Agrippina reaches for my hand, and I let her take it. Outside, the Godwinds howl. She takes a deep breath and then says, “I think, Ophelia, we could certainly try.”
Chapter 38
The next morning, the sun seems to push through Liminalia’s ever-present cloud cover more than before. And for the first time in many days, I rise with it, swinging my legs over the side of the bed to do the stretches Headmistress Magdalena taught me so many anni ago. I feel different, I think.
Last night, Agrippina and I did a ritual. I wanted to banish the emptiness sitting wide and vast in my belly, but Agrippina thought we should fill it instead. So with Nyatrix called away on duty for the evening, we made a special tea from Agrippina’s vast selection of dried herbs. Flowers and leaves and stalks meant to bring warmth, encourage pleasure, settle heartache. She had me drink the entire pot—which felt so wasteful—but said it was important that I feel full. Filled to the brim with life and growth.
I’m not sure if I’m fixed. I don’t know if I ever will be. But this morning, I feel lighter. Strange how emptiness in the right place makes you feel so heavy.
I’m leaning to the side, stretching my hip, when a knock sounds at the door. “Come in,” I call.
For some reason, I’m expecting Agrippina. But it’s Nyatrix who strides in, all midnight-black and glinting silver chainmail.She wears a different sword than the stolen blade, its handle wrapped in worn leather, tucked into a sheath. My heart clenches all the same.
“Could we speak?” she asks, approaching the end of my bed. Her eyes sweep over me, like she’s trying to determine how fragile I am. How broken. If a single touch will send me into shattered pieces on the floor.
“Yes,” I say, my stomach fluttering.
She nods and enters the room, sitting down on the edge of my bed. Murky gray light spills through the stained-glass panels, painting the floor with long swathes of blood-red. She looks tired, I notice. Formidable as ever, yes, but exhaustion clings to her.
“The Centurion Primus is unwilling to wait any longer, Ophelia,” she says. “It’s the Votum or the Expurgo. Today. I highly recommend you choose the Votum.”
My breath catches in my throat. Agrippina told me about the Expurgo a few nights ago—the dangerous ritual most Lumendites seeking refuge in Liminalia have no choice but to undergo. In Centurion Lucretia’s republic, she warned me, the rite has grown increasingly dangerous.
I close my eyes. I barely know if I evenwantto be the Avatar. I know I’d like to kiss Nyatrix. I’d like to work in the greenhouses with Agrippina. I’d like to find a softer, quieter part of this world.
But perhaps there isn’t one. Perhaps my God already devoured it.
“The Votum, then,” I say, trying to sound strong. Trying to be half as strong as Nyatrix. I glance up at her, and it’s impossible not to see the Lupa Nox as she was the night we fled. All vengeance and terror with that stolen blade in her hands, wings spread behind her. Death Herself, I’d thought to myself more than once.
“Did you tell your Centuria about the sword?” I find myself asking her, chewing on my bottom lip.
“Of course not,” she replies. She sounds so tired and it makes me yearn to take her in my arms. “Lucretia already believes I’m little more than a weapon the goddesses sent for her to wield against our enemies. Nearly everyone else is terrified of me. Remember, I’m Moryx’s Avatar, in their eyes.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, shifting my weight, trying very hard to stop thinking about the fact that we’re essentially sharing a bed. “This is Liminalia. Your people honor the Creatrixes. Shouldn’t they think you glorious? A goddess walking among mortals? Shouldn’t they throw flowers at your feet and pay you homage? Shouldn’t they worship you?”
Like I want to, I do not say—only by biting the words off the tip of my tongue. But she watches me as I speak, those eyes so sly and all-seeing, something moving across her expression that I can’t name, though it makes the blood pound between my legs.
“No one, not even the Host,” Nyatrix says, speaking slowly, “wants their god to walk among them. The First Son doesn’t, does He? He uses the High Ecclesia instead. Gods are terrible things, even to the people who worship them.”
There is more, I can tell, that she is not saying, though her body speaks loudly enough—the curled fingers, the shortened breath, the way she avoids my eyes. The way her exchange with Agrippina the other night over dinner was so short, terse, loaded with weight.
“Did something happen, Nyatrix?” I ask her, as delicately as I can. “When the Sepulchyre’s goddess walked among them, returned in a Fatum form?”
Her gaze snaps to me, that thunderstorm in her eyes simmering, like the gale is about to begin. She examines me in a way that makes me feel as though she can peer into my soul—theway the First Son claims He can, weighing my sins and my good deeds, deciding my fate.
But it’s just the two of us in this room, the Godwinds softened to a mild hum, and though I’m probably being fanciful, the Lupa Nox seems to relax when it’s just the two of us. Like her hackles go down, her teeth suddenly not so sharp.
“Yes,” she says hoarsely, one hand dragging through her hair. “I . . . I was very young, barely a maiden by mortal standards. I’m a foundling of sorts myself, I suppose, given by two Fatum warriors to a mortal couple before they went into battle with the First Son. They never came back, so I had none of my own people to guide me.” She pauses, swallowing hard. “Things were fine for many anni. But even when the battles of the Sundering quieted, the bloodlust in me did not. About thirty anni ago, there was a training exercise. And I . . . I lost control, Ophelia. I do not even remember it, not truly. Just this . . .” Nyatrix presses her lips into a firm line, shaking her head.
Gently, I reach across the bed and brush her fingers with mine. Her gaze slides to mine, and her mouth parts. I nod, wanting to encourage her. She carried me across Cursed lands, liberated me from the Host. The least I owe her, I think, is to help with the weight of her own burdens. No matter how much their jagged edges may bite.
“There is something inside me,” Nyatrix says, looking away. The weak sunlight of the Sepulchyre city slinks in through the window, pulling out shimmering shades of cobalt in her hair. “Sometimes it demands to be fed. With blood. With death. Who knows? Maybe the Avatars are real. At least then it . . . it might not be my fault.”
She swallows, glancing down at the blanket, tracing nonsensical patterns in the fabric with her fingers. “I killed eight of my fellow soldiers before I came to my senses,” she says hoarsely. “No one could stop me. I’m not sure if anyone eventried. I just . . . rampaged. After that, after a week of funerals, I bound myself to the Centuria. It’s an old Fatum custom. A serious thing. It helped leash . . . whatever it is inside me. The Centuria’s military commanders tell me where to go. Who to kill. And I do it, oathbound as I am. Icanstep outside their commands. I’m not mindless. But it’s not easy, so the oath helps hold whatever’s inside me back.”
Nyatrix swallows hard and finally looks up at me, her eyes soft and seeking—seeking something fromme, I realize. “But everyone remembers,” she says. “And now you know.”
My heart races. I’ve known since I first laid eyes upon the Lupa Nox that she was capable of such things. It is terrifying to imagine—of course it is. But it is not unthinkable. Besides, who am I to judge, having served the vile purposes of the First Son, having excused so many terrible things all my life?
