Page 41 of Wild Reverence

XXVIII

Forgive Me, but I Must Kiss You Now

MATILDA

The arrow caught me in the chest, just above my swift-beating heart.

At first, I thought it had pierced my fault line, my weakest point, creating a tiny fissure that was destined to unmake me. A crack that would only grow with each breath, like sundered ice. A wound that I would not be able to heal.

But my lungs billowed with misty night air.

My heart continued to beat, defiant of the pain.

I remained stubbornly upright, only taking one step backward, directly into Vincent. His hands touched my waist, firm, protective. I could feel his breath in my hair.

I decided it was time, and I lifted my veil.

I stared, steady and dark, at the baron. I watched as his pupils went wide, his face draining to a sickly white. His thoughts were vivid, as if he had scrawled them on his brow. He had not merely shot Vincent’s unnamed mortal wife, but a goddess.

Grimald lurched to his feet. The chair overturned behind him. His squire and advisor both cowered, as if keen to save themselves from my wrath.

Desperate, he tossed up his hand and shouted a thunderous “ Hold! ”

I had been so intent upon the clouds, upon Vincent and his uncle and our circle of light, that I had not looked beyond the tent, beyond the assassin who had slunk away with his bow.

Grimald’s warriors had used the cover of night, storm, and a parley’s distraction to creep closer.

My eyes now scanned the moving line of armor and swords, tracing it all the way back to the riverside camp.

I could see the infantry gathering on Fury Bridge, exposed by the moonlight.

But it was not their shuffling that hooked my focus; there was a figure darker than night cutting through the very center of them, like a lone, silver-scaled fish swimming against the current of warriors.

Orphia.

The goddess of death was retreating until she paused to glance behind at me, as if she had heard her name in my mind. The wind pulled at her long ebony hair, and the starlight touched her face, bathing her in a beauty so brutal that it stole my breath.

But she bowed her head to me.

I had unraveled her sister’s weaving on their shared loom. I had completed this assignment.

And Death herself was acknowledging my power.

“Your name, goddess.” Grimald’s query brought me back to the parley tent.

He was on his knees now, preparing to beseech me.

“I believe I saw you once, long ago, when you were still a god-child. You ran from us on the moors, afraid of us. We would have never harmed you, and I sadly never had the chance to learn who you were.”

I did not believe him. There was no telling what he would have done to me if I had not run, and my skin suddenly crawled.

“My name is Matilda,” I said, holding his stare. “I am the herald of the gods. And if you desire to live, you will take your forces and leave Wyndrift. You will not attack this fortress, unless you are prepared for me to call upon my allies to oppose you.”

“Lady Matilda.” Grimald held out his hands to me, as a supplicant. “Wyndrift is my home. I was born here. I grew up swimming in these waters. According to mortal laws, I am the rightful heir. I am the—”

“Laws can be rewritten, baron,” I interrupted.

“As they have been here. This river and this holding are no longer yours to claim. You have trespassed and attempted an assassination of my husband, the rightful lord. Consider it fortunate, indeed, that I have stayed my hand now, and am granting you the chance to retreat. You and your warriors need to be gone by sunrise.”

Grimald, sensing he was now kneeling in a bog, that he had challenged more than he had bargained for, slowly rose to his feet.

“But goddess, to retreat when the banks are mire? In the darkness? Can you grant me three days? Three days for my warriors to pack up their tents, and to let the ground dry? It will be impossible for my wagons to bear the trebuchets through such mud.”

Three days.

It felt too long. Enough time to let something unruly and unexpected grow, like a weed through stone.

And yet I needed to meet with Bade about this predicament, preparing him to aid me.

Lastly, Grimald did not speak wrong: After so much rain, the banks were ankle-deep in mud.

It would be difficult for his camp to pack up and leave under such conditions.

There was a side of me that wanted to intimidate him. To bare my teeth and chase him, watching him run from me on the bridge. But I refrained, yanking the arrow from my chest instead. I tossed it onto the ground at Grimald’s feet.

He glanced down at the arrowhead, glittering with my golden blood, before swallowing, meeting my steady gaze again.

“Three days,” I agreed. “If you are not gone by then, we will see it as an act of war. Now go, before I change my mind.”

Grimald bowed his head, but he looked at Vincent, one last time.

“I see you finally took my advice,” he murmured, and I felt Vincent go rigid behind me, his hands falling away from my waist.

I did not know what he meant but I could imagine, because the words had never left me.

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

Grimald’s advisor and squire retreated on his heels, the three of them striding down the length of Fury Bridge. The warriors followed, heads hung and swords sheathed, back to the baron’s camp on the bank.

It was only when it felt like Vincent and I were the only two left on the bridge, the only two standing in the night, that he took hold of my shoulders and spun me to face him.

He was pale, trembling, I realized, as his eyes dropped to my chest, examining my wound.

The arrow had struck me right above the bodice’s top edge, a handsbreadth beneath my collarbone.

But my wound was knitting itself together, my magic eager to heal what had broken.

My blood had eased to a trickle, casting a sweet fragrance in the air between us.

Vincent’s thumb traced the edge of my gown, just above my breast.

I felt that fleeting caress down to my bones.

“Don’t do that again,” he whispered.

“Do what?”

He stepped back. Cold air swarmed around me, and it was good, I thought. A chill to wake me up, to bring my focus back to important matters.

“Don’t take another arrow for me,” he said, his attention shifting to Fury Gate and its tower, firelit windows shining through the haze like beacons.

“What about a sword?” I asked. “A lance? An axe?”

“This is not something to laugh about, Matilda.”

“Am I laughing?” But I fell quiet, because I had been teasing him. I could not seem to help myself, this desire to prod a smile or mirth out of him. To draw back this heavy mantle he seemed to bear as lord. “Sometimes,” I said, stepping closer to him, “it is good to laugh, even on terrible days.”

“I thought you were a herald, not the goddess of revelry.”

His statement brought me up short. No, the goddess of revelry was Phelyra, and my mouth went dry, my pulse spiked at the mere thought of her.

Vincent sensed the change in my mood, how quickly I had become somber, and he frowned, gazing at me.

“What is it?” he said. “What did I say?”

“It is nothing important. Look, your knights stand in the tower window, waiting for us to approach so they may lift the gate.” I began to walk to it, keen to retrieve my belt.

But as soon as I found the moonstones, waiting for me in the shadows, and fastened them around my waist…

my mind drifted. My thoughts skimmed across the river to Grimald’s camp, descending below to where Enva and Dacre’s union was unfolding.

And that was when I remembered it with a hiss.

We had our own wedding feast to attend.

The hall of Wyndrift was a great room with smoke-stained timber beams and cathedral shadows that not even the greatest of fires could melt.

I was impressed by its vastness, how sound echoed through it.

How it felt both grand and intimate. Iron chandeliers hung from above, burning with candles whose wax had dripped into long stalactites.

The stone walls were clothed with tapestries of woven foxes, white stags, bewitching forests, and a river that reflected the moon and the stars.

Trestle tables lined the rush-laden floors, and what appeared to be a humble feast was set along the oaken spines: rye bread and wheels of cheese, pickled vegetables and meat pies, ginger pudding and lemon tarts.

Vincent did not desire to be here pretending a union any more than I did, and the moment we stepped into the hall, hand in hand, the crowd that had gathered went utterly silent.

All eyes were riveted to us as we walked to the dais.

Not even the babies cried, nor the children stirred.

It was almost uncanny, this sea of statues, until I dared to look at their faces, and I was struck by what I saw in their eyes.

I expected fear, but was met by hope, relief, awe, worry, desperation.

The younger ones, in particular, regarded me with candidness.

The gray-headed mortals watched me pass with arched brows and wrinkles of doubt, with carefully guarded expressions, as if to hope in this moment was too much to bear, and they had been let down one too many times.

I realized the heart of Wyndrift was not knights and sentries and archers as I had once presumed, but craftspeople.

They were stone masons, weavers, cobblers, tailors, blacksmiths.

Carpenters and merchants, bakers, millers, minstrels, farmers, clerks.

There were more children than I had ever seen in one place before, ranging from newborns to adolescents, and a strange feeling yanked through me like an anchor as Vincent and I ascended the steps of the dais, as we turned and I could survey the hall from a higher vantage point.