Page 35 of Holy Wrath

“ H ow?” I sputter, feeling faint. “How could you possibly have known my mother?” I heave for air but come up empty, as though my lungs are bound in twine.

“Perhaps,” Nyatrix says gruffly, crossing her arms, “you might start from the beginning , Agrippina.”

The older woman takes a deep breath and nods, folding her hands together for a moment. Heat rises to my face, skin clammy with anticipation. Then she smiles like a rose thorn—pretty, inviting, the sharpness hidden beneath soft petals. “I escaped,” she says. “I was born on the edge of the Gilded Quarter to a minor Noble family. Things there never made sense to me, the way I think perhaps they do not make sense to you, either.”

I open my mouth, but no words arrive, just my blood pounding in my veins.

Agrippina reaches for my hands, closing her palms around mine. “I left,” she continues, the fire crackling beneath her words, “because I could not love who I wished to love.”

I do not dare look up from her gnarled hands, from the comfort her gesture provides—so much wisdom in those hands, so many lives saved, so many wounds tended, babes brought into the world, stitches closed, bleeding halted.

“You mean . . .” I breathe.

“Another woman, yes,” Agrippina says.

I gasp in surprise despite myself as pinpricks needle my skin, somehow both hot and cold at once.

“We are not so few, Ophelia,” Nyatrix murmurs.

The Godwinds sweep across the roof with a low howl, shaking the shutters. They seem to reach through the sturdy pale stone and shake me, too, throttling me until I can make no sense of what’s happening.

“My mother,” I stammer, finally forcing myself to look up. Agrippina’s face is kind, open, but grief sharpens everyone. “How can you be so sure I’m the daughter of the woman you claim to know?”

“Well,” Agrippina replies, one brow arched, “you’re the spitting image of her, so that certainly helps.”

I pull my hands from Agrippina’s out of sheer shock, almost shooting to my feet before the dead weight of my leg and the pain in my hip bring me back down to the chair.

“Easy, little dove,” Nyatrix murmurs, abandoning her post by the pantry and moving to stand at my side. “Are you all right?” Her long, elegant fingers land on my shoulder, soft as a feather. It’s silly, but I feel safer with her right beside me. I let out a long exhale and nod, turning back to Agrippina.

“You and your mother lived outside Lumendei in a small village,” the older woman says, gentle now, like she’s soothing a frightened child. “You can come see it, if you like. It’s closer to the sea. There’s a copse of silver birch trees and a small?—”

“River,” I finish numbly. Panic overwhelms me, and I bring my hands to my face, digging the heels of my palms into my eyes. “But I remember so little. You could show me any village, and I might think it mine.” Because I have always been so very desperate to belong. “But it was the Sepulchyre that slaughtered my village. How could my mother have been Sepulchyre, then?”

The kitchen hearth is suddenly far too hot. My entire body is aflame, except for the place where Nyatrix’s cool fingers press into my shoulder.

“It’s been a very long day,” the knight says. “We could discuss this further after you’ve rested, if you’d prefer.”

Something that might be rage hums in me, like there’s a song in my marrow. Like it’s been trapped for a thousand anni and I only just realized I can hear it. “No!” I shout, shoving her hand away. Tears cloud my vision, and I can’t stop myself from pulling my legs up onto the chair. I wrap my arms around my knees and bury my face in my skirts.

Everything is too much, and I am not enough. That’s the way it’s always been. A different location won’t change that. I stifle a sob, pulling in the scent of a recently lit fire, the rich green herbs from Agrippina’s hands, and the sweet spice of asphodels.

When I decided to leave with Nyatrix, was I truly running from Lumendei, from the Host, from Sergio, from Renault? Or have I always been running from myself? And yet, even all the way on the other side of the Sundered Lands, here I am, still.

“The massacre you remember...” Nyatrix begins, her voice softer than I’ve ever heard it. “It’s well-recounted in Liminalian history. The Host demanded a Tithe from us: children with an inclination for Mysterium. Three an annum. As you might imagine, we said no.”

Horror descends on me, cold as ocean spray in the dead of winter, except this devours me entirely, pulls me to the bottom where muck grabs at my boots. The foundlings . I was always told we were the result of the Sepulchyre’s violence, that the Host was simply taking care of the orphans, giving us a place to thrive and serve the Lord. My mind races, the firelight turning to swathes of blood and gore in my vision instead of golden illumination.

Orphans are made, not born. I never stopped to ask myself why there would be so many. Why would we have an entire Foundling Hall built to house the children the Host so valiantly rescued?

And if it is my God, my once-beloved Lord, who grants us the power to work the Mysteries, why would He demand Sepulchyre children who could already do so? There is, I realize, no true difference between Mysterium and goetia. It’s all framing. All a game of who should have power and who shouldn’t.

A sob, or maybe a scream, tears free of me, threatening to rend my body in two. Nyatrix’s hand settles onto mine, impossibly delicate. She turns my hand over, palm up, and then interlaces our fingers. The atmosphere thrums, a pulsating thickness I’ve never felt before, like the heavy air of a humid summer day but without any heat.

“The Host attacked when we defied their request,” Agrippina says as she leans back in her chair, the wood creaking. Her words are too worn-in. She’s told this story too many times. She carries it in her pocket like a stone. “They came over the mountains for the first time in our histories. Slaughtered indiscriminately until the Celeres were alerted.”

There is nothing but the crackle of the fire and the distant moan of the Godwinds. My breath rattles in my chest like I’m just a husk, little more than that corn dolly I made with my mother all those anni ago. On those steps that are probably still here, somewhere. I gulp in an inhale, the smell of warm stone and fresh asphodel petals leaking from my memory and into the present.

“How did I survive?” I find myself asking, trying to sound imperious, like I’m not afraid of anything, like I’m made of stone instead of dust and petals and pain. Beside me, Nyatrix sighs, the sound almost devoured by the crackle of the fire.

“The hidden panel in your home, I imagine,” Agrippina says, her gaze unflinching. My stomach plummets. “The moment your mother heard of the Host’s Tithe demand, she made plans. That was Celia. Always ready.”

My heart swells, and I go stock-still. It’s impossible —it’s impossible this Sepulchyre woman knows the name of my mother, a woman I lost far too early, whose name I have never spoken for fear that her actions may further sully my standing in Lumendei. Grief claws at me. How ready the Host made me to forsake her.

“She was a talented healer,” Agrippina murmurs, leaning her forearms onto the small table. She raises one hand for a moment, her fingers curled, as though to brush away my tears. At the last moment, she changes her mind—but how desperately I want to fall into her arms, to imagine what my mother may look and smell and feel like, had she not been taken from me. “And she adored you. That’s what’s most important for you to know, Ophelia. The sun rose and set with you, as far as she was concerned.”

I turn away, staring into the hearth as I grit my teeth, willing myself not to cry. If she found a way to save me, why not herself? Why couldn’t she have crawled into that little den, too? Even if we had died, we would have gone together. I would not know this pain I feel now, like something sharp-clawed has climbed beneath my breastbone and now desperately, wildly, wants back out.

“One of us was supposed to find you first,” Agrippina tells me. “For almost thirty anni, I’ve dreamt nearly every night of one thing: pulling the panel back in the remnants of your mother’s cottage and finding it empty.”

The older woman’s eyes are bright with tears. My own vision blurs. Tentatively, I reach out with my free hand, brushing the back of Agrippina’s weathered knuckles. In a heartbeat, she wraps her hand around mine.

“By the time I arrived with the rest of the Celeres,” Nyatrix adds, glancing down at me, her expression heavy with grief, “you had already been taken.”

It would be the most beautiful lie—that I was loved. That I had a home. That I wasn’t the only survivor, just the only harvest reaped from the orchard the Host razed. “You must understand,” I manage, “how hard all of this is for me to believe.”

“Of course it is, love,” Agrippina says, so genuine I want even more to weep. “But there’s no rush. You’re safe—or at least, safer than you were. The Cult of the Mater Dea carries on, and we’re here for any questions you might have.”

“Mater Dea?” I ask, the words somehow familiar on my tongue.

She exchanges a look with Nyatrix, who lets out a very long sigh but then nods.

“We are a group of healers, cunning-folk, and wise women,” Agrippina tells me, her shoulders tight with tension. “We believe that the Creatrixes will return. Rise again.”

“Easy, Agrippina,” Nyatrix says, though she doesn’t pull her fingers away from mine.

“She should know, Nyatrix,” the older woman retorts fiercely, tilting her head back to meet the knight’s gaze, defiance gleaming in her eyes.

“Don’t speak about me like I am not here,” I say, surprising myself with how easily the words come to my lips. Self-consciousness sears through me a moment later; I am a guest in Nyatrix’s home, saved by her goodwill. All my anni in Lumendei should’ve trained me to behave better.

Swallowing, I look at the knight, afraid of her reaction. But there’s no anger or frustration on the sharp planes of her face. Instead, the corners of her mouth are upturned, one eyebrow raised, her eyes glittering in a way that makes my stomach flip.

“Apologies, Lady Ophelia,” Nyatrix says, raising my hand from the table. She leans low and brushes the back of my knuckles with a kiss. “You are quite right. Agrippina wishes to tell you something that you may find distressing. Perhaps it’d be best to wait a few days, until you’ve had more rest.”

The little stone kitchen is so quiet that Agrippina’s sharp inhale rings out like a church bell. I look between the two of them, gently pulling my hands into my lap. A log crashes in the fire and I jump, my heart climbing the hill of my throat. I don’t know how to explain to Nyatrix that there would be no rest or comfort for me, not with this unknown stone hanging above my head. If it is to crush me, it may as well be now.

“Tell me, Agrippina,” I say. “If you believe I should know, then enlighten me.”

The woman pulls in a deep, hitched breath, her lips pressed together. I try to straighten my spine despite the still-present ache of the flail wounds.

“We believe the Creatrixes will rise again,” Agrippina repeats, her eyes two pits of shadowed gloom in the firelight. “And, in accordance with the Cult’s Sacred Scriptures, we believe that they will send two Avatars in their stead. Two creatures of earthly flesh, destined to usher in a new age. To topple their Son from His unearned throne.”

Confusion floods me. I furrow my brow, opening my mouth to speak, but Agrippina continues before I can. “Many moons ago, we thought that your mother was Vitalia’s Avatar,” she says. “And with her gone . . . it very well may be you , Ophelia.”

My blood throbs in my ears. The fire crackles. The Godwinds rattle at the door.

I say nothing. What is there to say? I have always known my mother was a heretic.

I have always known I am not very good at being on my knees.