Page 4 of Wild Reverence

Bade was quiet, but his jaw flexed, as if he were grinding his teeth.

“This is much to ask,” he said after a long moment, pinning my mother with a fiery stare.

“Is it?”

Bade heaved a sigh, turning his gaze to me. At once, the flames dimmed within him as he held out one of his hands. I took it, tentatively. I could not explain the lump in my throat, or why my eyes stung with tears. But there seemed to be a bruise within me, staining my ribs violet with each breath.

I longed for a father, even though I existed in a realm where fathers often killed their daughters and daughters their fathers, all to steal magic. But I wished that it had been Bade, even with his warmongering ways. I wished that he had not hesitated when it came to my mother’s price.

I wanted someone to claim me.

“The truth is, Matilda,” he began, “this will be a difficult vow for me to uphold. You are young; we do not know whom you will become yet. What if you grow up to despise me? Would you still desire me as an ally? What if you become a goddess who yearns for peace and strives for it? How could I make a good ally to you then, hmm?”

“I understand,” I said, although my voice was muffled. It felt like I was speaking through a strip of cloth. “I would not want you to make a difficult vow.”

That was another thing my mother had taught me, alongside the location of Underling doors. That vows were binding. Never to offer or accept one unless I was certain it was not a snare. Wedding vows often fell prey to such danger.

Bade squeezed my hand; it was part comfort, part apology as he looked at my mother again. “She is too soft for this,” he said.

“Then make her like iron.” Zenia’s impatience clipped the words. “She will not have the long, languid childhood most of us did. She must grow up quickly.”

Bade returned his attention to me. “Is this what you want?”

I nodded, even though I was not certain what I wanted yet, and what this hardship would comprise. But then I thought, If I am strong, then I will no longer live afraid of being slain, my magic stolen. I can move through the realms, fearless. I can visit the Skyward halls, where my father dwells.

I would never have confessed this to my mother, but she was right about two things: I needed an ally of my own, and I could not afford to be soft.

“Very well,” Bade said, surrendering. He loosened his hold on my hand. “Bring me some parchment, an inkpot, and a quill.”

I rushed to do his bidding, hurrying to the shelves hewn into the wall above my bed. By the time I delivered the materials, my mother had cleared the table, and I set everything down before Bade, curious to see what came next.

“I will write my vow twice,” he explained, dipping the quill into the ink. “I will utter it, and then I will eat one, and you will eat the other.”

“Like a prayer?” I said.

“Yes, only it will not be as sweet, or so bitter. You would not believe how terrible some prayers taste.”

“Then what will this vow taste like?”

Bade began to write, then paused. “You will have to wait and see.”

I did just that, watching as he wrote his vow on the scraps of parchment. His handwriting was nearly illegible, riddled with ink blots that drew curses from him, but when I squinted, I could make out the words.

“Here, this is yours,” he said gruffly.

I took the parchment by the edge.

Mortals who worshipped Underlings wrote their prayers and buried them in the soil.

Those inked prayers then found their way to us below, as if following the gnarled roots of a tree down into the darkness.

The folded parchment would then bloom through the cracks in our burrows or fissures in the hall, or beside the vines that grew along corridor ceilings.

I had watched my mother eat prayers before—she was a divine who attracted supplicants like a bowl of honey does flies—and her prayers always arrived through the crack beside the hearth.

There were two prayers waiting there now, which she was in no hurry to devour and answer.

“As I recite, you need to follow along on your scrap,” Bade explained. “This is to ensure I do not speak false to trick you. That I utter the vow in entirety.”

I nodded, unable to speak.

“‘I, Bade of Underling, god of war, swear a salt vow to Matilda, the herald of the gods. I will be her loyal ally and will never betray her. I will aid her whenever she is in peril or in need. I will instruct her on how to fight and defend herself, until she becomes like iron. Should I break this vow, she has the right to end my immortality, and my name will be disgraced.’”

He spoke the vow word for word.

When he ate his scrap of parchment, I ate mine, and the vow tasted like the brine of the sea. Like a night laden with tears. Like drops of sweat provoked by a merciless midday sun.

I scrunched my nose as the parchment melted on my tongue. Other than a slight shiver, I felt no different than I had before the vow. I tucked a wily thread of hair behind my ear, blushing with disappointment.

Bade must have read my face. He gave a wry snort and said, “I warned you it would not be sweet.”

The vow had been swallowed, and at last my mother was satisfied.

She took the dagger by its bone hilt, and I watched as she cut her palm. Ichor, thick and brilliant as molten gold, welled across her skin. Unhurried, she dipped her finger into the blood, waiting for Bade to stretch out his own hand.

She drew nine points upon his broad palm, then connected them with lines. It was the constellation for cunning, magic she had stolen by killing a fellow divine whose name was no longer spoken, whose immortality had been snuffed out like candleflame.

Bade stared down at the drawn constellation as the blood dried. He curled his fingers inward, concealing the shimmer of gold as he bowed his head to my mother.

“The mark will last for three days,” Zenia said.

The wound in her palm was knitting itself together—I knew it would not leave even a trace of a scar behind—and she set her dagger near the hot embers of the fire.

“But do not let the Poet Queen see it upon your palm, or she will know you are wielding enchantment.”

The borrowing spell was complete.

Bade stood to leave but paused on the threshold to speak to me.

“Three days, Matilda,” he said. “I’ll return then. Be ready for me to train you.”

“I will,” I said, my heart quickening, eager for the challenge. I waited for the door to latch behind him before I turned to Zenia. “Why is it called a salt vow?”

She took her time answering, stoking the fire wordlessly with her magic. Coppery light crept to the corners of the chamber, and the spiders winked from their gossamer, high above. Within one of the webs, a moth had been caught, and her wings were furiously pulling against her doom.

“It is called such,” my mother said, “because it demands effort, and often great sacrifice.”

That night, when my mother went to court, I curled up beside the fire and finished reading the scroll Alva had slipped to me earlier.

It was one of her many ledgers of mortal dreams, and they encompassed everything I could have ever imagined.

Dreams that were ridiculous, humorous, peaceful, terrifying.

For Alva used her magic to visit mortals in their sleep, watching what unfolded in their minds.

Later, she wrote down the sequences in vivid detail.

It was our secret, I thought, luminous. Not even my mother was privy to the dreams, and this is when I began to see Alva as my ally, even without a salt vow.

Within that particular scroll were many dreams and many nightmares, but there was one that I read again and again as the fire began to burn low.

There was a boy with hair black as a raven’s wing, his eyes gray as the winter sea.

He was tall and lean for his age. He was made of sharp angles, hollow cheeks, and tenderhearted sorrow, as if he were hungry and anxious but had grown despite the hardship, like a weed emerging through cracked limestone.

He had survived on the leather-bound books in his strange, circular room and the sunlight that was so generous in the mortal realm.

Suddenly, the walls dissipated into smoke around him, and he was standing in a courtyard, although the edges of the dream were blurred.

“Wait!” he shouted, chasing after two men on horseback. “Finnian? Marcher, wait, let me come with you! I want to fight for the Poet Queen.”

But when he reached for the hilt at his side, the scabbard was empty. When he glanced down, his feet were bare and bleeding. His clothes were tattered rags, and he shivered, vulnerable.

One of the men on horseback—he was young and broad with tawny hair and eyes like tarnished gold—glanced back with a laugh.

“You are too young, Vincent. Wait here. We will return soon.”

Vincent did not wait.

He chased after the horses until he was ankle-deep in a river. The water was a cold shock. The currents tugged at him like persistent hands, dragging him down to his knees, climbing up to his jaw.

“Don’t leave me!” he screamed, but his voice was gone.

Water filled his mouth, withered his lungs.

He was drowning. He tried to scream again but Finnian and Marcher never looked back, never saw him struggle, and he was sinking like a millstone…

Alva’s record ended there.

He must have woken from his nightmare.

Vincent, I thought, tasting his name in my mind.

I set the scroll aside, but the dream had chilled me. I do not know if it was Vincent’s desperation upon being left behind, the mention of the Poet Queen, or the sensation of drowning.

But I thought of Bade and the nine points drawn in gold upon his palm.

With my eyes closed, I traced the constellation for cunning on my own hand, the stars intricate, shaped as an arrow strung tight on an archer’s bow.

I thought of the salt vow he had given me, and how it had tasted like tears.

I thought about the Poet Queen he had gone to deceive and woo, and I wondered what it would feel like to have a thorn in my side.

“Vincent,” I whispered to the fire.