Page 75 of Wild Reverence

He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, as if the salt was searing, but then it was done. The vow had dissolved between us. He was no longer a sworn ally, beholden to me, and he rose from the table. As if I had cut threads from him, he left, disappearing down the shadows of the corridor.

I sat in the roar of silence, alone.

The mortal sun would not wait for any god, least of all me.

It was time for me to return to Shale on the moors, and I stoppered the inkpot and wiped my fingers on my dress.

Anxious, I measured my sun disk again and saw that less than an hour remained until my scourging.

I would not have time to find Alva or Dacre this visit, as I had hoped. I would have to return another time.

Adria stepped into the common room, arriving so quietly I did not realize she was with me until I saw her move at the corner of my eye.

“I have something for you,” she said.

I stood to meet her, surprised to see it was another sheet of parchment. One with a jagged edge, as if it had been ripped from a binding. She set it within my outstretched palm, and I saw it was the constellation she had drawn for me. The one marked as soul-bearer .

“How did you know?” I asked. “How did you see the other half of my stars before I did? Before they burned in the sky?”

“I was never supposed to see such things,” Adria confessed.

“But nor was I ever supposed to be immortal, was I? When I was crowned by Death and Fate, the very bones of divinity shifted, ever so slightly. I gained a portion of both matriarchs’ powers.

I can foil death in my own way—not as great as your own, of course—and I can also catch a glimpse of what is to come, what is destined, as if I gaze into a murky pond.

Orphia and Rowena do not realize it. Not yet, but soon they will. ”

Her words stirred me like a gust of wind; my thoughts spun like stray leaves.

“ Adria, ” I said, but stopped myself when she pulled a small dirk from her belt.

She nicked her finger with cool precision. A drop of ichor welled upon her skin.

I made no protest when she drew two points on my collarbone with her sweetened blood. Two points that she connected, as if they were stars, gleaming in gold.

Only two other divines could take their stars and give them to another—Orphia and Rowena. My breath caught when I realized who Adria truly was. What she had become amongst us.

Death and Fate had not just created a goddess of peace.

They had made another matriarch.

If the under realm belonged to Orphia and the Skyward heavens to Rowena, then Adria was the matriarch of the mortal kingdom.

There had always been three realms in our world; we should have expected a third matriarch to rise amongst us.

We should have been waiting for her, knowing she would come from the mortal realm.

“You cannot give your stars to me,” I whispered. “You need them.”

“Do you remember the time when I was a mortal queen?” she said.

“You were younger, then, but you must have heard that I came from nothing. Even when I was named queen, I did not have much in the treasury that was mine save for a string of pearls. They had been my mother’s, my grandmother’s.

The only heirloom I possessed. And as the war raged on, I decided that I would melt down all the golden cups from the great hall and craft circlets, crowns, you could call them, and that I would inlay in each one a pearl that I took from my necklace.

I began to bestow them upon council members who were devoted not just to me but to Cambria.

These people, while not perfect, were fighting for the greater good. ”

“I remember,” I said. “Bade earned one from you.”

A sad smile passed over Adria’s face. “Yes, he did. It took him a while, and that is when my opinion of the gods began to change. Once, I believed that they did not care for humankind, and I was suspicious of Bade when he claimed he wanted to help us. But day after day, he returned to me, faithful as the sun rising, and he began to change. I watched as he softened to our cause, not to obtain a golden crown, but because he cared for me and my people. Likewise, I saw men and women who I had once trusted harden their hearts. They would do anything to obtain a crown from me, to use it as a symbol of power, and I realized I had made a grave error. My intentions, while pure, had devolved into something terrible. My crowns were no longer protection but had become targets, something to steal and kill over, and I thought… if I ever wielded such power again, I would be wiser with it. I would not give away every last pearl of mine, and I would only crown those who had proven themselves selfless and good to mortals.”

I did not know if she was giving me a crown. I could not see it or feel its weight on my brow, so instead of asking about it, I said, “That power has returned to you? Giving crowns to the ones you deem worthy?”

“It has always been my power. I merely wait for the right moments to grant them, and only to ones who have proven themselves worthy of mortal love.” She drew my hair over my shoulder, hiding the two stars that continued to gleam on my collarbone. “Keep these hidden until you need them.”

I swallowed. “When will I need them?”

Adria only smiled and said, “You will know when.”

I carried her blood-drawn stars on my collarbone as I left the under realm. They did not sink into my skin; her power did not become a part of me.

Not yet, at least.

I did not know when I would need to claim them as my own. I did not even know what her magic would grant me. What piece of her power she had given, if it was a crown or something else entirely.

I let that mystery follow me Skyward.