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For anyone who has ever had to let go of someone they love
Movement was destined to be my armor. I was not fully an Underling, and nor was I a full-blooded Skyward. I was both, and this had never happened before. I was Matilda alone. Matilda of nowhere and no kin. I would become the herald of the gods, much to my mother’s chagrin. And the goddess of death had certainly seen something out of place within my stars.
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.
One moment, Red was there, sprinting up the hill. The next, she was gone. And I would like to think my story began long ago when I came into the world as a pale, silent boy, destined to one day die.
Red was not a girl but a goddess. And I knew the stars that belonged to her. I had memorized them. I could close my eyes at night and point in their direction. I could trace them on my palm.
You hold on to her. But who could hold on to the wind? And—better yet—who would be so foolish as to trust—to love—such a wild being?
“You are parchment, ink, cloves. You are water dripping down stone, and the smoke of a burning scroll.
And there was my own constellation, the stars of a herald, six bright points shaped as a kestrel in flight.
And I wondered how it was possible for my heart to miss something that I had never experienced.
This is the beginning of the end, I thought. If heartless gods can be made soft by such love, we are all doomed.
Let me be not loved but feared.
Now that I had tasted its expanse, I realized how the earth might feel like a prison until she grew accustomed to the weight of stone.
It was bloodstained and limp. When I touched the prayer, I felt a shock of frost, as if it had been buried in hard winter ground. It unfolded in my hands, exposing a crooked, desperate line. Matilda, help me. I inhaled sharply. No one had written a prayer to me before, and the revelation struck me like a hand: All the prayers I had just burned? They were not for Zenia, but for me. I fell to my knees, desperate to reclaim them.
Why did my heart ache when I envisioned him calling out to me, only to be met by silence?
“I do not want this man to die,” Orphia said by way of greeting, her eyes fastened to the pattern on her loom.
He was mine to take before one dark solstice night, but I refrained, curious to see who he would become. I should have known Rowena would sense it and find a way to force my hand.
He gave a sharp inhale, as if he had been struck. His posture went rigid; his gray eyes widened like he was drowning. The dirk slipped from his fingers, clattering on the floor. And then came his voice again, soft and unguarded. Something I could recognize, as if we had met in a dream. “Matilda?”
Dreams were not real; had I not read them in a scroll, been entertained by them as if they were myths?
“Wife?” he echoed, paling.
“That is,” I was quick to say, “if you are not already married or promised?” “No. No, I am not.”
And as a divine with magic in my blood, I could be bound by vows. I would be held by anything uttered in a formal way, any agreement that would seal us together, and I wondered if Vincent knew this. How easily he could snare me, if he wanted to.
“I heard a bride has arrived by window,” said a robust, cheerful voice through the door. “Although I will not believe it until I see it, Vince. I thought you had sworn off marriage.”
My wife will have anything she wants.”
There was a sad glimmer in his eyes, as if he were beholding something he would never have.
It was only when it felt like Vincent and I were the only two left on the bridge, the only two standing in the night, that he took hold of my shoulders and spun me to face him. He was pale, trembling, I realized, as his eyes dropped to my chest, examining my wound. The arrow had struck me right above the bodice’s top edge, a handsbreadth beneath my collarbone. But my wound was knitting itself together, my magic eager to heal what had broken. My blood had eased to a trickle, casting a sweet fragrance in the air between us. Vincent’s thumb traced the edge of my gown, just above my breast. I felt
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“Don’t take another arrow for me,” he said, his attention shifting to Fury Gate and its tower, firelit windows shining through the haze like beacons. “What about a sword?” I asked. “A lance? An axe?”
“Sometimes,” I said, stepping closer to him, “it is good to laugh, even on terrible days.”
I would honor that old blood-smeared prayer of Vincent’s, that weight in my pocket. And I could only hope I did not fail him again.
“I always wondered where you dwelled, after you left me in dreams. What home you returned to.”
Vincent ceased to breathe, to move. He gazed up at me, unguarded, and I could see myself in the dark moon of his eyes. My reflection, and how I did not look like a goddess but a woman, powerless and doomed by the circumstances that had unfolded around her.
I was aware of him, lying in bed. How his breathing soon shifted, betraying his exhaustion. How swiftly he fell asleep in my presence, as if his worries and fears ebbed when I was close.
“You will not speak of my wife in that way,” I said. “You will protect her as you protect me.
I paused at the top of the stairwell, white blooming across my knuckles as I gripped the hilt of my sword. But what was steel against the force of a river? What was my strength when compared to a divine’s? I was earth, dust, salt, and bone.
How many times had she drawn me up from the water? It had been real to me, even if I claimed otherwise. Even if it had only been in dreams. And I dove into the river after her.
It did not matter how desperate I was to reach her where she was, to stretch out my hand and take her own. We only touched in fleeting moments. And we might meet in startled brevity, like the moon eclipsing the sun every thirteen winters. A meeting that felt so fierce the whole land took note of its shadow. But we were never meant to be bound together. Not even in pretense.
“If you are going to leave and steal off into the night,” he finally said, “then at least wake and tell me.”
“I know you are irreverent, but why do you doubt me? I am not here to deceive you or betray you. To steal off into the night. The truth is … I did not think to wake you. But only because I am often alone; I do not report my movements to others in an effort to protect myself.”
“And what,” he asked thickly, as if he also felt the pull to me, “do my words taste like?” “Like moldering parchment.” Vincent blinked, frowning. “Like what?” “I tease you, lord. Your words are sweet, golden. Milky.”
Twelve points, she had written beneath them, counting the stars above as well as the ones below. And then, soul-bearer.
I had little faith, but in that moment, looking at her … I believed we would be victorious.
“The river.” She held my gaze, expectant, almost mirthful. “And yes,” I said. “I came after you.” I followed you, but I could not reach you.
But it was like treading deep rapids that were hungry to close over my head. And I had always been afraid to drown.
I willed those stars to burn always, because I could not bear to imagine them ever going dark.
“You do not strike me as one who scares easily, lord.” “Oh, there are many things that I fear.”
“He chose me first,” I replied. “He dreamt of me before I knew of him. His soul found mine before I even knew how to look for his.”
“If it takes you,” I said, “then let it also take me. Don’t leave me behind like this, Red.”
It hurt to desire two things at once. To want to be in two different places.
As an immortal, ten years should be like dust. A mere page in a tome. But I was measuring it by something else now. I was measuring it by Vincent’s breaths.
“Stay,” Vincent whispered. “Stay with me a little while longer.” “How long?” I countered, and my voice betrayed me. I was breathless, and he heard it. His grip on my hand only tightened, and the hint of pain was welcomed, waking a dark fire in my blood. But then he relinquished me, his fingers sliding away from mine. He stepped back; the air swarmed between us, cold. “However long you can give me, Red.”
I would always be mortal, beholden to time and age and seasons. I would die, and Matilda would live on.
