“Now I know,” I murmur, “and I do not see you any differently.”
Silence descends, delicate as anything, and I think if I do not break it, I will instead lean forward and bring my mouth to hers.
“Compared to you, it should be abundantly obvious I’m no goddess.” I laugh, gesturing toward my leg, hidden beneath the sheets. “No Avatar. Were I imbued with the tiniest scrap of such power, do you think I’d be a cripple?”
Nyatrix examines me, suddenly so very serious, her attention heady and intoxicating. I draw a deep breath, painfully aware of the stonewashed linen across my arms, the bedframe pressing into my back, the silk nightgown drawn taut across my breasts.
“I think,” she murmurs, her gaze dripping across me like honey on the comb, “I would have little trouble believing you are a goddess reborn.”
My entire body goes still, and the moment stretches. I want to close the meager distance between us and taste her kiss, to feel her long locks between my fingers.
But from down the twisting spiral staircase, a crisp knock sounds at the domus’s front door.
Nyatrix releases a hiss, languidly getting to her feet. “That’s our escort,” she says, straightening her blouse. “For the Votum. Are you ready to go?”
I inhale sharply. “I don’t have much of a choice, Nyatrix, do I?”
She looks at me, her eyes filling with a bottomless sadness. “No, little dove,” she breathes. “Not this time.”
Barely a full bell later, I ride a pale equus through the ruined, dust-gowned streets of the Sepulchyre’s city, following a woman in a blood-red cape. The fabric bleeds out into the gray landscape like a wound. Perhaps that’s all there is—blood to be spilled, blood to be taken, blood to be let.
“Centurion Primus Lucretia,” I begin hesitantly, “did not seem very happy about my cane. My limp. Did you not tell her?”
I feel Nyatrix’s scowl even though I can’t see it. I slide my fingers deeper into Argento’s thick black mane as she looks up at me from the ground, where she leads the equus I’m astride.
“No,” Nyatrix says as Argento turns his massive head toward her. “It was a calculated decision. Let her underestimate you.”
I swallow, listening to Argento’s hooves against the sandstone pathway as I examine the Centurion up ahead—her gray hair in a severe knot, her collar of bones, the sword on her waist, the soldiers in silver chainmail flanking her on both sides.
I can’t stop replaying the Centurion’s reaction as we walked down the steps of Nyatrix’s domus: her eyes locked on my cane, the way she flatly demanded if I was the suspected Avatar, as ifnothing could be more absurd. How Nyatrix’s expression went dark at the Centurion’s inquiry, her lip curled in distaste.
“Do you find my cane shameful, too?” I ask in a near-whisper.
Nyatrix startles at my words, almost tripping over her own feet as she twists to look at me. Her expression is open, guileless. “Gods, no, Ophelia,” she replies, reaching one hand up to brush my knee, where it lies against Argento’s side. My entire body lights up like a Feast Day bonfire. “Of course not. I just know Lucretia and . . . well, like I said. Calculated decision.”
I don’t respond, instead studying the abandoned city as we pass through it. Decaying doors feature faded floral designs and rusted ironwork that must have been intricate many anni ago. Elegant sandstone buildings rich with carved details—the same curving, asymmetrical style that seems popular here in Liminalia—line the main avenue we’re trotting down.
This place, once, must have been so beautiful. Now there’s little more than dust coating the elaborate stained-glass windows depicting blooming vines and two entwined women I imagine must be the Creatrixes.
“Why did your gods leave you?” I ask, keeping my eyes trained on the Centurion and her soldiers. “You said they left of their own accord.”
Nyatrix heaves a sigh before she answers me. “The Creatrixes understood that He would destroy everything for more power and that if He managed to eat of their divine bodies and drink of their blood, nothing would ever be able to stop Him. So they diminished themselves, scattering most of their power into the Votum instead.”
I turn this over in my mind as the city fades into ragged hills and dusty brush. Without the looming buildings, I can see that mountains rise like broken teeth off to my left. On the right, the rampart walls cage us in. That just leaves the Umbraxan Moorsand the Cult of the Mater Dea’s Conclaves ahead of us. And somewhere, between here and there, perhaps, my childhood home. The site of a massacre.
“And what doyouthink of all this?” I ask Nyatrix, in the same way she might were I explaining my beliefs.
She scoffs, adjusting her grip on Argento’s reins. “Our goddesses abandoned us, and we celebrate it like it’s some benevolent thing,” Nyatrix replies, her tone sharp. “He holds all the power. He’ll devour this entire continent just as soon as He can. If the Votum ever existed, the time has long passed for it to make any difference. In the height of their power, the Creatrixes couldn’t stand against Him. Why would some scrap of their gifts make a difference now?”
I stroke Argento’s silky neck, running my fingers over the musculature. “Where did they go?” I ask, surprised at how wistful I sound. “Could we get them back?”
The Godwinds come roaring down the stone path, battering us. I pull my cowl tighter, holding an arm up to protect my eyes.
“We don’t know where they went,” Nyatrix says when the gale dies down, an unexpected undercurrent of grief in her voice. “Or if they even still exist in the same way they used to.”
At least, perhaps, her godsdoexist, though. Somewhere. In some version of what she expects. At least in place of her god there is not a gaping wound, a milk-white eye, a corpse-light.
“I suppose,” Nyatrix begins hesitantly, “that Idounderstand it. The Creatrixes leaving, I mean. If I thought for a moment that the Host could make me a weapon to serve them and wield me against my own people...”
