment, we stare at each other, the sounds of the fighting distant, as though it’s hundreds and hundreds of paces away instead of fifteen or twenty.
“Ophelia,” Nyatrix murmurs, taking my hand. Her eyes are wide, filled with awe. She reaches over my shoulder and brushes something—brushes me , I realize. I turn, nearly tripping, and find the arch of a snow-white wing burgeoning from my back.
Some forgotten instinct blooms, and I spread one wing, finding that the downy white fades into a rich gold that glints madly in the firelight. I flex the other wing, sending a wave of dust over the violets. Hesitantly, I reach down toward the soil, brushing my fingers across the pale petals.
The violets spread suddenly in a great wave, sweeping across the ground. Dust and blood disappear, and in their place an endless green rises, filling the air with the scent of spring. The growth—a Sundering in reverse—rushes toward the fray of battle, snaking beneath soldiers’ feet.
Freshly slain corpses rise in some grand awakening, hands clutching at wounds that are no longer there. Soldiers watch as their comrades stumble to their feet, as the enemy they just killed opens their eyes and pulls a deep, rattling gasp of air into revived lungs. I drag my gaze through the crowds, searching desperately for Agrippina, but cannot find her kind gaze or wavy mane of silver hair.
Some of the fighting halts. Sepulchyre and Host alike lower their weapons, looking at the suddenly lush and fertile ground, the resurrected people. Instead of shouts, murmurs fill the still air. Eventually, all eyes turn toward us. I wonder what they see: two women with wings, a dove and a diaboli.
The Sepulchyre soldiers drop to their knees, bringing fists to their chests. Host Knights look on in confusion, unsure if they should keep fighting or, perhaps, rebuke their god and take up a new one.
“You’ve all been lied to,” Nyatrix shouts, taking a step toward the now-silent horde. “All of us. Sepulchyre and Host alike. We all suffer for nothing. Our leaders command us to commit violence as they kneel to pray.”
I cannot tear my eyes away from her. No one can—not a single person beneath this war-torn night sky looks away from her.
“Fight, if you must,” Nyatrix says, spitting the words out, a challenge. “But know it’s for naught.” She turns to me, her gaze a heavy thing, filled with expectation and something else—something tender and sweet. “I love you,” she murmurs, her soot-stained fingers tracing my jaw.
My heart soars, and that inner chamber thrums, like perhaps it’s no longer empty. “I love you, too,” I tell her, gripping her hand, staring into her sharp, fierce features.
“How do you feel,” she begins, all of her attention settled on me, “about slaying a god tonight?”
I cannot walk without a cane, but with whatever Blessing two long-lost goddesses have bestowed upon me, I can fly. My shoulder muscles strain and the Godwinds actively fight against me, but when I tire, Nyatrix tucks me into her arms and continues across the Sundered Lands. It took us days to cross this barren earth on foot, but I think we only fly for a few bells. Perhaps the Creatrixes changed the curvature of the land, folded up the hills and sands just for us.
When I sight Lumendei on the horizon, it’s still a ruin clinging to a crescent-shaped slope on the edge of the sea. Seeing it—all of it—from this angle is like a knife in my chest, an undeniable confirmation of the lies I spent my life swallowing.
We land, Nyatrix guiding me, in the rotten swell of earth that was once my beloved gardens. At least in the sweep of night, with only the moonlight by which to see, I’m not forced to consume every detail, to catalog every dead thing where I thought life bloomed.
Anger courses through me, and I curl my hand into a fist, biting down on my tongue to keep from screaming.
Nyatrix brushes my shoulder with her hand, turning to face me. She takes my face between her palms, impossibly tender. “Are you sure?” she asks me.
Just three words. She doesn’t need more. I know exactly what she means. I squeeze my eyes shut, expecting the telltale prick of tears fighting to be shed. But there is nothing. My tears have run dry. My sadness, it seems, has also transmuted into something else. Or perhaps, like me, it has been something else all along.
“Yes,” I say between gritted teeth, opening my eyes to stare into hers. “I’m sure.”
The Lupa Nox, the Avatar of Death, looks at me a moment longer, my face still between her large hands. Then she nods, and when she stalks forward toward the Spine, I follow her. I remember walking this path, praying to every Saint who might answer that I wouldn’t find a High Ecclesian lurking in the dark of the arch, chainmail glinting in the gloom. Now I pray that I will.
I would like to show Them how sharp my teeth have grown.
“My dearest Ophelia,” comes a voice that sends an ice-cold chill racing down my spine.
I draw in a sharp gasp of air and turn, peering into the gloom of the ruined gardens.
And there stands Renault Amadeus. Unblemished, unharmed, not torn into tatters by the gaping maw of that reptilian Hexen. My mind swims as Nyatrix’s gloved hand lands on my shoulder.
“You,” I choke out. “ How ?”
My question is more or less answered as the very same Hexen that snatched Renault from Nyatrix’s grasp comes slinking out of the shadows. Its forked tongue darts into the air, dark, beady eyes trained on us. Renault stretches out a hand and pats the Hexen’s shoulder as if it’s an old friend.
The cries of those beasts—how many times did I think it sounded like the High Ecclesia? I grit my jaw, swallowing hard. If only I had not been trained to doubt myself so thoroughly.
“What glorious things you two have become,” Renault says approvingly, striding forward. He’s dressed in full Host Knight regalia, the pale moonlight making his bronze armor glimmer like a jewel.
Beside me, Nyatrix holds her ground—utterly still, a predator sighting its prey. “Ophelia was always glorious,” she purrs. “You were simply too foolish to see it.”
Renault draws still closer to us, delicately stepping over a gnarled stump. The enormous Hexen shadows its master. “Perhaps,” he muses, coming to a stop, “you are correct.”
My heart beats wildly as I watch him as closely as I always have, analyzing every small movement of his face, his body, his eyes, desperately trying to figure out what he wants. Not too long ago, it was so I could give it to him, whatever it was.
Now I watch for an entirely different reason.
“He’s waiting for you,” Renault says with a sweep of his arm, gesturing toward the Spine. “Sempiternus. The First Son. Our Great and Glorious God. He’ll make a meal of you, grind up your bones and drink your blood.”
In my peripheral vision, I see Nyatrix bare her teeth. “He is most welcome to try,” she snarls.
Renault tilts his head up, like he’s stargazing. The Hexen beside him continues to hold still, the moonlight dappling its leathery hide. I try to determine the greater risk: the beast or my betrothed. I do not arrive at an answer before he speaks again.
“There is, of course, another option,” Renault says, leaning against a Saint’s crumbling pillar. “We could be a most Holy Trinity, could we not? The three of us need not bow to His desires any longer. Think about it—the wealth and influence of the House Amadeus, the military might of the Lupa Nox, the medicinal skill and academic knowledge of Ophelia Foundling.”
The clouds unstitch themselves from the black velvet of the night, pouring weak moonlight onto the gardens like liquid silver. Renault’s face is bright, brimming with pure belief. “We would have no need for gods,” he says. “We could create Sylva’s future together.”
I turn toward Nyatrix just as her thunderstorm gaze meets mine. It’s strange—all my life struggling to understand people’s intentions, the words behind the words, and yet with her, a single exchanged glance tells me everything.
“If I understand correctly,” I say, unfurling my wings, “you offer us equality after a lifetime of subjugation, Renault Amadeus.”
Nyatrix coils beside me like a snake.
Renault, ever the fool, beams. Were it not for the abomination at his side, for the ruin of the blighted gardens, it might be the kind of scene a historian would rush to record in the annals of Sylva’s history. The sea winds race up the cliffs, buffeting me with salt. My blood pounds, the power of the Votum pacing beneath my sternum like a great beast in its cage.
“Yes, Ophelia,” Renault says. “I am so glad you understand. Let us be done with the First Son. Let us establish a Holy Trinity and remake this world.”
Nyatrix’s fingers brush my cheek. I turn toward her and she steps closer, her palm cupping the side of my face. “What do you say, my love?” she murmurs, too quiet for Renault to hear. “Equality or revenge?”
“Oh,” I whisper, gazing up at her, a wolf in the brambles. I don’t think I’m supposed to want revenge. I think with Vitalia’s avatar beating inside my chest, all downy wing and blossoming meadow, I’m supposed to only seek life. Light and shadow, me and Nyatrix, meant to balance each other. One cannot, as my mother told me, exist without the other.
And yet.
“I think,” I begin, “I’d rather enjoy revenge.”
She kisses me, rough and desperate and impossibly lovely. Then Nyatrix steps away, just slightly. With a soft rustle of feathers, she’s gone. Renault whirls, his hand flying to his sword just as a massive shadow devours the moonlight that had been shining down on him.
And then, all at once, Nyatrix is before him—wings spread wide, held aloft on a current of sheer power and nothing more, her smile promising terror. Renault stumbles back, raising his free hand to motion at the Hexen.
It pounces toward me. I know that, much like its master, all it sees is a little white bird—a plaything, nothing more. I unfurl my wings with a smile, taking to the skies. The great beast lumbers into a tight turn in an attempt to follow my movement, its head raised skyward, beady black eyes searching for me.
But I’m already upon it, tucking my wings and falling onto its back, right where its scales fuse with the rough coat of an equus. I place my palm there, fingers outstretched, hovering above the creature, and close my eyes. The power of the Votum—of Vitalia—surges through me, bright and unyielding. There’s a roar, a whoosh, and when I open my eyes, I find only the graying ash of something long since laid to rest.
I return to the ground, catching myself on my cane, and turn toward Nyatrix and Renault. He tries to parry one of her blows and then duck beneath her guard, but she’s faster than him. So much faster. She knocks him off his feet, dragging him onto the crushed seashell path. He tries to resist her, but it’s useless. I know that all too well myself. Nyatrix grips Renault by the throat, hovering in the air, her wings moving in slow, silent downstrokes.
“It doesn’t matter what you do to me,” Renault chokes out, his eyes glassy. “He’ll have you. His Divine Body will be restored. Kill me, if it pleases you. It changes nothing.”
Nyatrix cocks her head, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Oh, but it would please me,” she murmurs, her gaze straying to me.
I shouldn’t want this. My stomach should twist, my skin should go clammy with horror. My mind should tell me Renault might be a victim, too, that he only did what he had to.
But my rage spent too many anni caged, and it is very, very hungry. I stride forward, for the first time not ashamed of the way my cane thuds on the dry, parched earth. Nyatrix descends, her feet meeting the ground, though she still holds Renault aloft.
His face reddens and tears streak down his face. “Ophelia,” he protests, his voice cloying. “I know you. You are good and kind and sweet. You’re better than this.”
I take another step forward, until the three of us are ringed in moonlight. Anyone might see us. I find I do not care.
“I am better than this,” I agree, letting my wings spread as I lean on my cane. His eyes go as wide as my wingspan. “But you, Renault Amadeus, third son of your House, are not.”
Nyatrix grins, a dagger of a smile, and leans in close to Renault’s face. “And neither am I,” she whispers. Then, in the gardens I’ve walked so many times, in the heart of the place that almost broke me, the Lupa Nox pulls a dagger from her belt and guts Renault.
Just like she promised back in the Sundered Lands.
She shoves her gloved hand in his mouth to stifle the scream. I wait for nausea, for horror, for regret. It never comes. I watch his entrails tumble from his body, slick vermillion rope on the white path. Nyatrix reaches for a length of intestine and replaces her fist with the curl of pink-red ribbon, gagging the man who flogged me with his own entrails.
She lets him crumble to the ground, but he’s not dead yet. Not quite. I close the meager distance between us just as Nyatrix straddles him, gathering up more of the shimmering rope that pours from his torn cavity. I lean over him, look down into his face of silent, tortured agony. His eyes meet mine.
“What you love most, Renault, about your god,” I tell him, my wings spread wide, my body humming with all that unleashed power, “is that you can be utterly horrible your entire life and still be forgiven in the end. But you should know,” I continue, leaning over into his face, “that I don’t forgive you.”