Page 34 of Holy Wrath
T he opening in the Ossuary Wall closes behind us like it never existed, leaving Nyatrix and me in what appears to be a stable-yard. A low-slung building crouches along the ramparts to my right, lined with latched half-doors. A packed dirt courtyard ringed in stone extends out into the night, past the reach of the lamp set atop a curving metal post.
“Who goes there?” demands a thin, serious voice.
“It’s Nyatrix,” the Lupa Nox calls, holding a hand out to indicate I should wait. As if I planned to take a single step in this city without her guidance.
A door opens and closes somewhere close by, and then a man appears—tall, gangly, dressed in rough linen, much like Nyatrix.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he says, a grin breaking across his face. “You’re alive. And you brought home a stray.”
I duck my head, heat rising to my cheeks. Nyatrix told me Liminalia will barely survive the winter, and yet here I am, another mouth to feed. I can only hope my skills in healing are worth the price of keeping another person alive.
“Faunus,” Nyatrix replies, warmth flooding her voice, “this is Ophelia, but please don’t mention her to anyone just yet. I have some . . . politicking to do first. Actually, don’t tell anyone I’m back, except Agrippina. I need her to meet me at my domus. But no one else. I’ll deal with it all in the morning.”
The man draws closer, crossing his sinewy arms over his chest. “Delighted to meet you, Ophelia,” he says, examining me with cat-like eyes. He pauses, watching my expression, before turning back to the Lupa Nox. “Nyatrix,” he adds, his face growing tight and stern. “There’s something you should?—”
A loud neigh shatters the evening, devouring Faunus’s words. Nyatrix reacts immediately, turning toward a tall wooden fence at the edge of the courtyard. “Sorry, give me a moment,” she says with a laugh. “You know how impatient he gets.”
Between the moonlight and the lamp’s illumination, I can just make out what appears to be a wide, open space, populated by sparse vegetation and more rocky soil. Along the rampart walls, craggy trees reach twisted limbs up toward an empty sky. Nyatrix hooks one foot into the fence and hoists herself up just as something moon-pale begins to move through the dark of the night. The sound of thundering hooves fills the air, and then a massive equus slides to a halt by the fence. I step closer, awe stirring in my heart.
The equus is a beautiful gray, dappled in steel and heavily muscled. Its mane is near-black and thick, falling past its shoulder in long waves. Nostrils flared, it shoves its enormous face into Nyatrix’s. She lets out a delighted laugh, sounding lighter than I’ve ever heard her, and reaches to scratch the equus’s forehead.
“I thought I asked you to keep his mane braided,” she says, turning to look at Faunus over her shoulder, eyebrow arched.
“Argento objected to having his hair done by a mere mortal,” Faunus replies with a shrug. “Apparently only his Fatum mother is allowed to do that.”
“Is that true?” Nyatrix asks Argento, as if an equus could possibly talk, scratching the animal beneath the chin. He’s positively massive, nearly twice the size of the equui the Noble Houses keep in Lumendei for their carriages.
I watch—something tender blossoming under my breastbone all the while—as Nyatrix sighs and reaches over the fence, beginning to pick bits of bramble and leaves from Argento’s pitch mane. “I’ll be back,” she promises, bringing her forehead to his.
She slips down off the fence, her gaze meeting mine, but Faunus lightly catches her by the shoulder. Even though he’s a stranger to me, something about his expression makes my stomach drop. As Nyatrix glances down at the stablemaster, any shred of softness flees her face.
The two exchange terse whispers, their faces shadowed, and my heart begins to hammer. I so desperately want to step closer, to ask what’s happening, to not be left out as I always seem to be. But in truth, I’m afraid—afraid my place in Liminalia is still too fragile and untested for such boldness. A memory of Renault conspiring with the High Ecclesians in the Libris Sanctum creeps into my mind. I drag air into my lungs and try to shove it away.
Nyatrix steps away from the stablemaster, her expression grim. Panic thrashes against my sternum as the Godwinds pull at my hair. “Let’s get you inside,” she says to me as she approaches. “Faunus, not a word to anyone .”
The stablemaster nods wearily. “I’m still far more afraid of you than the Centuria,” he replies. “I’ll send Agrippina soon. Please be careful.”
“We will,” Nyatrix promises, surprising me when she takes my hand. I surprise myself, too, when just the brush of her cool skin calms the gallop of my heart. “Do you need me to carry you? It’s not terribly far.”
“You should ask the Scholae Medicorum about a currus for her,” Faunus remarks, leaning against the fence as he looks at me.
“I intend to,” she says, though her gaze never leaves mine.
“If it’s mainly flat, I think I’ll be all right,” I tell her, though my tongue longs to demand answers instead.
She nods and guides me through the stable-yard, exiting onto a narrow, winding side street. I can’t help but notice her free hand rests on her sword, like she’s ready to spill blood at any moment.
“Nyatrix,” I begin, my voice unsteady. “What was that about?”
The knight clenches her jaw as we pass buildings of sturdy pale stone that sweep up from the ground, undulating in strange formations that defy the kind of godly order to which I’m accustomed.
“Not here,” she murmurs, just loud enough for me to hear. Anxiety boils in my stomach and I find myself clenching her hand tighter as we walk. When we come around a bend, I catch our reflections in the dark faces of the windows, distorted by the rippled Liminalian glass. Sand whips across the walkway, a tumble of dried branches caught in its wake. I cannot help but feel much the same: cast about by forces much greater than me.
“Who lives here?” I ask her to distract myself. I keep my voice down; the narrow path is deserted, the strangely shaped windows shrouded and quiet. They must be the homes of very important people, I assume, to be so beautiful.
“Regular folk,” she says with a shrug. Her hand still hasn’t left the hilt of her sword. “A good portion of the Celeres—I think you’d call us knights in Lumendei. Mounted soldiers. Some of the craftspeople, like the weavers, and a few apprentice healers. Me.”
“You live here ?” I ask, tilting my head back to look up at the sky. The velvet night is sprinkled with a few winking stars, the galaxies a spray of seafoam in the distance, framed on either side by the curving roofs. I’m not sure what I expected—perhaps that she lived in some grand fortress made of mortal bones, feasting on flesh, only leaving her lair when summoned to descend upon Lumendite soldiers.
No, I don’t think that. At least, not anymore. Not since we fell from that rampart, down together into the dark.
We come around a tight corner. One side of the street is devoid of homes, opening instead to a larger boulevard. The Godwinds race up and down, showering the wide stone pathway with sand. Through the dust, I can just make out larger buildings, but Nyatrix keeps to the outside of the curve, staying in the shadow of the homes, and the view down the boulevard is swallowed within a few moments.
She stops just past a narrow alley. Here, the building changes from one continuous block of undulating stone to narrow houses of a similar style. Dark windows stretch wide like open mouths, the glass shimmering, an ocean at midnight. Nyatrix helps me up a few wide, shallow stairs, coming to a stop at the door.
Equui are etched into the domus’s gray stone as if the sculptor has freed them from a Curse, their manes and tails caught in an invisible wind. On the side of the structure, a windowed balcony leans over the alley, its roof rippled like the cap of a mushroom. Above the door, a mounted rider gallops, just visible in the moonlight.
And then under Nyatrix’s touch, the door swings open. She ushers me inside, bolting us in. Without the light of the moon, it’s pitch-dark.
“Let me light a lamp,” she mutters. A match strikes, and I find myself in the confines of a space that is somehow both wonderfully cozy and absolutely beautiful. The walls are wood- clad almost until they meet the ceiling. I step closer, awestruck, to find the glossy black wood is carved with skulls, vines snaking through the eye sockets, rising to weave an intricate, abstract form at the top.
With the lamp lit, I look over my shoulder into the small hallway from which we entered. Its ceiling is made of intricate stained glass in those snaking patterns that defy specific shape. The hearth draws my attention next—more pale gray stone reaching to the ceiling, this time sculpted into a fanciful design of swords, equui, and shields. Across the room, a low couch lounges, wrapped in a pale violet velvet, its arching back carved to match the walls. An intricate spiral staircase curves up into shadow.
I wish I could just tumble headlong into its beauty, but Nyatrix and Faunus’s whispered exchange clings to me with prickling claws. I hear Nyatrix moving in the next room, so I step through the arched doorway and find a small, orderly kitchen. To my shock, a neat open shelf is lined with foodstuffs: dried fruit, a jar of lentils, flour, yeast. No one who lives in Lumendei’s citadel is permitted to keep food within their chambers. I so terribly want Liminalia to be different. Perhaps it truly is.
I’m distracted by the sound of Nyatrix striking flint by the kitchen’s hearth. Orange-hued illumination fills the space, banishing the deeper shadows.
“Nyatrix,” I murmur, braver with her back to me, free from the weight of that thunderstorm gaze. “What happened? With the stablemaster?”
She turns, and in this small space, we’re suddenly so close— unbearably close. My heart leaps into my throat, anxiety and fear and desire and hope tangled together like the roots of a wild meadow.
“I...” She breathes out, dragging one hand through her hair, though she doesn’t meet my gaze. “Something unexpected happened while I was gone. Politics. I—it’s nothing I can’t handle. For now, Agrippina should be here any moment. The healer I mentioned. To help with your back.”
“Nyatrix,” I repeat, trying to find the right words. The hearth-light outlines her powerful body in red and my heart flutters. “Please. I’ve spent too long being kept from the truth.”
She finally looks at me, her mouth twisted. She releases a short breath and nods, reaching for my hands. Her eyes are wide, two dark pools in the glow of the fire. I let her wrap her fingers around mine, ignoring the way heat slides down my throat, blossoming in my belly.
“Faunus told me that our Centurion Primus, the leader of Liminalia’s governing body, was found dead a few days ago,” Nyatrix says. Her voice falters just as my stomach flips. “I—I thought I was bringing you somewhere safe, or at least saf er . But now ...”
A desperate urge to run sears through me, like I’m little more than a mindless mammal seeking the safety of its dark, hidden burrow. I stare down at my feet, my heart pounding.
“I can handle this,” Nyatrix promises, though her words sound distant, like they’re coming from very, very far away. My ears ring. “I’m just a bit shaken.”
A knock sounds at the door and I nearly leap out of my own skin. Nyatrix reacts immediately, too, dropping my hands and slinking toward the archway like some great beast. With the hearth at the front of her domus still unlit, there’s only darkness to peer into, but she finds an answer there, anyway. With an exhale, she turns back toward me, her shoulders drooping.
“My friend,” she explains, gesturing toward the door. “The healer. Are you still all right to have her look at your back?”
My mind tumbles, but I manage to nod, not trusting my words. Nyatrix asks me to stay in the kitchen and then slips through the archway, her footsteps silent on the tiled floors. Soft voices reach my ears, followed by the sound of a closing door.
Nyatrix reappears, looking a little more relaxed. “Ophelia,” she says, her gaze holding mine. “I want you to meet Agrippina.”
At the knight’s side stands a woman of about my height. She’s older, perhaps in her seventies, with a flowing mane of wavy gray hair. Her light blue eyes are sharp and striking against warm brown skin. She’s dressed in a simple linen shift, belted at the waist, a cowl wrapped around her shoulders, though the hood’s thrown back. I cannot shake the feeling that if my mother had lived, she might have looked much like this woman—the lined skin, the graying hair, the easy stance.
“I’m pleased to meet you,” Agrippina says. Her voice is low and hearty, like stew simmered for bells on the stove.
“I appreciate you coming,” I say, my gaze darting to her capable hands, the fingertips stained green from herbs, no doubt.
From a small dining nook, Nyatrix pulls out a chair, gesturing for me to sit. Agrippina asks me the kinds of questions I would in her position, and I preemptively offer her a few details that prompt her to ask me if I’m a healer, too. When I tell her I am, something passes between us—a sadness thick as heavy fog, but a kinship, too. As I peel off my clothing down to my shift, warmth fills the room, the fire crackling.
Agrippina works in a heavy, weighted silence. Something hangs over the three of us—something tense and unsaid, roiling like a stormfront. Nyatrix watches with a sharp, rapt kind of attention, her eyes constantly darting between Agrippina and me. Like she’s waiting for something.
“Ophelia,” the healer says in that rich, warm voice of hers as she begins to button my shift back up, my wounds cleaned and dressed. “Nyatrix asked me to come see you for a reason, and it’s not just because I’m a healer.”
My blood pounds in my ears, but I manage to slip my arms back into my dress and turn to her. In my peripheral vision, Nyatrix—who has been leaning against the pantry door—suddenly stands up perfectly straight, her muscles tense.
“Yes?” I ask Agrippina, meeting that startling blue of her gaze.
“You see,” she replies, reaching for my hand, “I’m from Lumendei, too. And if you’re who we think you might be, then…I knew your mother.”