She holds my gaze, one dark brow arching. “You felt quite sure the Host would burn you,” Nyatrix says, reaching across my body.
For a moment, I am not just held by her but pinned against her chest, our bodies meeting in every imaginable place. My breasts press into hers, and suddenly I can feel each hair on my head, every stitch of my rough-spun clothing, the blood pumping through each individual vein.
And then Nyatrix draws the sword, holding it aloft in the gray moonlight. I watch her strong hand wrap around the pommel, the long fingers, the flexed tendons. From her shoulders, black feathers tipped in platinum-silver spring, glorious and impossible.
“Would you rather risk crossing the Sundered Lands, battling Hexen and Nocturnes, with the Lupa Nox,” she asks, amusement pulling up the corner of her lush mouth, “or risk burning in the city that lied to you?”
I stammer, breath rushing out of my lungs. My heart careens about my chest. I peer over her shoulder into the shadowed cavern, half-expecting to see a glimmer of bronze armor. At least this time, I suppose, I’m being given a choice.
“I’ll go with you,” I say, wondering if I’ve completely lost my mind.
“No, Ophelia,” she says, flipping the sword so its point faces the ground. Then she reaches her hand up, a few fingers leaving the pommel to trace the edge of my jaw. I shiver, heat racing to my face. “Which do youwant? It’s a terrible choice, I know. But I want you to decide.”
A strange part of me wishes to laugh, to throw my head back and let some half-hysterical noise leave my mouth. Freedom is a knife. All I get to decide is where to plunge it into my flesh. But there’s one blade I’ll accept over the other, my soul be damned.
“You,” I tell her, tilting my chin up, forcing myself to hold the weight of her eyes. “I want to go with you. For now, I choose you.”
There’s laughter then, delirious, wolfish, and I think it’s coming from my own throat until I see that the Lupa Nox’s lips have parted. “So be it,” she murmurs, clutching me closer, her fingers opening against my hip. “For now, little dove, you are mine.”
And then she plunges into the Sundered Lands like a wave against rock, all movement and power. The Godwinds meet us instantly, slamming me into Nyatrix’s chest. I remember to cover my ears, slapping my hands to either side of my head, cane pinned in the crook of my elbow, as I try to shove wool into my ears.
“Do not listen toanythingyou hear except my voice,” Nyatrix says, her mouth so close that without the wool her lips would have brushed my skin. I nod, though it’s likely obscured by the torment of the wind and the scant moonlight.
Nyatrix stalks from ruin to ruin, leaning her back against old stone when she can. I feel her head swiveling on her shoulders, keen eyes constantly assessing threats. My heart hammers wildly, my fingers curled into fists. Moments stretch across all eternity, particularly when Nyatrix bursts out into the open.
At some point, she stops near the top of a hill, crouching in the overhang of a ruin. The angle allows me to see the open mouth of the chambers we left, far across the sands. It’s empty—which provides some relief. I half-expected to see the glimmer of armor, the Host Knights advancing upon us. It is strange how much I do not want them to follow. I want it to be because I’ve chosen Nyatrix, because I believe there is some good to be redeemed in the Sepulchyre, because I have found too much evidence of rot and darkness in Lumendei.
The truth is that I do not want to stand between them both and make a decision. Look into a knight’s eyes and then into hers. I don’t want to be the reason they fight, the reason Nyatrix kills more of my people. I want no more bloodshed and will not be made into an excuse to feed the Sundered Lands more death.
We’re sliding down the far side of a steep hill, Nyatrix barely keeping her balance on the slippery terrain, her wings thrown out behind her. She does not take to the air—presumably due to both the Godwinds and the concern of making us more visible to any Host Knight who ventures aboveground. A part of me longs to see her burst into flight again, but I push that desire down, trying to smother the burgeoning sin.
Her grip on my waist tightens, and I drag my eyes away from her, only to find a terror awaiting me. At the bottom of the hill stands a horrible creature—the head of a serpent, the body of a lyon, a long tail snapping through the Godwinds, the end tipped in something barbed and metallic, almost like a flail.
I cling to Nyatrix, anticipating a decision to flee, but she just readjusts her grip on the blackened sword and takes a few stepsforward. Her movements are calm, precise, like she is processing to the altar, not facing down one of the Hexen—the once-normal creatures of this place, twisted and marred by the goetia the Sepulchyre performed to hang the First Son from a Cursed cross. Their only purpose is terror. Their flesh cannot be consumed by either mortal or god. No more than dangerous refuse with terribly sharp teeth.
I swallow. What if that old story, too, is false?
Then the Hexen charges up the hill, its tail singing through the air. Any other thoughts I have disappear as my vision goes white with panic. It bounds toward us, seemingly unaffected by the Godwinds, serpent head reared back. Nyatrix holds her ground in a way that makes me scream her name, though my voice is lost to the roar of the winds.
At the very last moment, she moves—barely more than a sidestep, a flick of the stolen blade. Even over the Godwinds, I can hear the cry of the Hexen. It is surely some distortion, I tell myself, that makes the shriek sound so much like the High Ecclesia. A trick. I’m just confused, addled by fear, my mind drawing connections where none exist.
Nyatrix pivots hard, graceful as a dancer, though I can feel the strain in her shoulders as she braces herself against the wind with her wings. Before she can move to regain the higher ground, the Hexen comes at us again, even though its side is lacerated and bleeding something black and tar-like—a substance far removed from the blood of a living creature.
I can see myself reflected in the milky white of its dead eyes as Nyatrix dodges, fighting to catch herself on the uneven terrain. In truth, I have little idea how we aren’t dead already—she is relying on only one arm with a broadsword that looks to be built for two-handed wielding, if my scant knowledge means anything, and she’s carrying all my extra weight.
With a cry that rises even above the Godwinds, Nyatrix is the one to charge this time, propelling us over the crest of the hill. The Hexen leaps to the side, cat-like, and rakes at us with its massive claws. She deflects with the flat of her blade, but it strikes at us with its serpent head, fangs gleaming with a viscous liquid that smells of rot and death.
She cannot fight this thing with me in her arms. I am too much of a burden. Perhaps she’ll finally see that and leave me for the Hexen or the Host or whichever predator manages to find me first.
Nyatrix bares her teeth, chest heaving with exertion, and lunges for the Hexen. It shrieks, her blade biting into its shoulder, and she carries the movement farther instead of turning to face it. Her long, powerful legs propel us to a pile of ruins, where she dives into the sand, her arms protecting me. Beneath the half-moon of carved rock, the Godwinds are a little quieter.
“Stay here,” Nyatrix says, her gaze darting over her shoulder as she reaches into her boot. She produces a small blade and hands it to me. “If something gets close to you, stab it.”
All I can do is nod, clutching the worn handle of the knife, wondering if I even have it in me to harm anything at all—even something that would harm me. For a long moment, Nyatrix holds my gaze. I can’t see her mouth—the woolen cloth is wound around her head—but in her eyes, there is something unsaid.
She leaves it that way and disappears, sprinting in the direction of the Hexen. I huddle into the small, dark grotto, my cane in one hand, the knife in the other. And then I wait, hard, terrified breaths rattling through my lungs. My fingers go slick and clammy, my arms beginning to shake. I force myself deeper into the ruin, kicking up sand in my wake, until I feel stone meet my back.
An eternity or maybe a few seconds pass, the fabric across my mouth damp with the weight of my heavy breathing. The terror gripping me doesn’t fade; if anything, it crescendos, filling up my chest to bursting. The Nocturnes begin to sound like my mother’s voice, and I let go of my cane, clamping my hand over one ear, shrugging to tuck the other against my shoulder.
