With that, she produces another knife and tears a jagged cut into my skirts. For a long moment, I don’t understand, until I see by the dancing lamplight that she’s removing the parts of the fabric with Renault’s bloodstains. She balls it up and launches to her full height, lobbing the wool down the hall. A chorus of shrieks follows, sending chills down my spine.
“Okay,” she says, turning back to me. “I’m going to carry you. Don’t see much of a choice.”
Wide-eyed, I nod my permission, clutching my cane close to my chest. And then I’m yet again in the arms of the Lupa Nox, fleeing farther and farther into the unknown dark.
Night has long since descended when we emerge into open air. I’m half-asleep, still tucked against Nyatrix’s chest, and barely notice the difference. But then the wind whips at my hair and I stir, opening my eyes.
“Almost there,” she murmurs, her gait changing from the smooth strides she took on the relatively even floor of the tunnels to the jagged walk as she battles sandy footing.
I look around, but only a sliver of moonlight peeks through the heavy clouds, and Nyatrix appears to have left the lantern behind in the ruined citadel’s tunnels and tombs.
“I didn’t realize Liminalia and Old Lumendei were so close,” I say, surprised, my eyes roving the dark velvet of night, unable to make out much.
“They’re not,” she replies, letting out a low grunt as she scales a particularly steep hill. The Godwinds are still present here, but they’re much less ferocious, no Nocturnes whispering in my ear with the voice of my mother. “When Old Lumendei was ravaged, we searched for survivors and mapped most of what remained. Since then, we’ve been using it as a shelter in the Sundered Lands and have dug out tunnels to make passage easier.”
I nod absentmindedly, nervously glancing about for more Hexen. But Nyatrix moves confidently through the dimness, like she’s cut from the same fabric as the night itself. I cling to her and hope she will bear me through to the morning.
We trudge across the sands, which grow firmer and rockier with each step. Soon, I see a gleam in the distance—like moonlight on water. As we approach, ramparts of dark stone materialize out of the night. Banners hang down the sides, I think, though all I can make out is the silver embroidery: the Sepulchyre emblem of four skulls piled, one on top of the other, with a spear driven through the bones. I can’t help myself; I shudder.
I have been in a kind of purgatory since that first plunge from Lumendei’s balconies, but I feel it intently now. There is little but the heat of the Lupa Nox, the rise and fall of her breath, the soft whisper of the fading Godwinds, and the slowly approaching city of doom. The clouds above us part and, all at once, I see the Sepulchyre’s city gate.
Its metal is like tarnished silver, blackened with age, a sweep of spires and spikes. The design is unearthly, chaotic, and somehow incredibly beautiful. The gate is held aloft by two massive pillars. Made, of course, of bone.
Bones upon bones upon bones, all gleaming mad and ravenous in the moonlight. To worship the Creatrixes is to worship death. Perhaps I am more like the Liminalians than I realize, clinging to the muscular shoulders of a creature who seems born to usher death into the world, to deliver that final, glorious blow.
“The Ossuary Gate is a bit much, in my opinion,” Nyatrix says, a complete contradiction to my thoughts. I dare to raise my head from her chest and look up at her expression. Her nose is wrinkled, the turn of her mouth wry. “It’s not the bones of your people, if you’re thinking that. It’s Sepulchyre folk. By giving their remains to the city gates when they die, they believe they’re strengthening the protective Blessings placed by our priestesses.”
“What do you believe?” I ask, my words nearly torn away by the Godwinds.
She glances down at me for a moment, and then her gaze returns to the difficult, rocky terrain she’s navigating. “I don’t know,” is all she offers me, her tone contemplative and a little sad.
The truth hits me then, the turmoil of my own heart rolled over to show its soft underbelly to the world.
“Nor,” I admit for the first time aloud, “do I.” And there it is: Ophelia Foundling of Lumendei, a blasphemer. Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.
Nyatrix says nothing, but her hand tightens on my arm, fingers curling in as if to provide a comforting squeeze. Little the Lupa Nox does with her body provides me any comfort—instead it reignites that fire smoldering deep in my belly.
“I’m taking us straight to my rooms,” she tells me, swerving to the left, away from the gates and toward the towering rampart walls. I can see now that the base, too, is made of bones. I set my jaw. “We’ll explain ourselves in the morning. I have a friend whom I trust to look at your wounds, if you’ll permit it.”
I hesitate, my throat constricting. I have little idea how Sepulchyre city-folk will react to finding a Host woman in their midst, a Saintess medallion still strung about her neck. And it’s not even as though Nyatrix has brought back some brave, strong warrior of rare beauty, capable of dealing death with a single blow, burning bright with the Mysteries. She’s returned home with a fractured piece of a woman, capable of little and weak in every sense of the word.
“That is all right,” I concede, my voice small. I feel her take a deep breath, her chest moving against my shoulder, and wonder if she’s going to say something else. I wonder if I’m going to say something—going to ask the questions on the tip of my tongue.
But we continue in silence, making our way to the base of Liminalia’s walls. Up close, rocky soil and short, parched shrubbery line the ramparts, a low earthen slope forming an embankment into which the thousands and thousands of bones are set. They’re hardly the gleaming shields of silver I saw from afar, gilded by the moonlight. Instead, the bones are cracked, bloodstained, yellowed with age, weathered by the elements.
“Can you stand for a moment?” Nyatrix asks me.
I nod, and she sets me down, making sure I have a good grip on my cane. Then she turns to the wall and runs her fingers down the bones. One skull she pushes in, ever so slightly, and a femur bone gets twisted to the left. A tibia is pulled out by a hair’s breadth, and finally, she lays her hand flat against a second skull.
Mysterium thrums, and then a door opens, revealing a patch of warm, yellowed light in the grayscale world.
Nyatrix turns to me, eyes narrowed. “Probably should’ve blindfolded you,” she remarks in a casual, amicable way that makes my chest swell with the thought we might, at the very least, have some kind of budding friendship. How I yearn for it; I feel the loss of Carina like a dull ache in my temples, my chest, my hands.
“Probably,” I murmur with a shrug.
Her beautiful mouth curves into a smile and I am lost. I would dedicate my bones in her honor, leave my body to strengthen her walls, fall upon her sword to keep her safe.
The Lupa Nox extends her hand to me, and I take it. Together, we walk into the seat of the Sepulchyre and every single thing I have been taught to fear.
