Before me, the pupil of the eye opens like a door. From the statue, twenty long, spindly limbs reach out, dripping in blackened viscera, the hands hungry, fingers reaching. The pull of the putrid wound is inevitable, unavoidable, all-consuming.
“We know this ritual is a terrible one,” my God says, His voice deafening in its timbre. “We know you are frightened. But We need only do this once. And then, peace forevermore.”
The eye pulses, straining wildly at the viscous edge of the opening in the statue like a rabid animal. I fight against His hold on me, but find no purchase; He has permeated every part of me, infected me from the core. I cannot even look toward my love—I would like her face to be the last thing I see, but my God does not allow it.
The sound of a High Ecclesian shrieking cuts through the silence. Then everything happens all at once. The First Son’s hold on me loosens. Tears fall freely down my face as I reach for the base of His statue, fighting to crawl to my feet. Familiar fingers wrap around my bicep and pull me up. For the barest of moments, I stare into Nyatrix’s thunderstorm eyes. The full might of the Votum suddenly returns, thundering out of my inner room.
Nyatrix wheels, pulling her sword, and my eyes follow her movements down the altar stairs to where an Ecclesian shrieks. A woman—Magdalena, I realize—is crumpled on her knees, a pair of silver scissors in her hands as she strikes at the Ecclesian’s leg over and over again. Black, congealed blood coats her fingers. She doesn’t slow, not even when the Ecclesian swoops low and grabs her by the throat.
I don’t see anything else, because another Ecclesian appears before me, my view of the space swallowed by Their skeletal features, the thin, rotted lips. And then, with a howling shriek, They seize me by the shoulders and toss me bodily into the First Son’s gaping, hungry eye.
I am consumed, enveloped in the darkness. A thousand hands pry at me, wet with viscera. I scream, but there is no sound in this vast gloom—only rage and hunger, and none of itmine. So much hunger, more than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. And I have known hunger—perhaps better than most.
A voice slinks into my ears; it’s a physical sensation, like something lukewarm and slimy wriggling into my ear canal. “I wanted to taste the other one first,” the First Son tells me, probably as He digests me, “but I suppose you will give Me all the power I need to devour her.”
The very thought of my flesh and bone being converted into energy to destroy Nyatrix infuriates me—infuriates the shard of a goddess left inside my chest. We struggle together in the gloom, holding back the oppressive weight of a god’s desires. And then, I reach and I reach and I reach, searching for a seam where I might send the Votum’s power, where I might undo and unmake. But as I have all my life, I grasp only empty space. There is nothing to latch onto, no corpse-skin beneath my fingertips. There is nothing here in this place of darkness to banish.
“Your foolish hope amuses Me.” The words fill whatever remains of my being, spoken from the back of a godly throat. “And it fills My stomach.”
That’s all He is, I realize. Just hunger. For power, for blood, for dominion. Just endless, sweeping hunger. Which means, perhaps, that this dark space I find myself in is not the underworld, or even death.
Perhaps it is just a stomach.
I remember my tiny ritual with Agrippina, my first try at sympaethetica. I wanted to banish that vast, cold emptiness in me, to tear it from where it had coiled around the base of my spine and cast it away.
“But it’s better,”Agrippina had said, when her throat was not torn asunder, when she was not dead because of me,“to fill emptiness, isn’t it?”
I throw my head back and scream. I fill the darkness around me with all my anger, all my barely suppressed rage—but with my love, too. My blossoming love for Nyatrix, the love I will always have for Agrippina, for my mother, the love I felt for Carina, and even for Renault. I fill the emptiness with memories of that meadow in the vision from the goddesses, of the birch-tree copse where I played with my mother, of the false gardens that I’ll always adore, even if it’s foolish.
I fill and I feel and Ifill, emptying the teapot, tasting every single herb and bloom on my tongue—the ones for pleasure, the ones for joy, the ones for warmth. I fill this vast, empty stomach with all of me, every bit, and I hope that, for once in my life, it is enough.
The world tears down the center, like a seam split in two, and I tumble through the opening.
I land on something hard and uneven, crumpled in a heap, covered in blackened viscera. On my hands and knees, I scramble forward, away from the darkness, away from the grasp of an unworthy god.
Hands touch my shoulders. I look up, shoving the viscera from my eyes, and find myself looking into Carina’s face.
“Are we dead?” I ask her.
“Dead?” she echoes. “No. Saints, no. Ophelia, look.” She raises one hand and points behind my shoulder, to some eerie mirror of that day in the gardens, when I’d thought I had seen tears of blood on Saintess Lucia’s face.
I twist at the waist and find myself looking upon the altar. The statue of the First Son is gutted, the eye-wound in its chest nothing but a shadowed, empty hole. Carina hands me a handkerchief, and I take it gratefully, wiping my face clean.
I open my mouth to ask where Nyatrix is, if Magdalena’s okay, but Carina speaks first, reaching for my hand. I take it,if only to grapple her forearm and haul myself to my feet. My wings, I notice, are gone.
“Ophelia,” she says imploringly, her chestnut waves as perfect as ever, her skin an unaffected pale rose. “I was wrong and I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry for everything I said.”
“Oh,” is all I can muster. I sweep my eyes around the Devorarium, my gaze keen for danger. All I find are writhing heaps of tattered vestments that must be the High Ecclesia in Their death throes, the final ebbs of the First Son’s power.
“I love you,” Carina says, gripping my hand too tightly. “Even if my love can’t be the kind you’d like.”
I turn back to her then and frown. Perhaps it’s paranoia after Renault’s confession, but part of me wonders why, having just watched her god be torn apart by my doing, she is so quick to seek my love. My approval. Were I in her shoes, I think I would be angry, upset—even if I came to understand the truth of it all later.
I don’t know how to tell her any of this, and I’m not even sure if I would. “Your friendship is all I seek,” I reply, scanning the pews at Carina’s back. I don’t see Nyatrix anywhere. “And I’m happier than I can even explain that you’re all right. But right now, I need to find someone very important to me.”
Her hold on my hand loosens and I pull away, looking around for my cane, but it’s nowhere to be found, so I turn and limp toward the altar. Far off to the side, Nyatrix is on the ground, cradling someone in her arms. My stomach lurches, and I make my way to her. It’s only once I’m upon her that my brain processes the storm-gray vestments, the limp gauntleted hand.
“Nyatrix?” I ask, my voice trembling.
