Page 69 of Wild Reverence

L

This Is a Dream… Awaken

VINCENT

I sat beside Nathaniel’s body in the sepulcher, in the very heart of the fortress, watching the light fade.

It had been a full day since my brother had died on the bridge, and his body was beginning to rot.

He had been washed and prepared for burial, dressed in his finest raiment, a woven crown of river blythe on his brow.

His pale hands were folded over the hilt of his sword.

For a moment, I could almost fool myself into thinking he was merely sleeping, until I drew air and tasted Death.

It was time to close and lock the sepulcher’s door. But something had prevented me from giving that order. My denial, my grief? I could not be certain.

All I could do was tell myself to breathe through the pain.

I had spent the hours sitting at his side, watching time pass as sunlight shifted over the threshold, as darkness swelled and receded like the sea along the coast.

Alyse had visited, trying to coax me out of the tomb with something to eat, drink.

I could not bear to swallow anything.

Hyacinthe had also visited at my request, to give an update on the wounded and the prisoners we had taken. The knight who had killed my brother after he had pretended to surrender, who was chained far below our feet.

A terrible fate awaited him.

My uncle’s camp was still planted on the bank, but the day had passed quietly. We had entered an interlude, a sennight where no battle could commence, allowing us both time and space to bury and mourn our dead.

Edric had also visited me, standing in the sepulcher’s doorway, looking the most concerned I had ever seen him.

There were new marks on the man’s brow as if the past few days had aged him a full decade.

Hugh and his warriors had arrived at last, he told me.

They were helping by digging graves on the western side of the river.

As for Matilda… she had vanished. I did not know where she had gone, or if she would ever return.

There was a side of me that wanted to fold myself in steel.

To prepare to never see her again, or at least not for another thirteen years.

Why had she left when she did? Could she not even spare a moment to speak with me?

I felt the space grow vast between us.

She traveled to realms I could never reach. She evanesced into wind. She slipped through hidden doorways, thriving in shadowed places underground. She breathed beneath water and walked across riverbeds into swirling darkness that had never felt light.

I knew, in that twilit moment, that she was far away.

But there was another side of me that I nursed like a broken bone.

She had promised to give me an answer and see this conflict through.

She had swallowed my words, letting them hide between her ribs.

It was dangerous for men to hold her too closely; had she not said this to me? Even as she had lain in my arms?

I told myself to let her go.

Let her go.

I closed my eyes, arms crossed over my chest, my legs numb from sitting.

Weariness was creeping over me like a shroud.

I could not remember the last full night I had slept, nor the last time I had truly eaten.

I wanted to survive on air and spite and what ifs.

I wanted to shake my brother— Awaken! This is a dream!

—but the truth—that sweet rot of Death—continued to keep me sharpened to this new reality.

Nathaniel was dead.

I had lost my last brother.

I was alone.

The torchlight drew a flurry of white-winged moths. I watched them dance around the flames; the air chilled as darkness spread a star-flecked cloak along the ground. I was dozing when I thought I heard another’s breath, close to me. Someone was drawing air as I was exhaling.

Bleary-eyed, I focused on the torch fire. The moths with their frantic flap of wings. The susurration of wind beyond the gaping doorway.

No one was with me; I must have imagined the second breath. But when my eyes grew heavy… the sound came again, a deep sigh that filled the chamber.

Warily, I studied the shadows. The darkness that seemed to bleed in the corners, lapping at the firelight. But there was nothing living within them. Nothing moved, save for Nathaniel’s fingers on the hilt.

They were trembling, flexing.

I rose.

My heart was pounding as I stared at my brother’s hands.

They seemed to be shaking off cobwebs, as if they had never been dead but sleeping, and that was when I saw his chest rising and falling.

He was breathing, and I knew I must be dreaming.

I had fallen asleep, and I did not dare to hope, not until I stepped closer and saw that Nathaniel’s milk-white pallor was fading.

Color was returning to his face, as if blood thrummed through his veins again.

Awaken, I commanded myself. And yet there was nothing to wake from. I stood in the land of the living, in the waking world, and my brother was not dead.

“Nathaniel?” My voice was rough as split wood.

My brother froze. Breath suspended, hands poised elegantly over the hilt. I could do nothing but watch, afraid to blink for fear I would lose him again. Desperation spread through me like tangled tree roots.

“Nathaniel?” I said again, stronger this time.

A sudden gust blew into the sepulcher, carrying the river’s fragrance. One of the torches extinguished with a hiss, leaving a trail of thick smoke behind. The hair rose on my arms as I watched Nathaniel’s eyes open, his pupils blown wide and dark as new moons.

“Where is she?” he asked. His voice was nothing like I remembered. It was harsh, ragged.

“Who?” I whispered. “Who do you speak of?”

He paused. I worried he would slip away from me again and I dared to reach out and take his hand. He was cold, stiff. I willed the warmth to reach his fingers.

At last, he looked at me.

“Matilda.”