Her gaze snaps to me. “Ophelia,” she says, like it’s a prayer. “I...I think?—”
I gaze down at the High Ecclesian in her arms. With the First Son destroyed—or, at the very least, banished for now—therituals to create His High Ecclesia must have fallen away, leaving a skeletal Fatum woman in Nyatrix’s arms.
Even twisted as the body is by His magic, there’s no denying the resemblance to Nyatrix—the sharp jawline, the high cheekbones, the fawn skin.
“Petronyx?” I ask, softly, almost inaudible.
“Yes,” the resurrected Fatum manages. “Th-thank you. For releasing me. For l-letting me see her, just once more, before I go.”
I do not know what to say, so I just lower myself inelegantly to the floor beside Nyatrix, leaning my shoulder into hers as we both watch the Fatum woman take one last shuddering breath.
“She was wounded in battle,” Nyatrix says, her gaze never leaving her mother’s corpse, “months before the Sepulchyre Court left. She was already pregnant with me but didn’t know it. She ended up giving birth all alone, lost beneath the Sundered Lands. When she got back to Liminalia, everyone was gone.”
I wince. It’s unimaginable.
“So she left me with the mortal family in Liminalia I told you about,” she continues, her voice heavy with grief, “and came here to kill the First Son. To end the war so there might still be a life for me in Sylva with our people gone.”
That is, I suppose, how a Sepulchyre sword ended up in Lumendei. How the First Son greedily devoured the stolen power of one of the Sepulchyre’s greatest warriors and her goddess-forged sword.
“Nyatrix,” I finally manage. “I’m so sorry.”
The most powerful creature I have ever known bows her head and weeps. My own throat tight with emotion, my vision blurred with tears, I slip my arm through hers and press my face against her shoulder. I stay there, holding vigil to her grief, our tears running together like the first rains of spring.
Some time later, Nyatrix straightens, dragging the backs of her hands across her eyes. I slide my arm from hers and watch as she pulls herself to her feet, still cradling Petronyx’s body, which she places gently on the high altar. Then she turns and approaches me with a sigh, wrapping her arms around me.
“I need a bath,” I tell her.
“I don’t care,” she replies, cupping my face in her hands. And then, on the broken altar of a defeated god, Nyatrix kisses me.
She tastes like blackberries and asphodels and freedom.
Epilogue
Late autumn light filters across the partially restored gardens. One day, there might be trees overhead, the way I always thought there were, before the illusion broke: great boughs, swaying to and fro in the wind, the salt-scented air slipping through the foliage. My heart pangs, and I close my eyes, trying to imagine it. I can see it, that new world, just there behind my eyelids.
I smile and let out a long breath. When I open my eyes, my gaze is drawn all the way down the hill, out past the ramparts, to the faint hues of green beginning to appear throughout the Sundered Lands. One day, the Lymphaeron Forest might regrow. We don’t know what kind of creatures once lived there before the Hexen were formed by the Sundering. Perhaps the things I thought were only fairy tales—the manticores and the unicorns, the spriggans and kelpies—will reappear, repopulated and glorious.
That is the gift—and, I suppose, the trouble—of a new world. Anything can happen. This one is freshly birthed and still stumbling about on newborn legs. It will fall, I’m sure of it, many, many times, before it learns to walk. I swallow back awave of emotion. But how beautiful that it will get the chance to walk on its own. No puppeteers. No gods. No masters.
“What are you thinking about?” asks a lovely voice.
I look up from my seated position in my currus to find Nyatrix only a few strides away. The bright sunlight threads cobalt through her hair, brings out the thunderstorm of her eyes. She prowls closer to me, her mouth parted, one side curved in amusement for me. Always for me. Only for me.
“Did we do the right thing?” I ask. I don’t think I meant to say it, not out here at the end of a gorgeous autumn day when things are finally starting to go right. But it’s what I say all the same, and that thing beneath my sternum pulses, out of rhythm with my heart.
“I don’t know,” Nyatrix says with a shrug, lowering herself to sit on the pretty carved bench beside me. I wanted it to look like the furniture I saw in Liminalia. I want this garden to be a place for everyone. Beauty for everyone. “I don’t think we’ll ever really know, little dove.”
I sigh, watching a pair of swallows swoop by, their feathers glistening in the sun. Down the slope, Magdalena and Agrippina are laughing, which is good, because when I made my way up here, they were fighting over which flower from Liminalia’s seed stores to plant. I told Magdalena to maybe let Agrippina win that one, considering she’d died and then been resurrected by my Avatar gift, waking up to a deserted Liminalia street atop a bed of violets. Magdalena promptly reminded me we were only alive because she, out of everyone, broke the First Son’s hold and stabbed a High Ecclesian with her chatelaine scissors.
For what it’s worth, after further thought, Idothink Magdalena should get to pick the flower.
I glance over at Nyatrix. Because I know it’s there, if I squint in just the right way, I can see the Mysterium Blessing that conceals her wings. In the confines of our rooms, though, shesets them free. When we tangle together in our bed, she wraps them around me, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so safe. Mine are gone for good, for whatever reason. But so is my pain. I would rather lose the pain, I think, than keep the wings. Especially now that I have a custom-made currus from Liminalia’s talented physicians. As long as the terrain is fairly even, I can move about much more freely in the wheeled chair. It’s far easier than a cane.
“I don’t want to be a god,” I murmur, admitting the truth of it.
“I don’t want to be a weapon,” she replies—easy, quick, like an exhale.
“It is better,” I say with a sigh, “if we’re all on the same footing. Even if . . .”
