Page 101 of Holy Wrath

“Even if we’re not really,” she replies, looking over at me with a sly, private smile.

Together, after we felled the First Son, Nyatrix and I gathered up all of that Avatar power and directed it toward the land. Where the soil was torn asunder, where the heavy, choking fog gathered, where nothing could grow, where the stone seemed to be weeping for a gentle reprieve.

We thought we’d spend it all on the land, that tiny facet of the Creatrixes’ power granted to Avatars. We thought that would be the end of it and we’d be returned to ourselves.

But just as I feel the earth beneath my feet rolling over after a long winter’s sleep and, once again, reaching for the sun, I can feel whatever’s buried deep inside of me doing the same. Replenishing. Slowly, yes, but far from gone.

Which makes us the closest thing to goddesses in this land.

We’ve done what we thought was best. I’ve fixed a number of the Hexen, though it’ll take anni and anni to un-meld all those poor creatures. We restored as many lost memories as possible, but most of our history is still gone, buried in the graves of our elders. We used incantations whispered to us by the remnantsof the Creatrixes to reunite foundlings with their families from Liminalia. We did what we could with the shell of Lumendei to make it habitable. And we made sure that what remained of the Apostles and the Noble Houses understood things would be very different from here on out—though, frankly, we only needed the Lupa Nox’s intimidation skills for that, not the Avatar power.

We learned, to my continued horror, that the Apostle families knew about the High Ecclesia, a god’s gestalt—andhaveknown for some time. I searched for clarity by trying to determine if He had ever peered out of Carina’s eyes, ever manipulated Renault, ever whispered thoughts into the minds of my fellow foundlings. No one is quite sure. No one can quite remember.

Or, perhaps, no one is willing to speak the truth: that they were cruel and monstrous on their own terms.

“I think we’re right,” Nyatrix sighs, resting her head on my shoulder in a way that makes my entire body remember it’s alive. “We cannot suffer any more gods, Ophelia.”

I let out a long breath. She’s right. I know she is. And yet, as I sit here, my gaze drifts to Saintess Lucia’s statue. We removed the rest of the Saints’ statues, but I asked for Lucia’s to be left behind. Considering everything that had happened, no one questioned me. No one’s remarked on it at all so far—a strange thing for someone like me, so used to being poked and prodded and expected to justify my every thought.

Nyatrix’s breath ghosts my skin as she presses a lingering kiss to my jaw, right beneath my ear. I tumble into the sensation, every bit of me keening for her, lashing at her shore like a ferocious tide.

I turn to face her, and she rewards me with a kiss, all tender and sweet, far softer than it has any right to be. I reach for her, desperate and hungry, my hands sliding into her hair.

When we pull apart—softly, so softly—sometime later, I look into her gaze. “Nyatrix,” I murmur. “Why, after everything, do I still want some kind of a sign? It’s the same craving I had for the Sainting. Why do I still need the approval of some divine, unknowable creature?”

She smiles sadly, tracing my lower lip with the pad of her thumb. “I don’t know,” she admits. “It would be nice, though, wouldn’t it? To be sure. If we could be sure, I think, then everything we’ve endured would be worth it. The horrors might not slip into our bed with us at night if we were sure.”

My eyes brim with tears. I nod, my fingers curling tighter around hers. For so many anni, I wanted to bring children into a world that would devour them.

Instead, I’ve devoured a world. Consumed a god. But what right do I have, truly, to decide the direction of this land, these people? What if I’m wrong?

“Here,” Nyatrix murmurs, as if she can read my thoughts. She untangles her arm from mine, presses a kiss to my forehead, and then stalks toward Saintess Lucia’s statue. It always amuses me, just a little, when she joins me in the garden—all black leather and midnight linen, knives ever-gleaming on her belt, tumbling with me through this realm of tender green and pale pink and delicate buds of hope.

She reaches the statue and pulls one of those knives from her belt. I furrow my brow, watching my wolf of a woman as she touches her thumb—the same one she traced my mouth with just moments ago—to the blade, drawing blood. Then she looks over at me with a smile. “Like your vision,” the Lupa Nox explains. “Maybe you were right the whole time.”

She raises her elegant hand and anoints the statue. Then she returns to me—my salvation, my destruction—backlit by the sun, our three moons appearing like faint fingerprints in the westerly skies. Heedless of the blood, she takes my jaw in herhands and kisses me with the ferocity of a wolf, the intensity of a hurricane. When Nyatrix pulls away, I look across the path at her handiwork and smile.

In a garden at the beginning of a new world, a marble statue cries tears of blood.