Page 80 of Wild Reverence

LX

When Ice Draws Fire

MATILDA

I could not stay another day in Fate’s villa.

I painstakingly made my way down the stairs to the orchard, the grass peppered with plums and apples.

Here, in the very place I had first looked upon Fate, I asked her to go to my father’s hall and retrieve my belt, my cloak, my vial of poisonous flowers.

Rowena frowned as if I had demanded she pluck the moon from the sky and toss it to the Underlings, but when she rode the eastern trade wind, I was relieved.

While she was gone, I made myself walk back up the length of stairs. I felt every jar, every ragged breath in my lungs. My wounds swelled but did not break, even as I paced her villa from one side to the other, keen to stir up my strength for the journey to the mortal realm.

I kept the bottle of smoke in my hand.

I did not listen to Vincent’s words again, but I did not need to; they reverberated through me like clear silver notes strummed from a harp. They settled in my bones, warmer than the fever that plagued me.

I paused at the loom, tempted to look upon the tapestry’s design.

If I dared to gaze upon it, I knew I would see the golden thread of my own life, woven amongst so many others.

My life, tangling with Vincent’s silver one.

But that was the past and the present. A story that I already knew.

Rowena wove the things to come, and as I stepped closer to the loom…

I realized that I did not want to look. I did not want to know when I was destined to lose him, when his thread ended and mine continued on, alone.

I turned my face away from the tapestry, gazing out over the orchard again.

Rowena had been wrong about Vincent’s words healing me.

The lacerations on my back remained tender and hot to the touch, struggling to turn scabs into scars.

I could feel a languishing pull, the pulse of something that could not be healed, its heat simmering through me, making my breath shallow and my skin shine like ice.

“You are not fit enough to ride the trade winds back to the mortal realm,” Rowena said by way of greeting when she returned.

She regarded me with a dubious expression, but in her arms were the items I had hoped she could retrieve on my behalf.

“Travel will split your wounds open. You will be back where you started with me, days ago. Weak as a lamb, drawing all the wolves to you.”

I accepted my belt first, carefully buckling it low on my waist. I was grateful to see the Gatekeeper’s eye was sleeping. Next, the vial of blythe around my neck where it belonged, and lastly my father’s cloak, bright as mortal blood that morning, as if it wanted to scold me.

“I fear I have no choice.” I met Rowena’s stare. “I am needed elsewhere. I have been away for too long.”

“He is wondering where you are,” she stated.

“He is waiting for my return,” I said, thinking back on Vincent’s words. “But he is about to face another battle. And I promised to aid him.”

“Why would you chain yourself to something so trivial? You could spend your time, your passions on something far more rewarding than mortal battles that come and go as frequently as the tides.”

I paused, surprised. Earlier, she had been urging me to read his words, to welcome his worship, and now she made him seem like a burden?

“I have never seen it as a chain,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes, but it was only to hide her smile.

“Good,” Rowena said. “Then go and be with the one you love.”

When the western trade wind swept me up from Fate’s orchard, I was determined to ride its power all the way to Wyndrift.

But Rowena had been right. The travel plucked mercilessly at my wounds, sharp as a raven’s beak.

Pain rippled across my spine, limning all my weak points.

I hunched, trying to hold myself together, as the wind spun me like a vapor across the mountains.

I could not make it to the river.

I disembarked from the trade winds as soon as I could, gasping as I felt blood drip down my back again.

My skin was hot to the touch and beaded with sweat.

My gaze was hazy at the edges, and I blinked back tears.

Gradually, the pain receded enough for me to gain my bearings.

I was kneeling on flagstones shot through with moss.

A courtyard to a fortress, tucked away in the foothills.

The mountains loomed like jagged teeth behind it.

The air was cool; by the slant of sun, it looked to be midmorning, and the ground was wet from rain.

I shivered, struck by how silent this place felt as I rose to my feet. The fortress seemed dark, draped in sinister shadows. A beat later, I realized this was Hugh Delavoy’s land. I stood at the threshold of Drake Hall.

“Goddess.”

A whisper drew my attention to the right. A middle-aged woman stood in the archway to the stables, her gray-brown hair bound in a messy braid, her dress wrinkled and stained as if she had been wearing it for days.

“May I speak with you?” she added, reaching her hand out to me. Her face was flushed from weeping.

“What has happened here?” I asked, hurrying to meet her in the archway. As I drew closer, I saw that she wore a vial of blythe flowers around her neck, just as I did. She was from Wyndrift, one of the people who had evacuated. “Is everything well?”

“No, lady. We… have tried to send word to Lord Vincent at Wyndrift, but I do not think any of our messages have reached him.”

“What messages?”

“Days ago, not long after we arrived here for sanctuary, a good number of us went missing.”

My heart churned cold with dread. “ Missing? ”

“Yes.” The woman paused, covering her mouth to suppress a sob.

“My youngest daughter, Kitty, was one of them. My brother also. We have tried to make sense of it, to see if there was a pattern. But it has struck at random, it seems. Lord Hugh’s people have not been afflicted and have assured us this is no mischief of theirs—they would not dare break the law of the land by harming those taking shelter beneath their roof—and have even sought to help us look for our missing kin and friends.

And yet… there is no trace of them. They have vanished, and we do not know how to find them. ”

I fell pensive. If I had more time, I would have remained here longer, seeking to find an answer myself. But I was still two days’ ride from Wyndrift. Even if I could find the swiftest horse to carry me, I would be late when it came to the next battle.

But perhaps even more than time… I sensed that this mischief was a god’s doing.

“I am sorry to hear this,” I said. “I will carry a message to Vincent for you. Write one and I will personally see that it is delivered to him. We will find your missing kin and friends.”

An elderly man emerged from the shadows. He had been listening to us, and at first I expected him to ask more questions, as if I held the answers. But he merely extended a letter addressed to Vincent, one he had already written and was prepared to dispatch himself again.

“Thank you, lady,” he said. “My wife is also one of the missing.”

I swallowed and accepted the assignment. Magic coursed through me, tugging on my fingers. I felt the pull toward Vincent. He was home, as I knew he would be. I could sense the river’s currents, the sun-warmed rocks, the slight breeze stirring his hair.

He was on the bridge.

I left Drake Hall not long after that, accepting only the smallest of provision packs and a flask of water, still cold from a mountain stream. Vincent’s people insisted on it, as well as providing me with a draft horse that had pulled one of their wagons.

I would have been faster on foot if I could run, but my wounds continued to smolder, threatening to break again. I was still bleeding, a small but steady trickle, as I hauled myself up into the saddle and cantered away, following the road that would guide me back to Beckett land.

As I rode, I sorted through everything Vincent’s people had told me of the missing. How there was no trace, no pattern they could find as to who had vanished and why. A strange suspicion gleamed in the darkness of my mind, one that I was cutting my teeth on, when the air became drastically colder.

My horse eased to a walk, nickering with uncertainty.

I pulled him to a halt and gazed at our surroundings.

We were in a forest; the road wound onward through the trees, but it felt as if we had stepped into winter. The air was gray and bleak and sharp as a blade in my throat. Fog began to pool on the ground. The pine needles and bracken glittered with frost. When I exhaled, my breath spun like smoke.

A dark power had gathered in these woods.

Something that brimmed with magic.

I dismounted from the horse, who was shying away, flanks damp with sweat. As soon as I released the reins, the gelding bolted back the way we had come, leaving me to stand on the road alone, the fog nipping at my ankles.

But I would face this danger rather than run from it.

I called my shield from my belt. My arm trembled from the weight.

I was burning, as if my skin had been blistered from the sun, and yet the cold air made me feel brittle as ice.

I did not know how I could feel two things at once, but I told myself to breathe, my teeth aching, and I stepped away from the road, deeper into the fog.

I was the daughter of winter. And this scene almost felt like a memory.

Sometimes, my mother had let me walk the mortal realm with her when she came into her season.

I would watch her touch lakes and turn them to ice.

How frost would bloom in her footsteps. How she would tilt her head to the sky and exhale, and snow would begin to fall.

My mother is dead.

I could still feel her blood on my hands—I could still smell its cloying sweetness—as I moved deeper into the forest.

“Phelyra?” I called.

She was the goddess of winter now, but there was no answer. Not even the birds stirred here. This forest was empty save for one powerful thing, and I continued to follow its cold trail, unable to hide how I shivered.

The trees began to grow sparser, their branches broken. The frost crackled beneath my feet.

I stepped into a clearing only to stop, the fog receding.

There, in the center of the woods, with her tattered wings and iridescent scales, with her ruby eyes pinned upon mine, was the rogue eithral.