Page 70 of Wild Reverence

LI

Open Your Eyes

VINCENT

I returned to the place I had last seen her.

Maiden Bridge was still scarred from battle.

Blood sat like permanent shadows; flames had left behind charred rings in the wood.

The moon hung above like an omen as I stood where Nathaniel had died.

I had seen Matilda not long after he had breathed his last in my arms. She had walked through the knights, her red cloak providing something for my eyes to fixate on before she had disappeared.

I had wanted to call her name.

I had wanted her to touch me, to remain with me, and I had wrestled with that agony because she had not. She had left me aching, alone, or so I had thought.

Now, I knew where she had gone.

Nathaniel could barely speak of it, but when I had seen him bathed and dressed and fed before the hearth fire of his room, he had told me bits and pieces. Enough for me to draw a faint illustration of where he had gone, and how Matilda had followed.

“She gave her stories for me. At the gate,” he had said, his voice strained. “She held on to me, even in the darkness. In the water. She would not let me go.”

Overcome, I had left him to rest.

The hours passed as I remained on the bridge, listening to the river flow onward.

I stood at the altar she had made, a broken tower and a gate of rubble.

When I exhaled, my breath was a vapor, ephemeral.

Winter was prowling closer, and my eyes inevitably rose to the night—crisp, cold, and punctured with hundreds of stars.

I found Matilda’s constellation. A familiar glimmer in the western sky that I could have drawn with my eyes closed. But it was not as I knew it to be. Another constellation had woken in the sky just below hers, as if they had been dead embers, waiting for wind to stir them.

Frowning, I studied the unknown stars, wondering if a new divine had been born. And if so, who were they?

My thoughts were interrupted by pebbles cascading down the tower.

There was movement on what remained of Fury. A person etched in moonlight. They were climbing down to reach the bridge as if they were in pain. My heart quickened when I took a step forward.

It was her.

As soon as I recognized Matilda, she slipped.

“No.”

The word escaped me as a strangled whisper. I lunged forward to meet her, a beat later realizing this was a mortal reflex. To think the ground would shatter her, as if she were the same flesh as me. To think I could catch her.

I sprinted forward all the same. Even with my speed, I was too slow, and she hit the mountain of rubble that had become Fury’s Gate, rolling down its slope. Stones scattered, following her path down to the bridge, where she lay prone, unmoving.

“ Gods, ” I swore, falling to my knees. “Matilda?”

She did not move. My hands shook as I turned her over.

Skeins of damp hair tangled across her face.

Gently, I shifted the snarls away until I could see her closed eyes, her lashes fanning across her cheeks like dark fringe.

Her mouth, slightly open as she breathed, shallow and labored. The slender point of her nose.

There were small cuts on her face, at the corners of her lips. Bruises that gleamed gold beneath her skin. Her blood trickled, luminous, in the starlight. Her clothes were drenched, crinkled with brine from the sea.

Where have you been?

“Open your eyes,” I whispered, and I did not hide my desperation this time. How my voice threatened to break. “Look at me, Red.”

What she would see if she did. If she could trace my face in all its unguardedness. For I could not hide it from her any longer. Let her see me, I thought, if she would only open her eyes.

She stirred, her eyes fluttering open. There was a glaze of weariness within her—she almost looked mortal—but she met my gaze and held it. A sigh unspooled from her.

“Vincent,” she said in a pitch so low I almost could not hear it.

“Yes?” I bent closer, until I could feel her breath fan across my face.

She closed her eyes again, but she rested beneath the caress of my hand.

“Your brother…?”

“He is home, returned from the dead.” I tucked a loose thread of hair behind her ear. There was more I wanted to ask, more I wanted to say, but I held the words captive.

“Will you take me somewhere safe?” she said.

I gathered her into my arms.

She smelled familiar to me. I wanted to bury my face in her neck, in her hair. And for a moment, our hearts were young again.

It was only me and her.

The warmth of her body seeping into me.

The stars, casting us in silver.

I carried her to my bedchamber.