“No,” I reply, slowing my steps, “but would it really matter if there were?”
“No, I suppose not,” she replies, and then I hear her footfalls quicken as she reaches my side. The passageway is barely wide enough for us to walk side-by-side. Her bicep brushes my shoulder, and despite everything, gooseflesh races across my skin.
“Where does this lead?” Nyatrix asks.
“The main kitchens,” I reply. “It’s possible They don’t know about this passage, though I can’t be sure. It’s only used by servants.”
“Kitchens,” Nyatrix echoes.
I stumble on the uneven dirt floor, and almost instantly, she catches me, her arm curving around my waist. My entire body throbs, the blood in my veins singing a sweet, sinful song.
Any pleasure I feel in the way her open palm cups my hip is wrenched away when the door at our back tears open. Pinpricks of alternating cold and heat spear my skin. The scent of the passageway—slightly damp dirt, stone walls, and stale bread—is suddenly stifling.
“Ophelia, I need to carry you,” Nyatrix tells me, her tone urgent. “And we need to get to an armory. I don’t think a kitchen knife will hold Them back for very long.”
“I’m just going to slow you down,” I say, the words leaving my lips the second I think of them. “Leave me. Go.”
Another shriek races through the air, amplified by the tunnel. I turn to look at Nyatrix and find a fierceness has settled over her features, wolfish and sure. For a heartbeat, she meets my gaze, and there are a thousand unsaid things in her eyes.
“Forgive me, but I cannot,” she murmurs. The next moment, I am swept off the ground, cradled in the Lupa Nox’s arms. She slides my cane up my body, the handle near my ear so it won’t tangle with her legs.
And then she’s off, moving at a pace I have only ever felt in carriages. Despite my added weight, she moves like her namesake—a wolf in the darkness, indistinguishable from the shadows. She takes the curve into the kitchen at full tilt, angling her shoulder to protect me from the impact as she slams into the heavy wooden door, grappling for the iron handle.
And then we’re through and I find myself in an incredibly familiar place, but I don’t feel a single shred of familiarity. I castmy eyes around the large kitchens as Nyatrix grabs a few knives from one of the blocks. It’s like the city I knew and loved is gone, devoured by the Hexen that circle hungrily at its edges.
“Armory, Ophelia,” Nyatrix grunts, bringing us around the far side of the wide, heavy butcher’s block island. Stew pots hang abandoned above the firepit, the ovens cold. A sack of potatoes sits askew on a stone counter. I try to think, but the adrenaline racing through my body addles my mind, mixes up my thoughts.
“The armory is in the Militaire Annex,” I pant, out of breath despite being carried. “We’ll never get across the Spine, past the Devorarium. We’d have to double back or risk being out in the open.”
Nyatrix puts me down with a gentleness that only steals more air from my lungs. She even makes sure to place me by the counter so I have something to lean on.
“Are you all right here for a moment?” she asks, the smell of asphodels invading my senses, her powerful body bent over mine.
I feel small and fragile. I force myself to look up at her and nod.
The muscles in her jaw tense, and then she spins on her heel, placing both hands on the edge of the butcher’s block island. She pushes, and, incredibly, the massive piece of furniture actually moves—scraping so loudly over the stone floor that I wince. I cannot imagine the strength it takes to do such a thing, let alone after all the energy she’s already exerted. With a snarl, she stamps on the chain still dangling from her wrist, yanking her arm up at the same time. It snaps in a heartbeat.
My eyes slip toward the vaulted hall that leads into the kitchens, hoping no one has heard us. Carefully, I make my way farther down the counter and peer out. For a moment, the Spine is peaceful, nothing but midnight shadow highlighted by beeswax glow. The next second, the Holy Guard streams throughthe corridor in a torrent of bronze chainmail and shouted commands.
I turn back to Nyatrix to see she’s noticed, too, her head cranked back toward me even as she pushes the enormous island up against the door.
“That should hold Them,” she mutters, stepping back and observing her handiwork. Then she glances back toward me, the corner of her mouth tipped up, one eyebrow arched. “Maybe. For a few seconds.”
“Are youenjoyingthis?” I demand, gripping my cane so tightly that my entire arm shakes.
She saunters toward me, absurdly slow and sensual given how close we are to a horrible fate. Despite the audible shouts of the guardsmen and the clang of weaponry and the Ecclesian shrieks coming from the passageway, her attention lies entirely on me.
Her lithe, powerful hands land on either side of the counter, caging my body in, the long column of her frame only a whisper away. She bows her head like a repentant, her mouth so close to mine I am mere moments from shattering.
“I have always found,” she muses, the tendons in her hands flexing beneath her rich skin, “that the threat of death makes me feel more alive.”
Then Nyatrix pulls away, taking all the heat of the summer sun with her. I’m left trembling and utterly spent, my body incapable of stitching together all the sensations ravaging it.
“So, no armory,” she says, looking away, eyes narrowing. “Anywhere else that might be useful?”
I barely even know what would be useful—what could possibly stand up to the ten Fatum chosen by God Himself. And yet I find myself speaking anyway. “The Crypta,” I tell the Lupa Nox, raising my gaze to meet hers as I distantly recall something Renault said to me back in the Sanctum, during what feels likeanother life. “Th-there might be something. It’s an archive of sorts. It’s close.”
“And you can get us in?” she asks, absolutely unrattled by the sounds amplifying around us, by the way danger seems to be weaving us tighter and tighter into its web.
