Nyatrix makes her way across the room, pausing where I stand. She looks down at me, her lips parting. “Ophelia, I...” She glances over her shoulder. “I fear I’ve destroyed your life.”
Of all things, a laugh bursts out of me, edged in thorns. “I destroyed my own life,” I murmur. “How many anni I lived in that city, knowing in my bones that something was wrong. Thateverythingwas wrong. I knew, Nyatrix. And I did nothing.”
That sad smile again, tugging at the curves of her mouth. “Perhaps,” she replies, one brow arched, “our stories are more similar than we first thought, little dove.”
My heart pangs. She offers me her hand—the same hand that just took a life—and I do not hesitate to take it. Then, her fingers closed around mine, I follow the Lupa Nox into the dark.
Chapter 41
Agrippina shoulders the door with all her might. Though the iron latches rattle, it doesn’t give.
“Here,” Nyatrix says, handing the healer the lantern she’s been carrying as we’ve wound through what felt like endless hallways, the sound of the sea growing closer and closer. The knight steps up to the door—which Agrippina already unlocked—and drives her shoulder into it. Unsurprisingly, it yields to her strength and swings open.
The room awaiting us beyond it is spacious, smelling of dust and sea salt. Tiberius enters first, and only once he assures us it’s safe does Agrippina walk to the far side and yank open a set of shutters. To my surprise, golden-gray light pours in, and I find myself looking out onto the sea. Not a terrible place to hide while the manhunt for Lucretia’s murderer sweeps through Liminalia.
“Thank the goddesses,” Nyatrix mutters, pulling waxed sheets off a stone table with plain wooden chairs. “I don’t know how you all manage in these damn caves.”
Agrippina laughs, unlocking a chest and pulling out a perfectly preserved woolen blanket. “I’m in the greenhouse every day,” she explains. “And my rooms are in the outer courtyard, so I do have a window.”
I agree with Nyatrix’s sentiment, though I’m too exhausted by everything that’s happened to voice it. The vast majority of the Conclaves are ancient chambers, burrowed deep into the sea cliffs at the edge of the Sepulchyre’s land. Though the rooms are high-ceilinged and decorated with lovely frescoes and tiles, accented with tiny alcoves showcasing gleaming reliquaries, it still feels suffocating to me.
“And once,” Agrippina continues, pulling down a faded wall covering to expose a second door, “greenery used to fill these halls. The walls were alive with blooms. Vines crawled across the ceiling, every corridor an orchard. Once, both goddesses were present here. It used to be more than Death that stalked these halls.”
Tiberius pulls a chair out for me, and I sink into it. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, wondering if my nose will find some lingering memory of petals trod underfoot. Instead, asphodel floods my senses—sweet, dark earth and the rich spice of decay.
The sound of Agrippina pulling a door open, the wood scraping across the tiled floor, forces my eyes open. Liminalia’s golden-gray evening slinks through the opening, illuminating the space. Outside, what looks like curls of steam reach into the air.
“If you need to bathe,” Agrippina explains, turning back toward us, “these old rooms were for visiting dignitaries, so they have access to the hot springs along the shore. You’ll have to be very careful with the tides to not be swept off the cliff face, mind you. The ocean is a different animal than it once was. But you should be safe here until we figure out what to do next. I won’t see Tiberius and Nyatrix executed for treason, nor will I see Ophelia returned to the Host like a lost puppy.”
Tiberius only nods in reply, moving to stand in front of the door, arms crossed. Nyatrix settles into a chair across from me, drumming her fingers along the table’s surface.
I look at these three brave, strange people, summoning my own courage. “I need you to tell me everything you know,” I say. “About this Tithe. About what your Centuria has done.”
Nyatrix glances at me, pleased as a cat with a canary between its teeth. “Nothing would bring me more pleasure than giving you precisely what you want,” she replies. Her gaze slides away for a moment and returns twice as dangerous. “Whateveryou want, little dove.”
“Do you ever stop?” Tiberius demands from the doorway, while Nyatrix just laughs.
Agrippina takes a seat beside me, her mouth curved in amusement. Then she turns her startling blue gaze toward me, examining me, like she’s trying to decide if I’m strong enough to weather the storm she knows is coming.
“This city is divided,” Agrippina finally says, her words accented by the crash of waves outside the chambers. Over her shoulder, I watch an arc of sea spray shimmer in the evening light through the window. “It’s a division many of us cannot see. The Centuria, the wealthy, those with proximity to the ruling class—they made a decision for all of us. We give the Host our children with a natural inclination toward Mysterium. In return, the First Son provides just enough resources to keep us alive.”
Nyatrix pulls a dagger from somewhere on her person and flips it between her fingers. “As you heard,” she says, her gaze meeting mine, though the complex movements of the dagger do not halt, “Lucretia believed that she was somehow playing the Host. Tricking them. That we’d win out in the end.”
“But the Host keeps upping the Tithe number every few anni,” Agrippina says. “The Centuria has resorted to claiming Hexen are breaking through the Ossuary Walls and carrying children off into the Sundered Lands. They’ve even shown parents battered and broken little bodies that I believe are nothing but illusory Mysterium.”
My stomach churns, and I lean my elbows onto the table, feeling faint. “Why does the Host want these children?”These children, I say, as if I were not one of them.
“We think,” Tiberius says, his helm tucked under his arm, “that the First Son can’t access Mysterium, not directly. Some lingering Curse from the Creatrixes, maybe. So instead He has to consume the natural gifts of this land, unable to simply channel them. Children brimming with a Mysterium affinity are useful as soldiers . . . or a meal.” His jaw tenses as he falls silent, one hand rubbing his closely shorn black hair as he gazes at me. It takes me a second to understand the expression on his face—sorrow, maybe a bit of pity—and then I blanch.
“But I can’t work Mysterium,” I sputter, a tangle of frustration knotting tighter and tighter in my belly. “So why was I taken? Why was my mother killed for nothing?”
“The Tithing Massacre happened because we initially refused the Host’s demands,” Nyatrix tells me, her words soft. She lays the dagger flat on the table and reaches for my hand. “We thought after that day, it was over. Formally, the Centuria rejected the Tithe. It was done.”
“But it wasn’t.” Agrippina sighs. “And I’m so angry at myself for taking so long to notice.” She leans back in her chair, reaching into her robes. From their voluminous folds of fabric, she produces a thick stack of papyri, wrapped snugly in a thin leather cover. “Here,” she says, placing it on the table. “Birth records. Disappearance reports. I’ve noted the total sum of discrepancies on the first page. Every record is followed by my and Nyatrix’s notes on what we think may have actually happened.”
Hesitantly, I unwrap the leather and scan the first page, written in Commonia. My heart skitters. “This would add up to almost three hundred children,” I gasp, looking up at them.
“Have there been three hundred foundlings since you arrived?” Nyatrix asks, her gaze sharp.
