Page 76 of Wild Reverence

LVI

A Hall Full of Gold

MATILDA

I prepared for the scourging in the quiet shadows of my old Skyward room.

I removed the mortal clothes I had taken from Vincent’s wardrobe, laying them across my bed.

I set my moonstone belt, my cloak, and the vial of blythe in my cedar chest for safekeeping.

I kneaded my skin with oil, sparing Adria’s duet of stars on my collarbone, before scraping off the shining excess with a small curved blade.

I wore a dress with an open back and braided my hair into a crown.

In a strange way, I felt as if I were preparing myself to be sacrificed upon an altar. Dread seeped into my bones, so cold I could not shake it away, not even when I stood next to my brazier.

I held out my hands to it, but the embers that rested within were dark. They had never been roused to flames; there had never been a prayer burned to me—words that would ignite it—but I tarried for as long as I could, in case Vincent did decide to write.

I breathed the moments away. I waited, but no fire stirred. No fragrant smoke rose from the ashes.

I was tempted to gather my own parchment, ink, and quill.

Vincent had asked if I could write to him, and yet the mere thought had challenged what I knew to be true, my beliefs in myself and my magic.

I had not been able to imagine a world in which I sent forth my own words.

I was so accustomed to bearing them for others, and not myself.

Now is not the time, I thought, but I could not resist imagining it.

Dear Vincent, I would write. I closed my eyes and pictured how the words would look on parchment. How they would taste.

I am so afraid.

I bit down on my lip, welcoming the pain. I would never lay myself so bare. What good would it do for me?

But I continued to dwell on him as I slipped from the chamber.

I laid my hand upon my ribs, the place where his words rested within me, waiting for me to answer.

It will not be much longer. There were some things I could only marvel over, but this was one thing I knew to be true.

The mourning sennight would soon expire; the dead would be buried, the names of the fallen gathered, the last songs strummed in remembrance.

I could nearly taste it; the end was near.

I walked alone to the hall, reaching it just as the mortal sun surrendered to the western horizon.

The entire court had gathered for me.

They watched as I approached the dais, where my father waited with his whip. The eithral scales caught the fire that burned in the sconces, gleaming iridescent even here, far from home. Far from the beasts they had been plucked from and their domain in the under realm.

My heart was pounding as I reached the footstool of the dais. At last I came to a stop, my palms prickling, my breaths shallow. The court murmured behind me, hungry to see my disgrace. I could feel Warin’s gaze scalding my shoulder blades, the curve of my neck.

I felt like a stranger, as if I had never been in this hall before. No one would speak for me; no one would dare to challenge my father’s punishment.

I felt him scrutinize me. I kept my eyes lowered, waiting.

“Twenty-five lashes for breaking your vow by wielding the sight before mortal kind,” Thile said, his voice sonorous and bright in the hall. The fire in the braziers quivered at the sound; the whispers of the court went silent. “And twenty-five lashes for using the sight on an Underling beast.”

I shivered; I had expected a hundred lashes, and this punishment did not feel so daunting. Not until I studied the eithral scales again. They were going to cut me deeply; I wondered if there would be any skin left upon my back by the end.

I lifted my eyes to look at my father.

He seemed to be waiting for it, as if he wanted to see what hid within me. The haunting shade of my mother, perhaps, or a younger rendition of himself. Both of which, I imagined, he was keen to forget. I was the epitome of what could have been. Of what he had lost and what would never be.

“Kneel,” said Thile.

Slowly, I lowered myself to my knees. The marble was cold and smooth, unforgiving, beneath me. I closed my eyes and breathed, waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

The silence was unbearable.

And then the first lash struck, white hot and lightning quick across my back.

The pain was like nothing I had experienced before; it robbed the air from my lungs.

It crushed my heart and stung my eyes. I could not help but jerk as the eithral scales sank into me like deep fangs.

I could feel my skin break open. My blood bloomed, eager.

It trickled down my back, tracing my spine.

One, I thought.

I braced myself for the next blow.

The second lash struck, then the third.

Each time felt as if I were being split open, glistening to my bones.

I felt vulnerable, weak. Exposed before the court.

My wounds smoldered as if they had been set on fire and rubbed down with salt.

I drew rapid, tremulous breaths. My chest constricted with anguish; I worried my organs would tear if I gasped too much air.

I feared my heart—my fault line—would crumble beneath the strain of holding myself together.

By the eighteenth lash, my pride disintegrated. I could no longer hold myself upright.

I sank face down on the stairs. My ichor flowed freely; my dress was drenched in gold. Blood pooled beneath me, shimmering like warm honey, dripping down the stairs to form creeks along the polished floor.

My father did not soften his strikes. I would drown this hall in gold, and the whip continued to shred through my back, again and again.

Relentless. Soon, I lost count. The pain became a hot simmer, gradually turning my hands numb, then my arms. My feet.

I could hardly feel my body, and I wondered if I was about to slip away to the wastes.

If the eye in the gemstone was opening and—this time—the Gatekeeper was waking for me.

Vincent, I thought.

He was waiting for me to return. I could not let myself go—I could not leave him again without explanation, without seeing him face-to-face—and I sharpened my mind through the golden haze.

Stay with me a little while longer.

His words were an echo, a balm to my wounds.

I clung to them, repeating them like they were a hymn. A song I could trace with my fingers. A chorus that would carry me through the pain.

This agony would end, as all things did.

I just needed to breathe a little while longer.

I coughed between strikes. Blood splattered on the marble. It dribbled from my lips and coated my teeth like sap. I tried to swallow but felt choked by my own magic.

Belatedly, I recalled Adria’s stars on my collarbone.

I tried to move my hand to reach them, to lay my palm upon their two points, inviting her blood to sink into me, her magic to unite with my own.

She had said I would know when I would need them.

But my fingers were limp, crushed between my body and the edge of the steps.

I did not even have the strength to lift myself, to free my hands.

“That is enough, Thile.”

The command thundered through the hall, halting my father’s lashing.

The brusque voice was familiar in a distant way, like a dream that is forgotten upon waking but is remembered hours later.

I had not heard this voice in a long time, and I wondered if I was merely imagining it until I cracked open my eyes.

I saw the ripple of dark green robes and the long-clawed feet of Rowena as she approached.

Fate had come for me.

The Skyward matriarch who loathed the court and rarely took part in its ravenous gatherings.

It almost felt like yesterday that I had found my way to her orchard on my first delivery.

My father struck my back again, in anger this time, as if he wanted to prove he did not need to listen to her.

The eithral scales sparked across my bones.

I saw myself as a young goddess again, in the moment I had first beheld the scale on my mother’s table.

The beginning of her end. I saw myself in Vincent’s dream, climbing to the top of the cliff with him, that lone scale clinging to the dead creature’s skin like a taunt.

Fire licked down my bones. My ribs cracked, and I struggled to breathe. I groaned—the first strangled sound I had uttered—and shut my eyes once more.

“Are you proud, then?” Rowena said, her displeasure sharp as smoke. “To slice your daughter to the bone?”

“She must learn.” Thile’s words were ragged, as if the whipping had drained him. “She has risked all of us with her foolishness.”

“And you would kill her for it? Devour the very magic you gave her?”

“No divine was ever extinguished from a whipping.”

“No, unless you make her the first. You have proven your point here. This is enough. ”

I felt a wash of cool air on my back. I realized it was Thile, stepping away. I heard his retreat, the court whispers humming again like a beehive. I heard the clink of Rowena’s claws on the marble as she came closer, her hand cold as river ice when she touched my brow.

“Matilda?” she said. “Breathe, child. Open your eyes.”

I tried but my lungs had torn. They hung like shredded sails in the wind.

And I slipped away into a dark red sea.