Page 9 of Wild Reverence

I could tuck Alva’s dream scrolls away here.

Maybe I could even force the shield I carried into a pocket, although I imagined Bade would consider that cheating.

That was when I noticed the stone closest to the latch had a dark blue streak within it.

A shadow that had not been there a moment ago, before I had brought the belt around me.

I bent my head to study it closer, just as my mother gasped.

“What is that ?” Zenia tapped her fingernail against the gemstone.

I realized that the pockets were inaccessible to her, and I snuck a wry glance at Phelyra, whose brow was arched as she, too, noticed the strange pattern.

“I spent three winters harvesting only the best moonstones. Remove the belt, Matilda. I will replace that one.”

“Let it be,” Phelyra said, exasperated. “If you replace it for a mere smudge, I will have to reenchant every stone again for the pocket spell, and I do not have the time for such nonsense. Also, that moonstone is not spoiled. It has merely reacted to touching Matilda.”

Phelyra was right.

The stone had responded to me in some strange way, and as I studied it closer, the shadow reminded me of a shut eye, with long, dark lashes.

“You did not enchant it so that my mother can keep an eternal watch over me, did you?” I teased Phelyra.

She scrunched her nose and tilted her head, her flaxen locks shifting to cover one of her eyes. She winked with the other. But my mother’s frown only deepened.

I felt it, then, although I kept it to myself. There was something dark and slumbering within me. One day, it would stir, and I did not know how to prepare for it.

I sensed something was wrong with Bade the next time I saw him for training at the forge.

His fortnight with the queen had ended, but when he returned to train me, he was distracted.

Snow was caught in his hair, white as the spots dappling a fawn’s coat, and I could smell the cold, brisk wind on him.

There were fresh scars on his forearms, newly healed, and his red cloak was torn and splattered with mud.

“Have you been fighting?” I asked, which was wasted air. Of course he had been fighting, and he must have lost to be so morose. Swallowing, I shifted my grip on the hilt of the broadsword he had given me. My shield was perched on my other arm like a dutiful falcon.

A tense beat passed as I waited for him to begin the spar.

Bade was silent, his eyes distant. His own sword—the obsidian one that I admired—remained sheathed at his side. His arms were crossed over his chest. He was gazing at the coals in the fire pit, as if enchanted by their crackling glow.

“Did you hear me?” I said again, louder. But my heart faltered, dismayed.

This was not like him.

His attention never strayed from his task, and his eyes were bloodshot when he finally looked at me.

“What did you say?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

“Did something happen in the mortal realm? A battle you have been waiting for?”

“Yes.”

Why did he sound so mournful? Had the war ended? Was he falling into a slump of peace?

He had failed to notice the moonstone belt at my waist, which had first alerted me to his inattentiveness. I had expected him to remark upon it directly. To deem it a hindrance, and to demand that I remove it during sparring.

I would have preferred the old Bade, even as he liked to irritate me, and I decided that I needed to cheer him. I needed to bring him around.

“How is the thorn in your side?” I asked with a grin.

Bade’s eyes narrowed. “My what?”

“The thorn,” I repeated, mirth fading. “You once called her such. Don’t you remember?”

“You speak of Adria,” he said, glancing away. “She is…”

I waited, but he never finished his statement. It was like there were no words he could find to describe her, and my heart went cold.

“I cannot stay here,” he muttered, raking fingers through his hair. His snowy crown melted, and he began to stride away before he remembered me, standing in his wake, shocked. “We will have to resume this another time, Matilda.”

“When?”

“I do not know. Return to your mother.”

With that, he vanished into an adjacent corridor. A dark eastward route that I had never taken.

I sheathed my sword and eased my shield into one of the moonstone pockets—it fit perfectly, just as Phelyra had claimed—before following him.

I knew the map of gemstones, and I could navigate by them.

He was moving quickly, as if something in the distance had hooked him, reeling him in. Every few steps, I could hear his breaths, ragged in the shadows.

Had he been wounded? If so, I would have noticed, and gods heal themselves quickly as long as it is not a blow on the fault line. His armor had been unmarred. There was no mark upon his neck, and I could not understand his distress.

He was my salt-sworn ally, but in many ways, I was also his.

I followed Bade from ruby to emerald to malachite, all the way to the door that opened to the mortal realm above us.

I forced myself to wait ten inhalations before I dared to cross the threshold behind him. When I did, I was met by a wash of bitter wind, and a quiet world cloaked in fresh snowfall.

This door rested in a craggy oak’s trunk, sheltered by a close-knit forest.

I studied the tree to remember where the door hid, and then traced Bade’s footsteps, the snow crisp and ankle-deep. I trailed him to the forest’s edge, and there I stopped, gazing down at the muddy vale that stretched before me, embraced by stark mountains.

It held a war camp. There were rows of tents and heraldic banners. Smoke rose from campfires; the air tasted like burning leaves and oak, mixed with the mire of mud.

I watched Bade step into the encampment, well known amongst the armored warriors.

Some even bowed as he passed, although he paid them no heed.

His red cloak was an easy mark, and my eyes tracked him all the way to a great tent erected in the center of the camp.

There, he vanished, and I struggled to swallow the fire at the back of my throat.

He was returning to the Poet Queen.

And had he not just left her? I wanted to toss up my hands, grind my teeth in frustration.

You fool.

This was how gods lost their immortality.

By succumbing to distractions. By letting down their guard.

Had he not taught me this? Had he not been persistent in reinforcing this lesson to me, again and again, like his sword glancing off my shield, forcing me to grow stronger, harder, wiser beneath the blows?

A branch creaked above me.

My mind went blank; my chin snapped up. There was a sentry archer poised directly above me, on watch. I did not think she had noticed me yet, but my heart lurched all the same.

Silently, I retreated, filling my footsteps as I went.

It would do us no good to expose the location of an Underling door.

Those thresholds were our secret, and footprints emerging from a crooked oak would raise suspicion.

Again, Bade had lost all sense, leaving a trail for any curious mortal or Skyward to find, and I could not shake the shiver that followed me back to the burrow.