“No, she is not,” Nyatrix replies, her hand curling around my waist. “And the trial has exhausted her. We’ll be returning to my domus.”
Lucretia holds up a hand, and her soldier instantly draws his sword. “Nyatrix,” the Centurion warns, “she may not be the power we want, but she is Tithed. Which means she must be returned.”
Panic fills me, pinpricks needling across my skin, which is suddenly warm and clammy. Against me, Nyatrix goes utterly still. “Tithed?” she snarls.
I register the word for the first time as it leaves her mouth. And then it is terror—not something so simple as panic—that leaks into my veins.
“Yes, Nyatrix,” Lucretia says, sounding bored. “You’re right, for the record. About everything since the Tithing Massacre. That’s why Centurion Decima wasn’t alive by the time you got back. If our prior Centurion Primus was ready to tellyouthe truth, we couldn’t take the risk she might find someone else to confess her sins to.”
I grip Nyatrix’s shoulders, my gaze darting around the low-lit room, looking for ways we might escape. Through the door we came, perhaps. Or the door at the Centurion’s back. Surely Nyatrix could fight off two mortals. My body screams at me to flee, to find a safe, dark burrow and hide until the danger is gone.
But, of course, the woman holding meisthe danger.
“I will slit the throat of everyone involved in this scheme,” Nyatrix snarls at the Centurion. I can feel the rage thrumming in her chest, the constriction of her muscles that are as good a promise of violence as anything.
But instead of cowering, Centurion Lucretia just laughs. “You’d have to kill half of your own people,” she replies with a grin that makes my stomach churn. “Or were you not quite smart enough to discover just how deep all of this goes? Nyatrix, look around you. We have a handful of greenhouses. One measly river, though it’s barely more than a creek with so little rain these days. The rest of our land is uninhabitable. How do you think we’ve been surviving all these anni?”
I want to cover my ears, to close my eyes, to disappear into the floor. I was right, I think, that first night in Liminalia. All is lost. There is no honor in survival; it only means I have taken from another’s cup. I had hoped that more people here would be like Nyatrix.
But sheisthe last of her kind, isn’t she?
“You are Tithing our own people to the Host?” Nyatrix demands.
I expect another taunt from Lucretia, another dry laugh, as she steps closer—closerto the Lupa Nox, like an utter fool. Instead, her expression moves into something I’ve seen before: devotional, half-mad, so utterly convinced of her truths. I know this look well; it’s haunted my own mirror all my life.
“We give the Host just enough to stay alive,” Lucretia says, clamping her hands to her heart. “Just enough to keep fighting. Keep enduring. Please believe me when I say that I know this horrible sacrifice will be worth it in the end. They think they’re bleeding us dry. And maybe they are. But a tick engorged on blood is easy prey. Especially with a weapon like you at our disposal. So please. Let me return the Tithed girl. And then let me return the Sepulchyre to the glory our ancestors knew.”
Nyatrix’s grip on me loosens as she moves to gently set me down.
Wordlessly, I claw at her blouse, tears pricking the backs of my eyes. “No,” I cry out. “Nyatrix, please, no.”
“That’s a good soldier.” Lucretia sighs. “She would’ve been worth more were she an Avatar, but He’ll be wanting her back regardless.”
I look up at Nyatrix, grabbing for her forearm, but her face is expressionless, all of her attention on the Centurion. Desperation fills me, and I eye the dagger on her belt. I won’t go back. I can’t go back. I’ll throw myself into the waters crashing against these ancient sea caves. I’ll let a Hexen tear out my throat. I’ll invite the sands of the Sundered Lands to fill my lungs.
But I willnotgo back.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I snap at the Centurion, steadying myself on my cane. “Least of all to Lumendei.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Lucretia tells me, growing impatient. “You’re Tithed. You belong to the First Son. And for that, I am sorry. Truly. But I must put my own people first.”
Rage rattles the bars of its cage somewhere deep in my chest. All the parts of myself that I locked away, the things that weren’t suitable for a lady of the Host. In Lumendei, I had to be sweet and kind and accommodating to survive.
Not anymore.
“I belong,” I shout, “tomyself.”
Those four words hum low in my marrow. Something uncoils from that hidden place in my chest, and I think it might be power. But the expressions of the Centurion and her soldier do not change, and the earthen walls all but swallow the sound of my voice.
“Nyatrix, please gather her up,” Lucretia commands. “This has grown quite tiresome.”
“Centurion Primus,” Nyatrix replies, cool and collected. “It would be best, I think, to listen to the lady. And she says she belongs to herself.”
Elation fills me, sweet as any Feast Day wine, and I turn to look at the Lupa Nox. Her eyes—just her eyes, the rest of her utterly motionless—slide to me. The edge of her mouth curves into something that makes me forget there are other people in the room and that both of them mean to harm me.
“I will not let you jeopardize our future and the sacrifice so many of our people have made. I will bring the wrath of the entire Centuria down upon you,” Lucretia hisses. Her guard draws his blade and steps forward. “It will pain me, but if you can’t be the weapon we desperately need, I’ll hang you from the Ossuary Wall until you’re nothing but blackened bones.”
Nyatrix grins, like she’s finally enjoying herself. “You’re certainly welcome to try.”
