Page 97 of Wild Reverence

LXXV

Winterfire

MATILDA

I dragged Vincent westward across my bridge of ice.

He was heavy, weighed down by his armor.

He should have drowned, I thought with a chill, just as the ice gave way beneath us.

It was thinning as the river began to cleave the bridge’s weaker points, breaking it into bergs to float downstream.

Waist-deep in black water, I hauled Vincent onto the snowy bank.

He lay there, unmoving. His eyes were closed, his lips were tinged blue.

Ice glittered in his hair and on the long curl of his eyelashes.

“Vincent,” I said, touching his face. He was cold, but a plume of breath escaped his lips. “Can you open your eyes?”

“Red,” he whispered, as if it hurt to speak. His eyes fluttered open. “I need you… to undress me… from this armor. Before… I freeze.”

“Yes,” I said, reaching for the clasps on his breastplate.

I eased the steel away from his chest. His chainmail was spangled with frost. The tunic beneath was damp, sticking to his skin.

I moved to his gauntlets next, pulling them away from his hands.

“Tell me what else I should do. What do you need?”

“I need to get warm,” he replied, his teeth chattering. “A fire, or your body… against mine.”

I glanced beyond him, where the bank transformed into a thicket, and the thicket gave way to the forest.

“I can make a shelter for us,” I said, caressing his hair. “Wait here for me.”

Vincent nodded, but I felt a stab of worry when he closed his eyes again. He could slip away so easily. The only reassurance I had was the eye on my belt. I continued to glance down at it, but the eye remained closed.

Sleep, Gatekeeper.

I rose and hurried into the thicket. It was a tangle of vines and brambles, and they fought me as I tamed them.

Eventually, I hollowed out a space, a burrow that could hold the two of us, and I raked out the snow and gathered leaves for a bed.

I piled kindling off to one side, igniting it with the magic that teemed in my right hand.

I paused, watching the flames grow. A feeling of uneasiness crept over me. Fire created smoke, and smoke could draw enemies. But I suppressed that worry and hurried back to Vincent, my throat constricting when it took me a moment to wake him.

“Vincent,” I said, shaking him. “ Please, look at me.”

He groaned, but his eyes remained shut.

And that is when it came—a flare of heat at my waist. I knew without looking down that the Gatekeeper’s eye was opening. The moonstone on my belt was coming alive.

Vincent’s shadow, cast by the moon above, was starting to shift.

No.

I tore off his boots. His belt and scabbard. His chainmail and trousers and tunic, until it was only his skin, flashing white in the darkness.

I hauled him into my thicket, laying him down next to the small fire.

My hands were shaking as I undressed next, stripping off my sodden tunic but keeping the belt in place.

The cold was both bitter and exhilarating against my bare skin.

It reminded me of riding the trade winds, and I lay down beside Vincent, rushing my palms over him.

His chest, the lean muscles of his legs, the slope of his shoulders, the concave of his hip bone, the ends of his fingertips.

I rubbed until I could feel warmth, stirring his blood, and his breaths became steadier.

When his arm came around me, I could have wept.

Instead, I pressed my face into the crook of his neck, savoring the scent of his skin. I laid my palm flat on his chest, measuring his heart as it grew stronger.

The eye closed in the gemstone. But then came a different sensation. One that felt like a cord coming unwound. An ache in my ribs.

I could taste the faintest hint of Vincent’s prayer again. The one he had written so many years ago.

It melted away, sending a shock of pleasure through me.

I had answered him; my aid was fulfilled, and I shivered.

“Matilda,” he whispered.

I lifted my head to meet his gaze. His eyes were bloodshot, his face reddened from the cold. I wondered if he had felt it too, how his old words had turned into a sigh, vanishing.

“When you met me on the ice…” He paused, but his arm held me tight to his side. Sweat began to trickle between our bodies, our skin kindling as if we were our own fire. “I saw a crown of stars, gleaming across your brow.”

I became quiet, but my heart was erratic. When I had taken Adria’s stars as my own, letting them sink into my palm, I had sensed a weight gather across my brow. Something I could not see, but Vincent could.

“Are they still there?” I whispered.

He raised his hand to trace a path across my forehead. “Yes. They are not as bright as before, but they are beautiful. You look like a queen.”

“How many stars?”

He fell silent, counting. “Fourteen.”

I smiled at him, but I could not shake the worries, the wonders, that were beginning to swarm my mind. How I felt like a hot blade, quenched in oil. Forged under fire and heat and the strike of a hammer. Glittering with a sharp edge, keen to cut through the world.

I needed to see the sky. The stars.

“Give me a moment,” I whispered against his lips, kissing him. “I will return to you soon.”

His arm tightened, as if afraid to let me go. His mouth woke beneath mine, and we shared the same breath, the same moan. A sound that held me captive, soft with longing.

But when I eased back, Vincent’s embrace loosened.

His arm fell away, his breath hitched. He watched as I rose in our makeshift burrow, as I slipped out to the riverbank, still crusted with snow. I stood where the water lapped against the ice, my skin like alabaster in the moonlight.

I was almost afraid to find my constellation; a part of me believed it must have fallen from the heavens to crown me.

But I lifted my eyes and saw it remained, illuminating the western sky.

My six stars of herald burned brightly, like silver coins under a midday sun.

The six stars of soul-bearing rested just beneath, like a reflection on a lake.

But there were two more points sitting at the heart of it all, glittering with mirth.

The exchange of stars had been successful, even as it had felt like a dream in the moment.

Adria’s duet had become my own. She had crowned me and given me something else that I was still marveling over. Something beyond the peace and the steadiness that had enabled me to pull Vincent from the river.

I found her peacemaking constellation in the north, to prove my theory. I was alarmed to see she was missing not just two points but four, and my gaze raced across the sky, across hundreds of stars, trying to find where her other two had gone.

Bade, I thought, and there his constellation burned against the dark cloak of night. The god of war. He had once been an eleven-point constellation, and now he was thirteen. She had given two stars to him, and two to me.

Matilda.

I froze at the familiar voice, the way it curled through my mind, intrusive and soft as silk.

It was Warin, and he was close. I could sense his presence as he walked through the forest. He was coming this way to challenge me, one final time.

Matilda, he called again, and blood pulsed through my veins, preparing for a fight.

I rushed back to the burrow, darting inside to grab my tunic.

It was damp and stiff, sparkling with frost. I yanked it over my head and saw that Vincent had fallen asleep.

He lay close to my fire, which continued to crackle merrily through the cold darkness.

Its golden light limned his body, catching every hollow, every line, every scar.

I paused, stricken, but his breaths were deep and steady.

A rosiness had returned to his skin. The eye in the gemstone remained shut, and he would be safe here, so long as I drew Warin away.

I slipped from the burrow and called down the snow, to fall thick and slow. Let it hide my footsteps and conceal our haven in the thicket from divine eyes. Let it keep him safe, I thought as I set off, deep into the heart of the woods.

It did not take me long to find Warin.

I stepped into a clearing and felt an icy chill. I knew it was his gaze. He was staring at me, but I could not see him amongst the cascade of snow and the shadows of night, which sat crooked and darker than ink.

“Warin?” I said, coming to a stop. Every fiber of my body was lit with anticipation. “Come forward.”

“Oh, but that would spoil this little game of ours, Red. ”

My hand closed into a fist. My nails scored my own palm.

I would rip out his tongue for calling me that.

My fury was keen to be unleashed, but I tamped it down.

Wait, I commanded myself, and I followed the direction of his voice, to where three pines grew close together.

But it was only trees and bracken and snow and darkness, with flashes of moonlight when the wind tore through the clouds.

He was nowhere to be seen; I needed him to speak again.

“What game?” I asked.

“The one where I release a mortal vassal for every secret you tell me, beginning with your magic of bringing back the dead.”

His voice had changed direction, coming from behind me. I spun to follow it, hair bristling at the nape of my neck. At last, I realized why I could not see him.

He was wearing my enchanted cloak.

I remembered the feeling of losing it. A lash across my throat as the cloak had been torn from me, just after the eithral crashed in the valley close to Grimald’s camp. And while I had agonized over its loss, not once had I thought it would find its way into Warin’s greasy hands.

He was invisible.

I would not be able to defeat him like this.

I could not strike what I could not see, and dread unfurled in my chest.

I was so fixated on where Warin could be standing that I did not feel the other draft of cold air and swirl of snow, coming from my right side. Not until a gruff voice broke the tense silence.