I turn my head to see Nyatrix has drawn even with me. Relief courses through my body.
“Make me,” Renault sneers, his large hand closing around my throat. “Perhaps I’ll take home two brides instead of one.”
Despite her closeness, I don’t see the moment Nyatrix makes her next decision. Not the way I usually do with Renault—desperately attempting to analyze his expression, the way his mouth moves, the angle of his brows. Instead, Nyatrix simply reacts. A wolf striking at a hare. An owl diving after a mouse.
Before I realize anything has happened at all, Renault screams and drops to the ground. I gasp for air, the pressure around my neck released, and collapse onto the bench a step to my left. Renault thrashes at my feet, dark liquid pooling on the stone. My healer’s instinct takes over, my eyes looking for wounds to treat, bleeding to staunch. Instead, I find Renault’s fingers—perfect, unscarred, long, and aristocratic, adorned with gold bands of varying widths. The trouble is that his fingers lie too far from his body and are no longer attached to his hand.
“Do you wish for him to live?” Nyatrix’s voice interrupts my concentration. My eyes dart to her, the firelight catching on the sword in her grasp, the rise of folded wings behind her back.“I can cut off a lot more,” she offers, slinking closer, completely calm, though she raises her voice to be heard over Renault’s cries. “Or should I let him live?”
All at once, the reality of the situation crashes into me. I’m bells and bells away from Lumendei—well,myLumendei. I’m in a chamber with the Lupa Nox and my betrothed, who has just had his fingers shorn from his hand with a Cursed blade.
“You already saved his life once,” Nyatrix continues, sheathing the sword and coming to sit beside me on the bench. She’s dressed, I realize as she crosses one leg over the other and leans an elbow onto her knee, chin resting on her hand. Like all of this is perfectly normal; like speaking over the anguished cries of her victim is a common occurrence. “It would be fair to not extend the courtesy again, I think. You know what they say. ‘Fool me once...’”
A feeling rises in me, quick as the tides and twice as forceful, shaking my entire body. My bones vibrate and my fingers curl into fists. There is nothing I can do but throw my head back and scream, my voice rising above even Renault’s hoarse, weeping cries.
The chambers feast on the sound, feeding it back to me. My marrow sings with its thickness, its headiness, the righteousness of it all. Only once my throat is sore and my lungs have tired do I fall into silence. Renault, too, has quieted to little more than whimpers and gasps.
“See?” Nyatrix says. I turn to find her with one brow arched, her full lips parted. “You’re angry. Not sad.”
Her naming of it unsettles me, and the door to my inner room swings shut, taking the feeling with it. And then my body reacts in the way it’s been trained. I fall to my knees, grabbing the blindfold from the ground and winding the fabric around Renault’s wound. He fights me the entire time, beginning to scream again.
“You could leave it unbound, I suppose,” Nyatrix says, peering over at me. “Let whatever remains of Moryx in these lands decide his fate.”
“Help me,” I snap, meeting her eyes. “More strips of cloth to staunch the bleeding.”
“Sure,” she replies, springing to her feet and stepping over Renault’s flailing legs like she’s skipping down stepping stones. “Only because I like it when you tell me what to do.” She offers me a wink over her shoulder, and then she’s gone.
I turn my attention back to Renault, pressing down on his hand as he continues to thrash. He’s crying, I see, tears tumbling down his red cheeks.
“I know it hurts,” I say, raising my voice. “But you’ll be all right, I promise. Soldiers lose their fingers quite often.”
His cries go hoarse, near-silent, and then he looks at me like I’m a monster. I check the flow of blood, frown, and then press harder, which causes him to scream again. I squeeze my eyes shut as my ears ring, my hips throbbing from my crumpled position on the floor.
“Linens,” comes Nyatrix’s voice.
I open my eyes to find her placing a bowl beside me, filled with scraps of cut linen. One hand still clamped over Renault’s, I grab a scrap with the other and begin to bind his wound. “Thank you,” I say to Nyatrix.
I try to exert even more pressure on Renault’s wound and notice all at once that the flow of blood has stopped. Too quickly, too easily—impossible and too good to be true, unless Nyatrix’s blade holds more terrible secrets. Horrified at what I’ll discover, I pull back and peel away the stained linens.
There should be bloodied, severed stumps. I can see his shorn fingers on the ground no more than a stride away, and I’m covered in his blood. So how, exactly, am I gazing down at soft,baby-pink fingers, lacking any of the light calluses or gold rings he’s worn in all the anni I’ve known him?
My startled gasp must draw Nyatrix’s attention, because the next thing I know, she’s beside me and speaking.
“What the fuck?” she demands hollowly.
The two of us—Host foundling and Sepulchyre knight—stare at Renault in silence. He watches us, motionless save for the wild rise and fall of his chest.
“How?” Nyatrix demands.
“I have no idea,” I tell her hoarsely. I lean forward, hesitantly tilting Renault’s hand toward the light. It’s at this moment that he comes back to life, tearing his wrist away from me with a bellow. I startle, pinpricks darting across my skin.
“What did you do to me?” Renault hisses, clutching at his hand.
“Apparently,” Nyatrix says, something reverent in her tone, “she grew you new fingers, you ungrateful fuck.”
My betrothed offers an undignified sound and rolls onto his side. With a mixture of wonder and abject terror, he gazes upon his brand-new flesh, flexing his fingers. How is it that I feel as though all of my insides have been cut out and hung up to dry and yet Renault is utterly restored?
“I hope this teaches you a lesson about how God favors the Amadeus line,” he tells me smugly, turning his hand over with a smug look.
