Page 44 of Wild Reverence

I was not certain I was strong enough to tell him such a story. The divines I had come from. The places I had been. I smiled, but it was weak, and I began to run my fingers through his hair. At once, he stifled a groan, his eyes closing.

I took that private moment to study his face, taking in the high-set cheekbones, the slight cleft in his chin, the small scars along his jaw.

The blue dapples beneath his eyes from sleepless nights, the proud bridge of his nose, the slight furrow between his brows, as if he frowned more than he smiled. The wry tilt of his lips.

His appearance fascinated me; the closer I looked, the more stories I found within the details.

And I wondered how each winter would leave its mark on him as he grew older.

The wrinkles, the scars, the silver tresses.

The unique characteristics that I rarely encountered amongst my fellow gods and goddesses because aging in physical ways took centuries.

“Tell me a story about you,” Vincent whispered, opening his eyes. My caress had softened his body, his breaths, but his gaze remained like steel, piercing me. “I always wondered where you dwelled, after you left me in dreams. What home you returned to.”

His question inspired a lump in my throat. It hurt to breathe, and I glanced away. No one had ever voiced such a thing to me before.

“My mother was the Underling goddess of winter, fire, and cunning,” I said, tracing the silver stitched embroidery on his tunic sleeve. “My father is the Skyward god of summer, oaths, and dusk.”

And so I began to tell him slender fragments of my past. Little jagged pieces, like I was putting together a mirror that had shattered. How I had not known who my father was, how I had lived only in the under realm, how Bade became my salt-sworn ally.

“Salt sworn?” Vincent asked, gently interrupting.

“Yes,” I said. “He is sworn to aid me, no matter the cost to himself.”

“Hmm.” We were quiet for a moment. Only the fire crackled in the hearth, and now my eyes were the ones to feel heavy as Vincent’s fingertips began to graze my arm, following a path up the inner crook of my elbow to my collarbone.

The sleeve of my chemise had slipped from my shoulder; he let it be, drawing languid patterns on my skin.

“You speak of your mother in the past. What happened to her, if I may ask?”

“She was killed by one of her closest friends. Phelyra, the goddess of revelry and coin.”

His hand went still, heavy. “I’m sorry.”

“There is nothing for you to apologize for.”

“Yes, there is. What I said to you on the bridge, about being the goddess of revelry. Forgive me.”

I stroked his hair again, his apology making me feel far too tender, but he remained tense with regret. “You did not know.”

“How long ago was this? When you lost her?”

“Thirteen years ago.”

His mind went distant. I could see it in his eyes, how they glazed as he reeled back in time.

“Thirteen years is when I last saw you,” Vincent finally said. And now he was the one to pick up the pieces, attempting to make an image from fragments. “What happened after she died?”

“I had to flee Skyward and seek sanctuary with the father who did not know I existed.”

Vincent ceased to breathe, to move. He gazed up at me, unguarded, and I could see myself in the dark moon of his eyes. My reflection, and how I did not look like a goddess but a woman, powerless and doomed by the circumstances that had unfolded around her.

Enough, I thought. I had told him too much, and I felt terribly vulnerable for it.

I rose from his lap, thankful his hands slipped away. That he let me go, and I walked to the window, which was still cracked open to the night.

“Matilda,” he said, also standing. And it was the softness in his voice, the pull of sorrow, that made me stiffen. “I—”

“ Don’t, ” I cut him off. “Don’t be sorry for me. I only grew wiser after my mother’s death, and stronger in the Skyward court.”

“And that is what you want most? To be stronger than you are now?”

He was posing this question of want back to me, and I did not like it. I kept my gaze on the world beyond the glass windowpanes, the baron’s camp glittering across the wide blade of the river.

“All I know is I will not let another divine kill me, steal my magic, and send me disgraced into the wasteland,” I said. “I will not follow my mother’s fate.”

Vincent was silent, but I could hear him breathe.

I could feel the expanse between us. Only moments ago, we had been close enough to feel each other’s hearts, beating like drums as we touched.

Now, a chasm had cracked the floor, but I did not regret it.

I should never forget that he was mortal while I was not.

“You should get some rest,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. He was regarding me; I had a feeling he had not looked away once. “The night will be over soon. I will keep watch.”

Vincent submitted with a nod.

My attention returned to the window, and I listened as he walked to the bed. As he threw back the coverlet and made a sound of surprise.

“What is it? A serpent?” I asked, wondering if mortals played such games. Perhaps an old lover of his was angry, putting something venomous on my side of the bed.

“No. But it is a gift for you.”

The intrigue drew me.

I left the window to see what he spoke of, discovering a necklace beside my pillow. On a chain was a small glass vial, the length of my pinky, and within it, sealed by cork and hardened wax, was a stem brimming with white flowers.

I held the necklace up to the light. I recognized the flowers; they were the poisonous blooms that Orphia had once boiled for my mother to drink.

Their likeness had been stitched along the hem of my wedding gown.

They were woven into the tapestry on the wall, the blossoms that filled the four foxes’ wake.

“I know this flower,” I confessed. “We call it bittertongue below, but what is its proper name?”

“River blythe. It only grows here on the island.”

I met Vincent’s gaze across the bed. “How odd.”

“It likes cold, rocky places that are prone to flooding,” he replied, a touch wry. “Like the people who live here. But yes, the Underlings love to trade their gemstones and scraps of obsidian for a handful of blooms, as well as a bottle of wine.”

I could have laughed; he was not wrong.

“Am I supposed to wear this necklace now?” I said. “As your wife?”

“Anytime someone from beyond the river island comes here to live, whether by marriage or by choice, they are given a vial of blythe to wear around their neck,” Vincent explained.

“They are to wear it for a full year, an entire turning of seasons, and it makes them immune to the poison of the flowers. Although as a goddess, I do not think that applies to you.”

I studied the flowers again, carefully preserved in glass. I felt foolish for acting as Vincent’s cupbearer earlier that evening, sipping his wine while all along he was immune to poison that grew, wild and beautiful, on his island.

I decided to follow tradition and draped the necklace over my head. The vial came to rest close to my fault line, a pleasant weight.

Vincent watched, darkly intent, before his eyes dropped to the blankets before him.

“Did you know that I carry a small vial with me everywhere I go?” I said, reaching into one of my pockets to withdraw it. The glass orb cast a blue shadow over my palm when the light struck it.

“What does it hold?” Vincent asked.

“Nothing.”

“Then why carry it with you?”

“I do so in case someone burns a Skyward prayer to me. I can bottle the smoke and carry it with me.”

“And did you receive many prayers? When you were Skyward?”

His question made me feel shy. Perhaps it made me feel my age, my inexperience as a goddess. I tucked the blue bottle back into my pocket and said, “No. I have never received a prayer by smoke.”

He was quiet, as if he did not know what to say.

This is the moment, I thought. I should bring his prayer to the light. His bloodstained words. I should swallow them in his presence, so he could see me tether myself to his request. And yet as the seconds passed, I could not find the courage.

“Good night,” I said instead, returning to my post at the window.

“Wake me if something happens.”

I nodded, savoring the crisp air and the fog that began to rise from the river. But I was aware of him, lying in bed. How his breathing soon shifted, betraying his exhaustion. How swiftly he fell asleep in my presence, as if his worries and fears ebbed when I was close.

I do not know how much time passed me by, standing at that window. It felt like a mere breath and a full season, but when the fog began to dissipate, I realized why the air was so pleasant to me, why I had been inhaling so deeply.

Smoke was rising from the baron’s camp.

I leaned closer, pressing my hands on the rain-speckled glass. Grimald and his warriors were burning prayers. I could see the pinpricks of fire, smoldering fiercely through the darkest hours of night. Who was he praying to? Which Skyward divine would he try to bring against me in battle?

I bared my teeth, my hand flying to my neck, seeking the draws of my enchanted cloak for comfort.

There was only the softness of my chemise, the silver chain, and the dangling river blythe, and I turned to scan the room.

Where was my cloak? Panic shot through me until I remembered that humans stored garments in cedar chests and behind those wasted wooden doors they called wardrobes, and I strode, soundlessly, to Vincent’s.

The twin doors creaked in greeting as I opened them, and there, hanging amongst Vincent’s raiment like it was finally where it belonged, was my cloak.

I sighed in relief, pulling it from the hanger.

“Do not worry me like that again,” I scolded, although I knew it must have been Alyse who had moved it.

The cloak only fluttered in reply as I brought it around my shoulders, knotting it at my collar.

I did not need to command it; the fabric went from bright crimson to a dusky lavender, rendering me invisible.

It must have sensed my determination, my reckless plans.

But I would not sit here, tucked away in a tower, while the baron plotted to move against me.

I glanced at Vincent. He slumbered onward, deep and peaceful, and I climbed out the window, taking the same path I had previously forged. Down the tower, which was far worse than ascending, the stones slick from the storm, the river churning up mist.

This time, no one saw me.

I was nothing more than a shadow in the night as I slipped into the dark, star-flecked water.