Page 96 of Wild Reverence

LXXIV

A Call to Ghosts

VINCENT

I had never known such coldness.

My skin burned as if I had set it on fire. I dragged myself from the water and onto the icy bridge, my limbs numb and slow. Water weighed me down; I coughed and felt it smolder through my lungs like flames. I watched it freeze as soon as it dripped from my mouth and hit the ice.

I was certain it was a dream; every movement felt hazy, precarious.

My breath was like smoke from a forge. The air blistered my mouth and I eased forward, frost crunching beneath my armor. My eyelashes froze when I blinked up at Grimald.

My uncle looked just as weathered.

Icicles were dangling from his beard. His chainmail was melding to his body. The bottoms of his feet tore every time he took a step, leaving patches of blood on the ice.

“Have mercy, Vincent,” Grimald said. “Let me live, and you will never see my face again.”

I fought the weight, the air, the cold in order to stand. I was on fire; I wanted to close my eyes. It was creeping over me, this need to lie down and sleep. But I stared at my uncle, the moonlight spilling over us. Our world was blue and black and silver.

“No,” I said.

I lunged forward, clumsy and slow, but I took Grimald down to the ice. We were weak; the blood was clotting in our veins. Our breaths were ragged. But I was able to roll my uncle to the edge of the bridge, where the water picked up its currents again, flowing downstream.

I would call to ghosts this night. To my father, my brothers.

I would open my old wounds to mend them. I would let myself bleed again.

“For Marcher,” I said, forcing Grimald’s face into the water.

I held him there for three beats before I pulled him back up by his hair.

“For Finnian.” I submerged his head again, holding him down six beats longer.

He flailed and fought me, frantic but weak.

I yanked Grimald’s head up one final time, listening to him gasp, as if he were being born into the world.

“For my father,” I said through my teeth, through frost and blood, and I pushed him down again.

This time I held my uncle’s head beneath the water until he ceased moving. It was not long before he grew cold and stiff, a starlit corpse.

I swallowed the knot in my throat and shoved him into the river, giving his body to the water, as he had once wanted. I watched the rapids carry him downstream until he was nothing more than a shadow melting into a greater darkness, and a sob broke my breath.

I pushed away from the edge of the ice, shaking until I saw I was not alone.

Matilda stood close to me, moonlit and solemn. I could see stars shining in her hair, like the constellations had drifted from the heavens to crown her. When I blinked, the crown held steady, weaving light across her brow.

“ Red, ” I whispered, turning her name into clouds.

It burned away the last of my strength.

I felt myself fading, lulled into slumber by the cold and the ice and the snow. But I felt her hand on my face.

Her touch was the last thing I remembered.