Page 101 of Wild Reverence

LXXVIII

Phantoms We Create

MATILDA

The wasteland was more beautiful than I remembered.

Undulating pink hills, a sunset sky teeming with stars and moons and suns, an iridescent stream that flowed like a song.

It took me a moment to gain my bearings, to realize that I had not entered this realm through a wasted doorway but by soul alone.

I could draw breath, but I did not need to. There was no pulse to feel in my wrists, my throat.

A deep wound in my chest was damp with blood.

I was dead.

My body was still solid and familiar, although it felt untethered in a way I could not explain.

I felt an immense thirst, which prompted me to walk along the road I had traveled before, knowing it would lead me to the gate.

That is when I started to remember my final moments.

Bade’s death had come first. Then Warin’s, by my hand.

Then my own ending, embraced in Vincent’s arms.

It had been gentle, this passing unto death. It had been like falling asleep.

Bade.

I began to run, eager to see him. There was no weight to hold me down; I flew over the hills as if I had grown wings, slowing only when I reached the last summit that overlooked the gate.

Bade was still on the road, cresting the hill, walking slowly.

But he must have heard me coming. He paused and turned.

“ Matilda, ” he said, his face taut. “You should not be here.” But then he saw the blood that dribbled down my tunic, a wound that matched his own, and his shoulders stooped. “Was it him ?”

I glanced down the remaining stretch of road to see Warin was standing at the mist’s entrance.

He must have cut in front of Bade, which did not surprise me.

The Gatekeeper had brought out her measuring scales and was currently listening to him, weighing his life.

He did not have many bones in his favor yet; he had come to her disgraced, stripped of all his magic.

Magic that was now mine, and I could feel it, woven into my very essence.

Warin waved his hands. I could hear his voice rising, although I could not catch the words. He sounded impatient, angry. The Gatekeeper merely cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Yes,” I replied, returning my gaze to Bade. “I now have spring, iron, and rivers to my name, but I am not war. Do you know why?”

“This is Adria’s doing.”

“And the two stars she gave you?”

Bade was quiet for a moment, as if thinking of her pained him. “Yes. As she also gave to you.”

“I still do not understand.”

“She is more than the goddess of peace. She is the matriarch of the mortal realm and can weave constellations into crowns, bestowing them upon any divine of her choosing. Such a crown can never be stolen once it is granted, which means the magic that divine possesses cannot be stolen either. Warin might have slayed me, but my magic was protected by the crown Adria gave to me. It is mine and will always be mine.”

I pondered on this for a moment, wistful.

Warin had killed me, but souls and words were still my own. The stars I had been born with had been the ones I had died beneath. All because Adria had woven them together into a crown and had given that endless ring back to me.

“If you have a crown of stars… why can’t I see it?” I asked.

“Because the crowns can only be seen by the one who knows your soul. Adria can see mine. Vincent, I suspect, can see yours.”

I swallowed and looked down at my palms. My mother’s constellations also still gleamed upon my hands. In a way, she felt close to us, and I wondered if she waited just within the mist to welcome Bade. To welcome me.

“Shall we walk together?” Bade asked, inclining his head to the gate.

I let my hands fall back to my sides as I gazed up at him. My heart, which was an icy, quiet vessel in my chest, suddenly felt warm, as if my magic was stirring.

“Do you want to return to her?” I asked him. “Do you want to return to Adria?”

Pain flashed across Bade’s face. “Of course I do.”

“Then take my hand.”

He stared at it—my right hand outstretched in the space between us.

“What is this, Matilda?”

“Take my hand,” I said to him again. “But you must promise that you will not let go of me. No matter what comes, you must hold on to me.”

Bade hesitated. But then his large hand encircled my own, cold as the winter snow that had soaked our spilled blood, just moments ago.

“I promise,” he said.

I drew him with me the way we had come, away from the misty gate and the scales and clatter of bones and the Gatekeeper’s shrewd eye.

We claimed one hill and its corresponding valley before cresting the next, our souls in stride with each other.

The only thing that slowed our pace was our thirst. It was harder to ignore the farther we traveled from the mists.

I was beginning to fear that I could not bear a soul if I was dead, that I was merely dragging us through the wastes aimlessly, when an obsidian gate bloomed before us on the road.

An impasse that we could not go around but required we enter to reach the wasted doorway.

“What is this?” Bade asked.

“Remember what I told you,” I said, tightening my grip on his fingers. “Do not let go of me, no matter what you see or feel.”

I waited until he nodded. Only then did I pull him through the gate.

I had once wondered what haunted the god of war’s sleep. When he gave himself over to rare slumber, what nightmares arose in his mind? Where did his soul wander when he slept?

It was a place of guilt and remorse. Blood-soaked dreams that were knee-deep in skulls and anguish.

I stepped into the landscape of his nightmares—a dimly lit world of charred trees and dying grass and smoke—and instantly wished to be away from there.

I was already cold as Death herself, and yet the chill of this dream sank deep within me.

It was oppressive; I realized there was no hope in this place, only bleakness.

Bade stopped, yanking on my hand.

When I looked back at him, I saw fear creasing his face. Fear and dread and guilt. He closed his eyes.

“No,” he whispered. “ No. I do not want to be here.”

“This is just a dream,” I said to him. “But we must go through it to reach Adria. She is waiting for you on the other side.”

Bade trembled. His eyes remained shut as if he could not bear to confront his past, elements that still haunted him.

His skin was waxy, gleaming. I had a startling vision, as if I were seeing a shade of his younger self.

When he had been a god-child, struggling to understand the full breadth of his magic.

When he was coming into his power and realizing what he could do to the world. The scars he could carve upon it.

“Come,” I said, stepping forward. “I am here with you, Bade.”

To my relief, he followed. He was strong enough to drag me anywhere, and I worried he might bolt back to the gate. That he would pull so hard his fingers would slip free of mine, and I would lose him eternally in the fog of his own nightmare.

I did not want to imagine it.

I set my focus on the path we needed to take, my eyes seeking the gleam of the exit gate.

It would appear like a beacon, and I was keen to locate it, when we came across the sea of bodies.

I paused, stricken. There were hundreds of them.

Thousands of corpses, slain in battle. Their faces were gaunt, their mouths were open, maggots writhing between their teeth.

Their blood was dark red, almost black, after it had dried upon armor and raiment.

Mortals, then, and I shuddered as I began to pull Bade through the battleground.

He yanked on my hand, resistant.

But he knew, as I did, that there was no way around.

We had to pick a path through, and we began to step on the bodies.

I felt bloated flesh give beneath my feet, bones snap, wounds reopen as my heels pressed down on them.

These were sons, daughters, brothers, sisters.

Lovers, spouses. Fathers and mothers. Kindred.

They were mortals with names, their lives had once been woven into a tapestry with countless threads.

They were each beloved to someone, and they were dead long before they should be, harvested by war’s scythe.

“We should turn around,” Bade panted. “There is nothing… nothing good ahead.”

I did not respond but continued to pull him in my wake.

Soon, the sea of bodies began to thin.

We walked through skeletons now, picked clean by the buzzards. Armor that had been abandoned, shining through the smoke. Skulls with broken teeth. Pennants that were staked into the ground, torn by relentless wind.

A tent loomed before us. A war tent, I realized, and my mouth went dry as I pulled us into its shadows and firelight.

Adria stood within, gazing down at a map.

I heard Bade inhale. He stopped abruptly and I halted with him gazing at the memory of her.

She had not yet ascended as a goddess. She was still a mortal queen, dressed in armor, her face weary, her eyes bloodshot. A golden crown inlaid with pearls gleamed across her brow.

She heard us enter, or perhaps she felt a draft of cold. Adria glanced up. I was invisible, but her gaze was riveted onto Bade. His grip tightened on my hand as if he were in agony.

“I told you I did not want to see you again,” Adria said to him sharply. “I told you to never step foot in my camp again, god of war. You are not welcome here. Get out. ”

“ Adria, ” he pleaded. “Wait.”