Page 47 of Wild Reverence

XXXII

Fire Beneath the Water

VINCENT

I was not dreaming, because the tonics I drank every new moon kept my dreams suppressed. There was only a red sea to drift upon when I slept, a mindless place to rest. But it broke like glass when someone pounded on my door.

I startled awake and lunged up from the bed, legs tangled in blankets, my sight blurred. The fire in the hearth had burned down, and the light was a murky gold. But I could see my sword, propped against the nearby chair. I was reaching for the hilt when a voice spoke through the door.

“ Lord. ” It was Edric, his breath haggard as if he had been running. “I just received word from one of the sentries. There’s trouble on the bridge.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in. To realize the goddess who had been standing before the window, wearing a chemise so thin that I could see every curve of her body when the fire touched it just right, was gone.

I swung the door open.

“Where is Matilda?” I asked sharply.

“On the bridge,” Edric replied with a grimace.

Of course she was. I was a fool to think she would stay in one place, remaining at my side while I slept.

With anger, with haste, I drew on a pair of trousers and shoved my feet into boots.

“Which bridge?” I asked, belting the sword at my side.

“Fury,” Edric said.

If there was any chance of trouble unfolding, it would be on the bridge farthest from me, the one I would have to sprint to in order to reach, and I gritted my teeth.

I descended the tower stairs at a fast clip, leaving Edric and his lumbering pace behind.

Through the foyer and into the courtyard to Rye Tower.

I pushed myself to run faster once I cleared the first gate, then the second at Maiden.

My boots pounded down the wooden boards of the bridge, a beat that mimicked my racing heart.

In the near distance, Fury Tower loomed.

I recognized its pillar against the night sky.

Its winking lights burned through the fog, as if welcoming me, and I had almost reached the tower stairs when I heard Matilda’s frantic shout for the gatekeeper.

Her desperation was piercing.

I stumbled, skinning my palm against the stone wall.

The pain faded as I dashed through the doorway, taking two steps at a time, my breath like fire in my lungs by the time I reached the sentry corridor. My archers were positioned at the windows, arrows nocked on their bowstrings, but their stances were stiff, hesitant.

“Hold!” I ordered.

The archers submitted, one of them stepping back so I could claim the window. My eyes cut through the fog and torchlight, riveting on Matilda.

A man had her pressed against the balustrade.

No, not a man. A god I recognized.

“ Matilda! ” Her name tore through me; I hardly recognized the sound of my own voice. But my call came too late.

I watched, stricken, as Warin dragged her over the railing and into the river below. They went under with a splash, and I strained my eyes, waiting. But they did not surface again.

I drew a jagged breath. The air was cold, but it did nothing to ease the heat that was spreading through me. I was about to push away from the window, my nails digging into the casement, when a faint light caught my attention farther downstream. Something glowed below the surface.

I studied it, this fire beneath the water. It was not far from what we called the Claw on Maiden Tower’s southernmost point, and how familiar I unfortunately was with those currents. Matilda was there—somehow I knew this—held by the god of rivers. The god of iron and spring, whom I despised.

“Lord?”

I stepped back from the window. I do not know what sort of expression had overtaken my face, but it must have been terrible. The archers and two of my knights dropped their gazes instantly. No one dared to move, to speak.

“Sir Kenneth,” I said, and the words could have been steam for how my chest boiled. “You were gatekeeper tonight. Tell me what happened.”

“The goddess appeared on the bridge from the eastern riverbank, from the direction of your uncle’s camp, as if she had come from the fog,” Kenneth explained.

He was one of the oldest knights of Wyndrift, and by his tone, I could tell he was casting suspicion on Matilda.

“She asked if we would raise the gate, and we honored your order, lord. Only you can give that command.”

“She asked for the portcullis to be raised,” Hyacinthe corrected. “She wanted to find shelter between it and the gate, because Warin was pursuing her.”

I raked a hand through my hair, my skinned palm smarting. It had been my order, and they had followed it. My own words, barring her safety.

I swallowed, but my mouth had gone dry.

My thoughts whirled, but I no idea why Matilda had been in my uncle’s camp and why she had not told me before she left. And while it wasn’t wrong for Kenneth to be suspicious, my anger became a wild, livid thing.

“She is your Lady of Wyndrift,” I said, my voice smooth, dark. “And now she has been taken, unwillingly, by another god. Because you would not protect her.”

“She’s a goddess, ” Kenneth began, exasperated. “Lord, she should not need us to protect her. It might have been a ploy of hers. She might be in bed with your uncle, trying to convince us to raise the gate while you slept. Have you not considered that?”

I wanted to strike him.

By the grace of the gods, I resisted.

“You will not speak of my wife in that way,” I said. “You will protect her as you protect me. If she asks for you to raise the gate, you lift it.”

Kenneth flushed scarlet.

I pushed past him, heading to the stairs.

“Lord?” Hyacinthe trailed me. Her armor and chainmail gleamed in the light. She was ready, prepared, as she always was, but her eyes were soft with concern. “Where are you going? Do you want assistance?”

I paused at the top of the stairwell, white blooming across my knuckles as I gripped the hilt of my sword.

But what was steel against the force of a river?

What was my strength when compared to a divine’s?

I was earth, dust, salt, and bone. Warin was made of spring and constellations.

Of molten gold and iron and wind that was eternal.

And yet… I knew this river.

I knew it perhaps better than him, and I continued my descent.

“I’m going to the Claw.”

It was called such for one simple reason: It was a cluster of rocks shaped like a claw, rising from the base of Maiden Tower’s island. They created a wading pool that then gave way to the deep heart of Wyndrift, the currents flowing downstream.

This was the place where my uncle had once tied ropes to our waists and tossed us into the water like we were flotsam. My elder brothers and me. Nathaniel, thankfully, never experienced it. There were no good memories here, and yet I did not let that hinder me.

I removed my sword, boots, and tunic and stepped into the wading pool wearing only my trousers, the water frigid and high from the rainfall.

I still had the enchanted diving harness that Marcher had found—a leather vest that was lightweight in the water and could be yoked to a rope for safety.

It also had pockets where stones could be tucked away, which seemed counterintuitive for someone who did not desire to drown, but hence the enchantment. Magic often defied logic.

I ensured those pockets were filled with stones before I tied the harness in place over my chest. Next, I knotted the rope to it. The other end was fastened to the iron ring that Grimald had once driven into the rocks. I yanked on it, to ensure it had not been weakened by rust.

“Lord, what will you do if you reach her?” Hyacinthe asked. She was the only one to accompany me down to the Claw, although I knew my sentries in Maiden Tower were watching from their posts.

It was a fair question, and I did not have an answer.

Again, I felt the constraints of my mortality.

The ache of my bones, the measure of my breaths.

I could not live without air; I could not live without the ground beneath my feet.

I would be dangling by a rope. But nor could I idly stand by, knowing Matilda was being held underwater.

I stepped closer to the pool’s edge, feeling the currents tug on my ankles. A beckoning of deep, dark water. The moment before leaping off the ledge was the worst.

“If I call to you,” I said to her, “pull me in.”

Hyacinthe nodded. But her face was tense in the moonlight as she watched me.

Eyes shut, I gathered up the rope and suppressed my thoughts, just as I did my nightmares when I slept. But when I opened my eyes again, I envisioned Matilda. How many times had she drawn me up from the water?

It had been real to me, even if I claimed otherwise. Even if it had only been in dreams.

And I dove into the river after her.

I let the water carry me downstream as if I were nothing more than a small leaf, bobbing on the surface.

But I controlled how fast I went with the rope, and I set my course slow but steady.

It was similar to how my brothers had rappelled down the mountain when we had tried to reach the dead eithral on the summit, many years ago.

Soon, I could see a glimmer of light far below me.

I released the remaining rope so it would go slack, and instantly the stones in the harness began to pull me downward.

The river’s current was strong, and I could feel my exhaustion begin to stir.

I would only have so much time before I needed to haul myself back, and that would be the hardest part of the journey—carving my path upstream.

But I drew in a deep breath just before the surface closed over my head, and I followed the enchanted light.

The current was roughest here, but I had learned how to move my body in such a way as to cut through it, agile as the bream that thrived in the river.

The weight in the harness also drew me down, quickly.

Soon, I reached the colder, darker vein of water, which was calmer, heavier.

My ears popped. I could feel the air smoldering in my lungs, bubbles desperate to slip from my mouth.

I swam as deep as I dared, my eyes open, fixed upon the light.

But it did not matter how hard I kicked or how far the harness stones dragged me. It did not matter that I was shot through with determination to find Matilda, that I slipped through water like a bolt of silk, graceful even in the cold. My body began to ache; my blood yearned for the surface.

And the riverbed remained as distant as the moon, the stars. Something I could look at but never touch.

My hand trembled as I grasped one of the harness sleeves, drawing out a smooth stone. I let it slide from my hand, watching it melt into the darkness. I removed another, then another, until they no longer weighed me down nor kept me suspended in the water.

With the stones gone, I began to drift downstream.

My lungs withered. I could feel a throb in my temples, warning me that I had remained under for too long. That no matter what I believed—if I was a son of Beckett or not—not even the ocean blood of my mother could save me here.

I began to haul myself up, following the rope.

My exhaustion was blistering; I suddenly wanted to close my eyes and let go, to sink into the numbness.

The peaceful darkness. But that was the river’s way; spend too long in her embrace, and she had a knack of lulling you to sleep.

Of making you forget, catching you by the throat, and sneaking into your lungs before you knew it.

But she relinquished me this time, as if knowing I was not hers. At least, not that night. I broke the surface with a gasp, shivering.

I floated for what could have been a moment and could have been a year—there is no time in the water.

The sun was about to rise, and I was watching the eastern horizon when something wrapped around my legs.

I jumped, kicking by instinct, but whatever it was held on to me, tenacious.

Cursing, I reached down and pulled it to the surface, only to see that it was Matilda’s cloak.

This, then, I could carry home, and that was when I acknowledged it. I felt the expanse yawn wide between us—Matilda and me. The mundane and the magical. The mortal and the divine.

It did not matter how desperate I was to reach her where she was, to stretch out my hand and take her own.

We only touched in fleeting moments.

And we might meet in startled brevity, like the moon eclipsing the sun every thirteen winters. A meeting that felt so fierce the whole land took note of its shadow. But we were never meant to be bound together. Not even in pretense.