Page 31 of Wild Reverence

XXII

The Trouble with Loans and Old Lovers

MATILDA

He arrived much faster than I anticipated.

In the past, Warin had liked to make me wait when I had wanted him or called for him.

But when I heard his tread on the stony shore—when I felt his presence like one feels a cold shadow—I realized he must have been close, interested by the war camp that had gathered on the riverbank.

“You are the last goddess I expected to call for me,” he drawled. “Aren’t you supposed to be below, celebrating Enva’s imprisonment with your uglier kin?”

I turned to see him standing behind me, three paces away.

He was dressed in robes that looked as if they had been dipped in sunset.

His ashen-blond hair was silver in the fading light.

His beauty was still as striking as it had been the first time I looked upon him in Fate’s orchard, his expression cruel, his blue eyes guarded as if he did not trust me, even after all the years we had spent as lovers, entwined on his bed.

Given our last parting on the steps of his villa, which had drawn blood from us both, I knew that he would be loath to aid me in this moment. But despite the jaded gleam of his eyes, there was also a curious spark within them.

That fire rekindled my determination.

“Hello, Warin,” I greeted him, removing the hood of my cloak. “You look well.”

His gaze traveled down my body, lingering on my belt of moonstones. “I wish I could say the same of you, little goddess, but the rain has a way of making you look quite mortal.”

It was an insult, but I did not feel the sting he hoped.

Warin was one of those rare gods who never dallied with humankind, thinking they were far beneath him.

He was telling me that I was unattractive to him now, even as my dress clung to me like gossamer, and my skin was flushed from the chilled air.

My hair was unbound, spilling around me like red wine.

His eyes told me otherwise. He could not look away from me.

“I do not wish to waste your time,” I began, my voice pitched low, deep. “But there is something I need from you.”

“You never needed anything from me, Matilda.”

“Then should I call on another Skyward god? Perhaps Shale?”

Warin fell quiet, but his gaze burned through mine. He despised the god of wind and how my father favored Shale over all other divines at court. How Shale had always been fond of me, the first Skyward I had ever trusted.

“Speak your request,” Warin said, crossing his arms. “Perhaps I will grant it to you.”

I swallowed, hating that my mouth went dry. “Will you lend me your magic? From sunset to sunrise?”

His brow arched, betraying his surprise. “Which one?”

“Your power over rivers.”

“No.”

“You don’t want to give it a moment of consideration?”

“I never let anyone borrow magic from me,” he said. “And you, above all others, should know that.”

I did. I knew it, and yet I had dared to hope he might be moved to make an exception for me. That his curiosity as to why I wanted his power for a night would undo him, and that he would draw the constellation of rivers onto my palms with his hot ichor.

A beat of silence came between us. There was only the river and the rain and our breaths, rushing through the air.

“Why do you want my power?” he finally asked.

“I need to cross,” I replied, my hand sweeping toward the currents. “I have an assignment and must reach the castle before dark. As you can see… the eastern portion of the bridge is closed to me.”

“Who are you bearing a message for?”

“That I cannot say, unless you grant me your magic.”

Warin smirked, pleased with my response. “I have taught you well, haven’t I?”

He had taught me many things, but this was not one of them. The cunning had come from my mother.

I waited, the tension in my chest coiling tight.

“Borrowing my magic is out of the question,” he said. “But there is something I can loan you that will enable you to walk the riverbed with ease.”

“Tell me.”

He reached into his robes, withdrawing a set of slippers. They were made of iron bands, braided reeds, pebbles, moss, and silt from the river. I would have thought them odd had I not sensed the enchantment pulsing from them.

“What is this loan?” I asked.

“You may take these slippers and use them however you would like,” Warin said with a scythe of a smile. “You can walk through my rivers. You can breathe underwater as long as they are on your feet. But when I am ready for their return, you must bring the slippers to me yourself.”

This was not as terrible as I had been expecting. Was I not a herald who delivered messages? What difference did slippers make? I nodded.

“You must give me ample time with the shoes, and you cannot hold me when I return them,” I said.

“Hold you? I think I have held you enough and gotten my fill, don’t you agree?”

“You know what I imply, Warin. I make the delivery for their return, and then I may go. You cannot keep me longer than I would like to stay.”

His eyes narrowed, his smile losing its edge. “I am offended you think so low of me, Matilda. If I had wanted to put you in a gilded cage, I would have done so by now. And despite the last time you were at my villa… we spent many good moments there together. Unless you have forgotten?”

“I have not,” I was swift to reply. “But it would be foolish of me to accept a loan without defining terms on my end. As you once taught me.”

That mollified him. I had stoked his pride again, and Warin inclined his head.

“I will not hold you longer than the span of a dinner, at which I request you join me when you return the slippers.”

I had to stifle a groan. He was sly, and I was thankful my intuition had ignited, or else he might have tried to hold me longer than a meal.

“I agree,” I said, but my heart lurched with uncertainty.

Warin extended the river slippers. I accepted them, amazed by how light they felt, how delicate, as if they might come unraveled at the slightest touch.

“Who made them?” I asked, easing down to sit on a rock. Quickly, I unlaced my sandals.

“I do not know her name,” Warin said, as if tired. “A mortal woman, in my hall.”

His answer made me pause, but I only curbed my tongue. Anger him now, and he might retract the loan.

Instead, I said, “How will I know when you want them returned?”

Warin smiled. The western trade wind began to blow, and he prepared to ride it. Leaves spun in the air around us; the rain fell harder.

“Don’t worry, Matilda,” he said, just before he vanished. “You will know when I call for you.”

The slippers were a perfect fit.

I tucked my sandals into a pocket, wiggling my toes until the reeds, the moss, the stones, the silt, and the iron felt as much a part of me as my own skin.

Then I gazed at the river as if I had never seen it before.

Eventide had arrived; I was anxious that even with Warin’s enchanted shoes, I would not reach Vincent before the clouds broke.

I stepped into the shallows, my pulse a throb in my veins.

Down I went, one step after the other. Deep into the river, the water churning around me with a coldness that I could only liken to the indigo stretch of sky just above the clouds.

And yet how heavy I felt in my center, as if the shoes and my very heart—my bones and my breath—had been cast into lead.

How strange it was to let the water close over my head, swallowing me whole.

But Warin’s slippers held true.

I walked along the riverbed, the shoes an anchor and a guide.

I walked over sand that drifted like snow, over the skeleton of a drowned knight and his rusted armor.

Through patches of kelp and schools of iridescent fish and around barnacled rocks that were jagged like teeth.

Soon, I could no longer see. I was in the belly of the Wyndrift, a place so profound and frigid no light could reach it, and I paused, afraid to breathe.

I had been holding air in my lungs, letting it smolder like fire, until I had no choice but to trust Warin and what he had promised me.

I opened my mouth and drew the water in.

It filled me like evening air, sweetened by storm. My lungs swelled like it was incense in my father’s hall, like the taste of burnt prayers, and I continued onward into the deep.

The tug on my ribs came again, as if a rope had been fastened to me, reeling me to my assignment.

A lord who dreamt in a tower, who might remember me or might not.

Orphia’s words trickled down my bones, spurring me to walk faster through the thick weight of water, my cloak streaming behind me like a pennant.

He was mine to take before one dark solstice night, but I refrained, curious to see who he would become.

That statement had not meant much to me when she had uttered it, when I had envisioned a stranger. But connected to Vincent, it made my heart rise in my throat.

He is doomed when the clouds break, and the moon shines through.

This was all a game between sisters. Mortals were entertainment for divines. Who could out-weave the other, who could make a pattern that could not be picked loose. A weaving of lives and deaths that would hold.

I bared my teeth to the water.

The currents shifted; I sensed the bridge ahead of me.

I could feel the powerful draw of it, interrupting the rapids, as if I stood near a beehive, especially when I passed the middle tower of the eastern bridge, which was built upon the rock.

The water hummed around its foundations; the river seemed to sing for it.

I had no doubt there was an Underling door somewhere in the middle tower, opening to a passage below.

Finding that threshold would be crucial, providing me a quick escape route should I need one.

And I decided that emerging here at the bridge’s foundation, appealing to Vincent’s guards at one of the gates, was a terrible idea.

I knew where the lord lay.