Page 30 of Holy Wrath
M y mind bends and twists. Whatever creature thrashes about in my inner room lets out a long, low howl, unused vocal cords shuddering with the effort. My thoughts crystallize into one thing, over and over and over again: how dare he, how dare he, how dare he .
I raise my hands to Renault’s chest and take his tunic into my fists. My hands are strong from anni of labor in the garden, in the library, in the infirmary. There is a thrill, I find, to snatch at a man’s garment the way they so often snatch at a woman’s flesh.
“Let go of me,” I say, raising my gaze to his.
Surprise creases his brow, and then he laughs, sliding his hands to my shoulders and tightening his grip until I wince. “Are you so stupid I need to repeat myself?” he asks, his tone coy and mocking.
Another howl from deep inside my chest rattles my bones. “Are you ?” I retort, tightening my grip, too. “Let. Me. Go.”
For a moment, Renault is silent, inspecting me like I’m a manuscript he might plumb for information. But then he just laughs, his face contorted in a sneer. His lips part, venomous words no doubt lying in wait on his tongue, but someone else’s voice rings through the chamber.
“It’d be best to do as the lady asks.” Nyatrix’s words are like a dagger wrapped in velvet, smooth and decadent on the surface with a dangerous bite lingering just beneath.
I tilt my chin back and stare at Renault. His attention has long since left me; instead, his gaze is fixed over my shoulder, no doubt on the Lupa Nox.
“Do you have any idea who I am?” he demands, his grip on me loosening.
Nyatrix’s scoff slinks through the large chamber. “Renault of House Amadeus, third heir to his Title, one of the Twelve,” she replies, sounding closer with each word. “And I’ll gut you just as easily as I’ve gutted any other man if you do not release her.”
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, my Lumendei. 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.
I think of the violets, of the Hexen’s transformation, of the disappearing bruises on Nyatrix’s skin. I wrap my arms around myself and let out a long breath, utterly exhausted in a thousand different ways.
“Well, this has been amusing, but it’s time you seek your God’s city,” Nyatrix tells him, getting to her feet in one lithe unfolding.
Renault finally tears his eyes away from his hand and glares at her. “Yes,” he agrees, to my surprise, cradling his hand against his chest, as if he’s just remembered how easily she took his fingers from him. “My bride and I will be on our way. You will not interfere.”
Nyatrix roundly ignores him, grabbing my cane from where it’s leaning against the bench. Then, without another glance in his direction, she reaches down and offers me her hand. With a hard swallow, I take it, and she gently helps me to my feet. Once I’m standing, the knight positions herself between Renault and me, fingers wrapping around the hilt of the Cursed blade.
“Ophelia,” Nyatrix says, her voice all slinking heat, “do you still wish for Renault to live? Say the word, and I shall gladly slay him for you.”
My betrothed’s breath comes in a hard gasp, the sound unmistakable in the silence of the bathing chambers. My lungs constrict, as if my body has forgotten how to breathe on its own. Heat amasses low in my belly, an ache unfolding between my thighs. I swallow hard, pressing my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
“This is absurd,” Renault protests, but his voice is high and reedy, his eyes wild with fear.
My mind tumbles, and the forgotten chamber buried beneath the rotten sands of the Sundered Lands holds perfectly still, stretched taut as a pigskin drum.
“I do not think,” I say, my lips numb, “there is need for any more death today.”
Nyatrix does not hesitate; she steps aside with all the grace of a high-blooded Noble lady. “As you wish,” she murmurs, turning to me, her head bowed.
My throat tightens, and that forbidden thing roars a war cry somewhere in my chest.
Renault says my name and does barely more than shift his weight toward me—but Nyatrix’s blade is already drawn, the point of it pressed against his throat. My heartbeat ricochets, my world condensing to the indentation of Renault’s skin where a Sepulchyre sword rests. A delicate thing, I think uselessly—to apply just enough pressure with such a large, heavy blade. To not break the skin, to not spill blood, but to so clearly make a threat of doing all those things.
“She is not going with you,” Nyatrix snarls.
I turn toward her and find myself lost in the utter darkness of her gaze, the tendons and muscles that stand out along her sword arm as she holds the blade perfectly aloft. Not a single tremble. Not one shake.
“She is not staying with you ,” he counters despite the threat the Lupa Nox clearly presents. “She is my prize. The only way a third son may rise to House Heir. The High Ecclesia promised.”
“Renault,” I say, my voice strained as I sink back against the stone he shoved me into just moments ago, even though it feels like anni and anni have passed. “You said I’m important. How? What could They possibly want with me?”
I resist the urge to grip my Saintess medallion, to see if I can summon a flood of that perfect divine wonder. If I’m important to the High Ecclesia, perhaps I could drive out the infection at Lumendei’s heart. Perhaps I could do more than flee.
Renault sneers. “Hard to believe, I know,” he replies, haughty as anything. “But you’re a very important tool in the First Son’s plans for the future. And I am to be the wielder of that tool.”
A tool . Of course.
Just a thing, an object, something to be milked and used up until I’m a husk. Disappointment gnaws at my soft places even though I should know better by now. Beside me, Nyatrix says nothing, her sword still held against Renault’s throat. It’s his own ambition that drives him to this madness, that allows him to show his not-so-sharp teeth to the Lupa Nox. That’s all. Not love. Not even devotion or friendship or goodliness. Just lust for more power.
Of all things, it’s a long exhale I let out, and something in me releases, like a tightly wound muscle finally relaxing. I inhale, and I think maybe it’s the first time I’ve taken a deep breath in a very, very long time.
“I’m not an object to be wielded for your desires. And I’m not going with you, Renault,” I say, straightening, trying to hide the wince as I shift my weight to pull myself up to my full height. When I stand straight like this, he’s not even that much taller than me. “You are free to leave. I have no desire to see you slain, so please. Just go.”
He sneers at me, all arrogant derision, still somehow unaware of the threat he faces. Still somehow thinking he deserves to leave a situation like this one with more than he had upon entering it.
In my peripheral vision, I see the corded muscles of Nyatrix’s forearm flex, and a trickle of blood slides down his neck as she drives the point of her blade just a hair deeper.
Finally, Renault holds his hands up and backs away. He asks for the rest of his armor, and we allow him to take it, though Nyatrix pulls his sword from his waist and watches him carefully as he dons the brass helm and breastplate. From his belt, he pulls a small pouch free. Nyatrix tenses, her weight shifting forward, as he tosses it onto the stone floor at my feet.
“Here,” Renault says, his voice thick with condescension. “A reminder.”
I look down at the pouch just once, then return my gaze to my betrothed. Nyatrix directs him out of the bathing room, and I follow, a wisp of pale, bloodstained wool on the heels of a prowling shadow. Through the main chamber and out the corridor we go, Nyatrix offering short, terse directions to Renault, who leads the way, the point of her blade hovering at his back.
“What does your God want with Ophelia?” Nyatrix asks as we walk, voicing the very thing I am afraid to press Renault on. I clench my jaw, trying to keep my body steady.
“She is to be a vessel,” my betrothed replies. “A most glorious vessel. And yet she shunts this divine duty.”
“A vessel for what ?” I ask as we turn down a tight corridor.
“A new age,” Renault replies with all the conviction of a devotee. “The First Son’s return to His former glory.”
Nyatrix scoffs, and I half-expect some burst of fury and violence out of her, but she just keeps walking, her sword at Renault’s back. When we reach the small, sloping tunnel that leads to the surface, our strange party pauses. I can hear the Godwinds again, their song filling the emptiness of my ears. It must be daytime, for a weak light leaks down the ruined corridor, and my mother’s voice does not pry at my heart with pleading fingers.
My betrothed turns to face us, Nyatrix’s sword at his chest now. She tightens the grip on the hilt, watching him carefully, like she’s trying to make a decision.
“Enjoy Liminalia,” Renault spits at me, his eyes wild beneath his helm. He edges toward the mouth of the tunnel. “I pray the First Son gives you all that you deserve. I wish I could be there to see your face when you find out the truth. When you learn of the Tithe.”
Even in the low light, I can see Nyatrix tense, her attention suddenly returning to its razor-sharpness.
Renault catches it, too, and a terrible grin spreads across his face. “Yes,” he continues, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of the Godwinds. Then he laughs, a terrible thing. “Enjoy the city of the dead, Ophelia. I hope nothing but horror finds you.”
“Wait,” I call, stepping forward. “What Tithe? What are you talking about?”
“On second thought,” Nyatrix says with a frown, all her attention leveled at Renault, “perhaps we should keep him. See what else he knows.”
Renault’s face pales and his eyes gleam in the gray light. All the world slows to half-pace as he dives toward me. Nyatrix reacts immediately, but her first strike only glances off his armor. I desperately try to scramble away, but it’s inconsequential—at the last moment, Renault changes course, turning on his heel to bolt for the open corridor.
Nyatrix charges after him, a hound with the scent of blood in her nose. My heart races furiously as I watch Renault sprint toward the mouth of the corridor where the Sundered Lands await, moving as fast as a man in full armor possibly can.
Nyatrix is so much faster.
She’s nearly upon him when a great shadow rises from the ash-gray sands. I can do nothing at all as an enormous Hexen—part equus, perhaps, with the head of some great reptilian and a forked tongue covered in steaming saliva that drips poisonously from massive fangs—leaps toward the corridor’s opening.
Before even the Lupa Nox herself can intervene, the Hexen lunges at Renault. It happens so fast. He’s there, a solid thing of bronze armor and bottomless arrogance, and then all at once, the man whom I thought saved my life is gone, vanished into the gaping maw of an ungodly beast.