Page 21 of Wild Reverence

XIV

The Last Word

MATILDA

“Where have you been?”

My mother’s query pelted me like stones the moment I slipped into the burrow. I knew I had been away too long, and she would be waiting for me, red-eyed and pacing.

I shut the door behind me, rubbing my arm. Bruises had bloomed, a testament that I was not impervious in dreams. That I could be wounded and shackled, as Vincent’s uncle had nearly succeeded in doing.

Take hold of her. Did I not tell you that we could use her?

Those words chilled me. The more I traced them, the more they rang true, as if they had been spoken in the waking world.

Did Vincent see me in such a light? I was something to be dominated, a power to be used?

“I was wandering,” I said.

Zenia paused, pinning me with a glare. “ Wandering? ” she repeated through her teeth.

When she drew close to me, I braced myself, preparing to feel the smite of her palm.

“Do you understand how dangerous it is, now that your salt ally is disgraced, a mortal has become a goddess with unknown powers, and an eithral has been slain in the process?”

I inevitably pictured the eithral in Vincent’s dream. Picked clean of scales, dead on a cliff. In that moment, I realized how right Alva was: sleep did expose glimpses of the soul, but it also revealed fragments of reality.

Vincent was a mortal boy, and he had been climbing, determined to reach that eithral for a scale.

“A dead eithral is not dangerous,” I said, but only to rile her.

When my mother was angry, her tongue loosened.

“A dead eithral means scales can be easily stolen, ” Zenia explained, slow and sibilant, as if I were dense. “And do I need to remind you that scales can cut through anything? Even the god of iron’s burly throat.”

I knew Xan was dead. This was not news to me, but it still coaxed a shiver down my bones.

“He was killed with a scale?” I asked, remembering his shorn throat.

“ Yes. By a god whom Phelyra and I have never traded with before. He should not have possessed a scale.”

“Who?” I asked, waiting for Zenia to tell me an answer I already knew.

“Warin, that haughty, insufferable god of spring.” She resumed her pacing. “They say he took one of the scales and plunged it through Xan’s throat during dinner in a mortal hall. This is not good, Matilda.”

“Mother,” I sighed. “You and Phelyra have been illegally selling those scales to Skywards for many seasons now.”

“We have sold six scales in total,” my mother corrected coldly. “And… they only went to one divine.”

A knock interrupted us.

Zenia grimaced as she opened the door, but her rigidness eased when she saw it was only Phelyra.

“I have terrible tidings,” she panted, as if she had run a great distance. There was mud on the hem of her dress, and her blond hair was snarled. “I found the eithral. It died high on a cliff, and not one scale is missing from it.”

I glanced at my mother, confused. Surely this was good news? We would not need to worry about scales falling into dangerous hands. But her face had gone pale, her eyes wide.

“You harvested a few then, surely,” Zenia said.

“Does it look like I had time to?” Phelyra threw her arms wide. “Dacre was on my tail.”

“So he has recovered its body?”

“Yes.”

“Then he must know by now.”

Phelyra was quiet, holding my mother’s tense gaze.

“Mother,” I said, breaking the silence. “I do not understand. I thought we did not want the scales to be stolen.”

She turned to look at me, almost as if she had forgotten I existed.

“Yes, but now Dacre will know the scale Warin used to kill an Underling god was not harvested from a dead eithral, as Phelyra and I were hoping. He will realize someone in the clan has committed a crime and has been selling them Skyward.”

“Then what do we do now?” I asked, envisioning the worst—Dacre torturing both my mother and Phelyra for their crimes. Maiming them, or permanently marking their beauty.

“ We? No, you have nothing to do with this, Matilda,” Zenia said, reaching for her cloak.

“You will stay here while Phelyra and I attend to some things. Do not open the door to anyone save myself and Bade. Not even Dacre, should he knock. He might claim he wants to speak with you, to ask you questions, but you will not be safe with him. Nor Alva, for that matter.”

I followed them both to the door. “When will you be back?”

“Soon,” my mother said. “Stay here, where it is safe. Do you understand?”

When I was silent, she set a flinty gaze on me.

“I understand,” I said, my voice hollow.

She and Phelyra left without another word.

The knock on the door came not long after my mother had left.

I set down the book I had been reading by the hearth. To draw breath in that moment felt precarious; I held the air deep in my lungs as my eyes fixed on the door. I knew it was enchanted, that the iron lock could only open beneath my hand or Zenia’s, and yet my body went taut.

A trio of knocks came again.

I swallowed and walked soundlessly to the door, to lay my ear upon the wood.

“Who is it?” I called.

“It is I, your friend,” said a familiar voice. “Alva.”

I hesitated, hung between relief and wariness. My mother had said not to trust her, but I had always considered Alva my ally.

“Will you welcome me inside?” she asked.

“Why have you come?”

“I have something for you.”

“Leave it at the door, please,” I said.

“Is everything well, Matilda?”

“Yes.”

“May I speak with your mother, then?”

“She is preoccupied at the moment, but I will tell her you called.”

There was a long lull. But then I heard a clink, and the tread of Alva’s feet as she walked away.

I waited awhile longer, leaning against the wood. But my curiosity grew, and I unbolted the door, peering down through the sliver of opening to see Alva had delivered a new scroll.

Quickly, I scooped it up and shut the door again, exhaling when it locked.

I returned to the fire and opened the scroll, surprised to see there was nothing written on it. Frowning, I continued to unspool it, and at last I found a lone dream that Alva had recorded.

Vincent was clinging to the side of a cliff in the rain. I appeared at his side like a bright red flame, burning away the gray haze of his fear.

My throat closed as I continued to read, reliving the dream.

Who do you think harvested them? Vincent had asked me about the missing scales, plucked clean from the eithral.

I do not know, I had said to him. But my mother tells me the Skywards want them. They use the scales for power and they pay a great amount for them on the black market.

I froze. This had been a moment I foolishly believed I was sharing with Vincent and Vincent alone. But Alva had been there in the shadows, watching us, and my face flamed hot.

Gods above.

Breath hissed through my teeth as I frantically tossed the scroll into the hearth fire.

I paced, wondering if I had just doomed Zenia and Phelyra.

I needed to warn them that Alva knew of the black market. That I had been the one to expose it to her.

Trembling, I laced my sandal leathers up to my knees. I did not know where my mother had gone, but I decided I would run to Phelyra’s burrow first, thinking the two of them might have met there to speak freely, without my presence.

The fog in the corridors was waist-high as I ran from moonstone to emerald to topaz. I could hear shouts in the distance—angry, livid voices, leaking from the hall. I did not let the fear fetter me; I reached Phelyra’s door and pounded on the wood.

“Phelyra!” I panted, continuing to rap my knuckles until the skin broke. “ Phelyra! ”

The door swung open; I stumbled across the threshold.

“What is it, child?” Phelyra demanded. “Do you want the entire clan to know you’ve arrived here?”

My gaze swept her messy, magpie-cluttered burrow to find my mother, counting a pile of Skyward coins at the table. She rose at the sight of me, her concern swiftly giving way to anger.

“I told you to stay home,” Zenia said, striding to me.

“I…” My voice hitched. I wanted to sob at my foolishness. My cheeks continued to burn in shame. “I have made a mistake.”

Phelyra shut the door. I could see her at my periphery, glittering in a golden dress. She glided back to the table, standing slightly behind my mother.

“Mistake?” Zenia snapped. “What are you speaking of?”

“Alva knows about the black market, how the Skywards want the scales for power. She saw me and Vincent in a dream, tossing coins into the flames, just after we climbed the cliff to look at the dead eithral. He almost took the last scale, and I thought he would! I thought he was going to take it, and I am so relieved he chose not to. I am so relieved, and I do not know why. Why should I care? He does not truly know anything about me, or what it is like to live here!”

My mouth was a dam that had broken. The words spilled out of me, frantic. A candlelight confession that made the weight in my chest ease, if only for a moment.

Zenia’s fury abated, softening the lines on her brow. She almost looked afraid now, listening to me ramble. Her face became paler with each breath she drew; her eyes widened, as if she was looking at me and realizing that—after all these years—she truly knew nothing about me.

“Who is Vincent?” she asked calmly. For once, I felt as if her attention was wholly devoted to me. It was not distracted by forbidden coins, or the crime of harvested eithral scales, or the desire to appear powerful at court. “What is this dream you speak of? You saw the eithral on the cliff?”

I pressed my lips together, steadying myself. But I wanted to tell her everything. I was worn down by the secrets I was carrying, and I stared at the ground between us, trying to think of the best way to begin.

“Vincent has been dreaming of me,” I started to say, only to have my words interrupted by a noise I had never heard before. A wet cracking sound, like bones fracturing. A rasp of shocked breath.

My chin jerked up.

An eithral scale was protruding from my mother’s neck. It had cut clean through her, through bone and wind and voice and blood. It was a fatal wound on her fault line—her mind—and she began to collapse, gasping for air.

I could only gape, numb with shock.

Phelyra, who had been standing directly behind my mother, watched with cold eyes as her ally went down, golden blood spurting over the floor, sweet as honeyed milk.

Mother.

I do not know if it was a thought or a scream. A roaring had consumed me, and I fell to my knees to take hold of her just before she sprawled onto her face.

I cradled Zenia, her ichor drenching my clothes, and I felt something brush my arm.

It was the weapon Phelyra had made. An eithral scale on a shaft of wood, like an arrow.

And she had stuck true and fast, betraying us both in the moment when we were most vulnerable.

When my mother had been utterly fixated on me, her guard lowered.

“Mother,” I whispered. “What should I do?”

I could not imagine a world without her. My mind refused to acknowledge what my heart knew to be true: Her immortality had just been extinguished. Her magic, stolen. Only a frail thread of light remained within her, but she was fading swiftly. A flower wilting beneath frost.

“ Thile, ” my mother said, her voice no longer dulcet but a harsh gurgle. She was gazing up at me, her eyes shining with anguish. Her face was blanched; her blood was pouring faster now, creating a gilded pool beneath us.

“What?” I whispered, bending closer to her. “Mother, please . Stay with me.”

“Thile,” she said again, her eyes fluttering closed as if she had just found peace.

It was a name, I realized with a jagged breath.

Thile.

My father’s name was her last word.