Page 107 of Wild Reverence

LXXXII

Unravel

VINCENT

I wasted no time. I rode directly to Wyndrift, arriving deep in the night.

The guards recognized me at the bridge’s gates. They lifted them for me, one by one, until I reached the castle. Everyone was sleeping. The shadows were thick and cold, but I took the stairs two at a time to reach Nathaniel’s bedchambers.

“ Nate! ” I called, banging on the door. “Nate, I need to speak with you.”

I heard a groan. The sound of heavy feet trudging to the door. It creaked open and I saw my brother, his hair tousled and his eyes narrow.

“Vince?” he said, brows arching in surprise.

The words spilled from me. “When you were in the wastes years ago, with Matilda. When she followed you there, and you told me of the gate, and bones, and how she gave stories for you… what else happened? I know… I know there is more, and she, you… you must know. If you can remember.”

Nathaniel stared at me for a beat, utterly frozen.

“Nate?” Anton’s baritone drifted from the room. “Is everything all right?”

I knew how I must look with my bloodshot eyes, my trembling hands. How my words tripped over themselves.

“Yes,” Nathaniel called back into the chamber. “Will you pour us some wine, Anton? And stir the fire? My brother is here and needs to speak with me.”

“Let him in, then.”

A few minutes later, I found myself sitting across from them both before the hearth, holding a glass of wine I was too anxious to drink.

Anton had tossed another log onto the fire, and the shadows of their bedroom receded. The light flickered over my hands, my face. I realized I must have woken them from sleep and felt a stab of guilt.

“Did you come from the farm?” Nathaniel asked, frowning with concern. He suddenly sounded and looked far older than me. “Did something happen?”

“Yes. These past six years… gods, I have thought Matilda was in the mists. That she could not bring her soul back.” I paused, setting the wine on the table before I spilled it.

“But I now realize she is in the wasteland. She is there, which means she is only a door away from us, and I need to know everything you remember about that moment she went after you.”

Nathaniel drew a deep inhale, as if bracing himself.

“That was a while ago,” he began, raking a hand through his tawny hair.

“I’m sorry to say that when I think back on it…

the entire encounter feels like it was a mere dream.

Truly, I do not think I can remember everything in detail.

The colors feel smudged, the words seem off.

As if I am looking at it through fractured glass, and nothing makes sense. ”

Anton touched his shoulder. Reassuring, comforting.

I swallowed and waited, patient, but I was desperate for whatever morsel he could give me.

“But yes,” Nathaniel said, his frown deepening. “There were bones. For some reason, Matilda stepped in to help me with them. I… I did not have enough, I believe. To be welcomed into the mists.”

“And these bones were earned by stories?” I said.

My memory surrounding Nathaniel’s resurrection was also soft, muted.

As if the more time passed, the less we remembered.

I could only assume it was magic, perhaps the Gatekeeper’s.

Maybe even Matilda’s. We were not supposed to remember these things once we returned from the dead. But I was keen to unravel this mystery.

“Yes. I remember she spoke of you, actually.”

“Me?” I echoed. Damn my heart, for how it leapt at the thought.

Nathaniel smiled. “She told the story of how she first met you. In a dream, and then on the moors. When the eithral flew over you both.”

“So she gave up her own stories for you,” I said. “For bones. She was granting you a favor, so what was the price for it?”

“Price?”

“I imagine the Gatekeeper wanted something from Matilda in exchange? A bargain was struck between them? For granting her the power to do this for you?”

“I… I do not remember.” Nathaniel wiped his eyes.

He suddenly appeared dejected. “Forgive me, Vince. I wish I could give you the answers you seek. I wanted to write it down, not long after I returned, because I worried I would forget. But you told me to keep it secret. We did not want anyone else to know what had happened. What Matilda had done for me.”

I leaned forward. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Thank you for telling me what you remember.”

Disappointment stung my chest. I felt heavy, but I rose. I was making my way to the door when Nathaniel stood.

“Wait,” he said. “There was something said about ten years. Seven years as well.”

Ten years. Seven years.

The thought was a stone in my throat. What had Matilda done for my brother? What had she surrendered to see him returned to me?

I have lived thirteen years without her once. I can make it through seven. I can endure ten. If she will only return to me.

“Thank you,” I whispered again.

I had every intention of riding home that night, but Nathaniel protested.

“You woke me and my husband as if the land was on fire, asked questions I sadly cannot answer, and now want to leave again, as abruptly as you arrived? To ride off into the night?” He clucked his tongue.

“No, brother. Stay. Your old room is just as you left it. Your horse needs to rest. You can ride home in the morning.”

The thought of sleeping in my old room must have drawn a scowl from me.

“Or,” Nathaniel added brightly, “we can ask Alyse to prepare one of the guest wings.”

“No, no. My old room will be fine.”

I left my brother and Anton standing in the corridor, although I felt them watching my retreat to the tower, as if they were worried.

My mind was so preoccupied retracing everything Nathaniel had said to me that it took me a moment to realize a fire was burning in my bedroom hearth, and the coverlet had been folded down on my bed.

Alyse had already been here, having heard my tumultuous arrival.

I was grateful for her as I sat before the fire and removed my boots, weariness stealing across my shoulders. But that was when I glanced up and saw it. A letter was tucked on the mantel, half buried in the juniper boughs.

Vincent of Beckett, Lord of

Wyndrift

I remembered this letter; I had refused to open it. It was the one that had brought Matilda to me.

A letter from Death herself.

I stood and took it in my hand. How many years had it sat here on the mantel? How long had it waited for me to break its seal and unfold it, for my eyes to run across its inked words?

Far too long, I thought, although I began to believe that I was always intended to open it now, many years later.

Dear Vincent,

We nearly met once, years ago, but I

decided to spare you, if only to see who you would become. And so I

have, and so I marvel. This time, my sister has woven your end upon our

loom. But she did not see the golden thread that twined with yours like

I did.

Matilda is all that you need to escape us

both. Her fate is woven with yours. A knot that not even I can

unravel.

— Orphia of Underling

Matriarch

I read Death’s letter a second time. A third, until the words began to blur.

I tossed them into the fire to burn.