I hear Agrippina’s sharp intake of breath and watch Nyatrix’s jaw tighten. She swallows hard, her eyes fluttering closed. “No,” she whispers. “So there’s only one thing to do.”
She turns to the trunk tucked against the wall and begins to pull her armor from it—quietly snuck into the Conclaves by Tiberius and a few of Agrippina’s trusted fellows. It’s the armor I’ve always heard about but never seen. Due to the late summer heat, she wasn’t wearing it when she was captured and taken into the Vincula.
It’s the armor they write about in Lumendei’s annals, in the records that might live long enough for someone like me to pore over them by candlelight, desperate for a scrap of the past, for the things we once knew but have forgotten. We are always forgetting, mortals. And when we do look back, we look to loot, to mine, to take. Never to understand. Never to learn.
“Nyatrix,” Agrippina warns. “Lucretia was murdered, and you disappeared. You’ll be taken into custody. You’ll be fighting the Hostandthe Sepulchyre.”
She’s not listening. Instead, she’s lacing up her boots—the ones that come to her knees, meticulously crafted from black leather, the waxed cotton ties tight against her long, powerful legs.
“I’m the last of my kind,” she murmurs, a sad, soft smile on her face. “It was always going to come to this, I suppose.”
I push myself up to stand unsteadily. “You cannot change what your people did by sacrificing yourself,” I protest, though I know all I really want is for her to stay with me. Now that I’ve found her, I cannot imagine losing her. I cannot stand over her funeral pyre or gaze upon her bones set into a glimmering, tiled grotto. I won’t.
“No,” Nyatrix agrees with a shrug, reaching over to the settee and grabbing her chainmail, dropping it over her head. “But I won’t let the Host take Liminalia, either.” She settles the metal over her shoulders and meets my gaze. The sun paints her eyes red before it slips beneath the horizon, plunging us into darkness. “And I certainly won’t let them take you.”
She motions for Agrippina, who holds her ground for a long moment, the two of them in some unspoken stand-off I don’t understand. But then Agrippina sighs, a pained understanding crossing her face, and she moves toward Nyatrix. Then, carefully, she helps the knight into her armor.
I watch them and cannot shake the feeling I am seeing Nyatrix’s corpse prepared for death. Agrippina pulls the oiled leather buckles tight, her fingers practiced. I fumble for words and find none. Not until Agrippina steps away, leaving only Nyatrix.
No. Only the Lupa Nox.
Her armor is silver, blackened with age and blood, the material sculpted and engraved to look like the proud chest of a wolf. Sharp pauldrons extend from her shoulders, glimmering in the candlelight. Two delicate slits, freshly shorn, run down the back. Under her arm, she holds her helm—a perfect replica of a growling wolf, teeth bared, ears flattened. The workmanship is surely Fatum, another thing lost, sacrificed on the altar of the First Son’s ambitions.
“I’ll go,” I whisper.
Nyatrix’s hearing picks it up immediately, and she strides over to me. “No,” she growls.
“Yes,” I reply, tilting my head back to look at her. “They want me. They want the sword. I stood by while the Host devoured so many foundlings, so many children, turning people who simply wanted to honor their god into fodder for the battlefield.”
“I’ll give them the sword before I ever give them you,” Nyatrix snarls, her eyes wild. “You have sacrificed enough.”
She steps back then, her hand going to the pommel of the Cursed blade. Her wings spring from her back, devouring all the light in the space, stretching across the chamber.
She is heartrendingly beautiful. My lovely apocalypse.
“The Host will take no more of you,” the Lupa Nox says, like it’s a vow, a hymn, a promise that will never become undecipherable like the papyri piled on the table. She hefts the sword into the air, gloved fingers closing around the handle. “They can have the blade.”
“Nyatrix,” Agrippina begins, but the Lupa Nox turns to her, the moonlight grazing the sharp, feral features of her face. Not mortal. Never mortal. Not even close.
“The First Son may take this blade,” she murmurs, striding forward, flipping the sword in her hands, “between His sixth and seventh rib. In His stomach. In His heart, if He still has one.”
She pauses, candlelight running like rivulets of gold along the intricate embossing on her armor. With one hand, she raises her wolf-helm and settles it onto her head. When she speaks again, it is a low growl, a dangerous purr from the back of her throat, the depths of her bones.
“Thatis the only way this false god will take anything from us ever again.”
Chapter 44
Ihalf-expect Nyatrix to storm from the room right then, all shadow and ruin, as much a weapon herself as the sword she carries. Instead, she sheathes her blade. Her wings blink out of existence, and some of the darkness leaves her face, the feral gleam quieted. She approaches me, soft and slow, and kneels at my feet.
“Ophelia,” Nyatrix murmurs. “There is something I must ask of you, but only if you can accept yet another burden.”
I don’t hesitate. “I am stronger,” I reply, reaching for her gloved hand, “than anyone thinks.”
She smiles. “Let me at least speak of what I would lay at your feet.”
The rest of the room disappears. It is just me and my dark salvation, both of us gilded in the candlelight.
“Go on,” I whisper.
