Chapter Forty-Five
Forty-five
This is your responsibility. This is the Goddess’s will. There is no other.
—PRIOR PETRONILLA
THE CRY THAT CATCHES in my throat is nearly freed by Ramiro’s blade, which wastes no time in seeking me out. I push back out of reach, blood pounding, but ice-cold.
Nolan…
Another attack, a hairsbreadth from opening me shoulder to hip.
I keep close to the path wall, but Ramiro is fast, too damn fast. Sloppy, though, no finesse to his strikes.
Except who needs skill when they’ve got enough stolen divinity to make a raging bull seem as gentle as a kitten?
It’s all I can do to dodge, or turn his blows aside.
No trying to block or overpower him. Both are a death sentence.
I can only keep moving. Survive. And I barely manage that, every strike putting me a little more off balance.
Then, my foot catches a rock. I drop straight onto my backside like a clumsy toddler.
The only thing that saves me is Ramiro himself, wasting a moment on a manic, crackling laugh before his sword falls again.
I throw myself to one side, kick out, heel catching the side of his knee.
Something snaps, tears. But Ramiro’s pain is a thousand leagues away right now.
With a frustrated cry, he sinks his sword into the meat of my thigh.
I scream, reflexively dropping a sickle and reaching for the wound, the reckless need to pull out the blade overcoming all reason.
I needn’t have bothered. Ramiro yanks it free, triumph spreading on his face as quickly as the dark stain around Nolan’s dagger, which is still planted in his side.
He straightens—looms—bloodlust glinting in his blown-out gaze as he raises his arm again.
It’s a bad angle. And I have to wait until the very last, riskiest second, when Ramiro drops that final strike, one that looks aimed to remove my head from the rest of me.
I whip my sickle around and release, then jerk back as far as I can as a line of fire lights up across my chest, just below my collarbone. A well-aimed strike.
But not as good as mine. Ramiro stumbles, sickle sunk deep into his sternum, before his knees buckle.
The sound he makes is doomed enough that I scramble to the edge of the cliff, bracing myself for the sight.
Nolan’s body broken on the rocks below. Him sinking beneath waves, too injured to swim.
Nothing at all, the waves having already claimed their meal.
What I see is Nolan, balanced precariously on a narrow, jagged ridge just below my vantage, clinging to the stone.
A breathy, thankful laugh escapes.
Nolan grimaces. “Be relieved later, please.”
I reach down and hold tight as he pulls himself back up over the ridge, then spots Ramiro, slumped over and gasping.
Heaving, really. But a few inches of steel in your lungs will do that.
I don’t feel in better shape. I get back on my feet, ribs feeling like they’re likely to take a stab at my lungs, leg red and wet and screaming.
“You want to finish him off?”
“No time.” Nolan grabs Ramiro’s sword.
Oh, but there is. Enraged fury radiates from Ramiro’s gaze as I sweep by, retrieving my sickle with a yank. He bucks once, mouth filling with blood. It spills from his lips, dribbles down his chin, oily black beneath the cloak of night.
“That”—I lean close—“was for Mortimer.”
The rage in his eyes flickers, turns to utter confusion. Then they go dark. Almost as dark as the satisfied smile that dances onto my lips.
“Lys?”
I catch the pleading note in Nolan’s tone, along with something else. Fear? But he’s right; it’s time to run.
The Caerula may still be in pursuit, but our way forward is clear.
We reach the city and dive into the maze of it.
When Nolan turns, I follow. When I bolt down an alley, Nolan is on my heels.
We are a pack of two, moving as one, running until even our lungs begin to burn.
And then, finally, we stop, in the shadowed courtyard of an empty, crumbling warehouse, moon peeking over its ragged roof.
For several minutes, we listen, backs pressed to the cold brick.
But there are no sounds of pursuit, nor anything else. We are alone.
Nolan turns to me, streaks of drying blood across his pale skin, eyes alight with the glow of battle. I want to laugh again, or howl, a primal sensation tearing through me. But I can barely catch my breath. My gaze locks with Nolan’s, both of us still treading the consuming, velvet darkness.
Then, in a wordless, mutual agreement, we drop to the ground.
I press my forehead to my knees as victory recedes and the pain comes crashing back. “Ghmmmm.”
Nolan shifts closer. “You’re hurt.”
“S’nothing. Scratches, a rib or two that’s been better. Back there, I—” I thought you were dead. “You almost died.”
“Almost but didn’t. You’re hurt.” More insistent this time. Hands unfold me, straightening my wounded leg.
“I’m—OW!”
“No, you’re not.” Methodically, he examines the cuts, then slips off his belt and removes the scabbard from it before tightening it around my thigh. “We need to take care of this.”
“Sure.” The night air is cool, but I’m hot all over. Burning, even. Simmering in my own blood loss. “Just need a minute.”
I expect an argument. Instead, Nolan takes a deep breath and sits back, drawing his own knees up. For a moment, he looks strange. Looks…
Small.
“It’s over,” he says quietly. “The reliquary… we’ll never get to it now.”
Small… and broken.
Something settles around us, weightier than our bare survival, yet gossamer thin.
Nolan stares at me over his knees with a piercing, brittle intensity.
It sinks deeper as my breath slows, heartbeat returning to normal, flesh redoubling its efforts to remind me that divinely gifted does not mean totally invincible.
But those corporeal discomforts slip into the background, pushed back by Nolan’s words and the recollection of those few torn-apart heartbeats where a hole had suddenly opened up in the world, in the place where he had been.
They’d passed quickly, that empty space refilled, but left something behind.
A truth, deep as the wound inflicted by Ramiro and twice as dangerous. A truth I can’t find a name for.
Nolan and I aren’t family. We aren’t friends. We’re—
“It should be you.” The words rupture out of him, blunt as a confession.
“What?”
“It should be you,” he says again, and this time, it sounds exactly like a confession. Like a secret that can’t be kept anymore. “Executrix. The Goddess’s hand. If there is anyone in the Devoted Lands that can carry that honor… Lys, it’s you.”
I try to laugh, but my busted ribs don’t get the joke. “I told you, I’m not—”
“You could have escaped Ramiro. Retreated to safety. Instead you stayed. Saved me.”
“Barely.”
“But you did, though you didn’t need to.
Like you did at the Cathedral, when Emmaus attacked, and when the Renderers…
” He looks away suddenly, as if embarrassed by that memory.
“You play the fool, but you’re not. You were willing to partner with me even after I tried to kill you, because it meant a better chance at finding the reliquary and that mattered more.
You’re one of the finest fighters I’ve ever seen, even if you don’t need a blade to get under someone’s skin.
You improvise. You cross lines when you need to.
I… I thought I was in control in Lumeris, Belspire, Novena.
That there was no challenge I couldn’t conquer.
” He takes a deep breath. “But I’ve failed, over and over.
Made every wrong decision. And since coming here…
all I’ve felt is the constant cracking, as if…
as if I’m flaking away bit by bit. I… I don’t trust my own instincts anymore. ”
“I’ve felt it too—”
“Not like I have.” He tenses further, shrinking into himself.
Withering. “We both know that. Even if you are only staying afloat, it’s better than drowning.
The Executrix needs to be ready for anything.
You bend. You flex. You’re unbridled and unconventional, and…
” He pauses, still staring at the worn-down cobblestones.
“And that is exactly what our blood mother needs more than anything right now.”
Too warm a minute ago, now a perplexed chilliness trickles over my skin.
His eyes find mine again. “That’s what I’m going to tell Tempestra-Innara, if we make it back to Lumeris. If… if they’ll hear me. That even though we failed to find the reliquary, you should be Executrix, and that it would be an honor to see you at the Goddess’s side.”
And just like that, I win.
Nolan is conceding. But not surrendering.
Competitor, adversary, rival… those words no longer matter, held up against whatever we are now.
Nolan is not Jeziah, a companion of convenience and necessity.
And he’s not my blood brethren, that forced distinction that has always been as much challenge as collective.
I don’t know what he is.
Only that there is too little space between us now.
Cyprene turns into a diaphanous thing, a mirage shimmering at a distance a Nolan stands, a ghost threading through the fractured, faded world.
And maybe that’s what we are—ghosts of two doomed children resurrected by a merciless baptism.
He offers a hand, sticky with the blood that is our shared lot, and I accept it, letting him help me to my feet.
For a few heartbeats, we stand like that, silent, dressed by the night, by death, by the divine chain that links us to one another.
I drop my hand first. “The Petrel.”
We move like shadows through the city, and by the time we sneak in through the back of the guesthouse, we hardly need to.
The windows of the common room are dark; the stairs, dark; the interior of Nolan’s room, dark.
Within, he lights a lamp and goes to work immediately, sitting me in a chair, cutting away my ruined clothing to get at my wounds.
He cleans them as best he can, binds my ribs with lengths of torn sheets, stitches the puncture in my thigh.
With every touch of cloth, every snug stitch, the ruthless years of our Cloister training shine, infused now with something more—an unfamiliar conviction.
A lacy, unsure devotion. Bitterness grows in my mouth as Nolan draws a bath and leaves me alone to cleanse the rest of the night’s grim leavings.
It spreads through me like the blood staining the lukewarm water, but refuses to drain away.
Minutes pass thickly, congealing around me until, finally, I towel off and re-dress enough for basic modesty.
I return to the sitting room. Nolan is there, face filled with questions, though he waits for me to speak. To decide what comes next.
My chest tightens in a way that has nothing to do with the bindings. “Giving up isn’t an option.” His words, my conclusion. “We need Caius, to get him and his Thorn Guard back and… tell him everything.”
He nods, once. “About the reliquary.”
The words are heavy with resignation. But this search of ours has gone on too long, become too frayed. Borne too many unintentional consequences.
“Yes. The reliquary.” I lean on the table, borrow its sturdiness.
Nolan takes a concerned step forward, misreading the gesture. “You need to rest.”
I do. I need… “We’ll find a ride to the Golden Glory in the morning.” I can’t help the smirk that tugs the corner of my lip. “Just need a little beauty rest first.”
“Tomorrow,” Nolan says.
“Tomorrow.” And then, before either of us can say anything else, I retreat to my room.
Inside, I lock the door. Discard my bloodied garments and go to the basin of water, splash it on my face.
It’s blessedly cold as hell, tempering the persisting heat in my cheeks.
Head hanging, letting the water drip, I watch the ripples grow, fold over each other, and disappear as they meet the relentless confines of the basin.
There, half naked in the square of light streaming through the room’s single window, I let myself understand.
The indecision gripping me, the hesitation…
it isn’t about what I wanted. I’ve known what that is since the moment a goddess’s blood trickled over my lips, binding me, emptying my life of everything but them.
Except now, there’s something else that matters. Someone else.
I make my decision… a decision I’ve already made countless times since Nolan spoke those four little words.
It should be you.
This cannot go on.
I cannot go on, like this.
I open the window and place a candle in it.
Light it. Then, I put on fresh clothes and clean my sickles.
All while marking the time in my head, the count keeping my heartbeat steady, my thoughts manageable.
After half an hour has passed, when I’m sure Nolan has succumbed to the fatigue left by our battle and my message has had a chance to be spotted, I make my way down the side of the building and drop gracelessly to the street.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, bodies will be found. Caius will be told the truth. Cyprene will be torn apart.
But I will be gone, on my way to Tempestra-Innara, and the death of one of us.