XIX
A Bride for Below
MATILDA I had forgotten how beautiful the mortal realm was.
Thirteen years I had spent dwelling in the sky, but when the western trade wind delivered Enva and me to the upper moors, I felt as if I had been there only yesterday. I studied the hills, the wild blooming Helenium, the rust-tinged bracken, the small trickling creeks, the distant woods with their golden leaves. The ground, dappled from morning rainfall, rolled beneath our feet, and the sky felt vast above us, promising another storm by night.
The scene was idyllic, like something from a ballad, until I began to look closer.
I had forgotten how fragile and transparent this world was, hiding nothing. If there was war, drought, blight, strife, floods, it reflected those woes. If there was peace, abundance, it likewise made that evident, holding no secrets from the ones who wandered upon it.
Enva walked down the hill first, harp gleaming on her back. She followed the gouges in the ground, the wind tangling her long dark hair. I watched her for a moment, my chest constricting, uneasy. We were not far from an Underling doorway, and yet the longer we tarried here, the more opportunities there would be for things to go awry. Dacre was waiting for us, far below our feet, and he would be quick to doubt me if we were late.
The last time I saw him, I had been running from him in the corridors, ignoring his commands, a child ruled by fear. But I would return to him a goddess, delivering his bride.
“Look,” Enva said, drawing me down to the vale where she had knelt in the grass.
I saw what had arrested her attention. A scattering of bones, with red flowers blooming from a small rib cage. A human child had died here, most likely carried by an eithral, or dragged by one of the hounds. After studying the clawlike furrows in the earth, I suspected a hound.
“Do we have time?” Enva asked, but she was already untethering the harp from her shoulders.
I would never deny myself the chance to hear her play, to hear her sing.
“Yes,” I said, settling in the grass nearby as she began to strum over the bones.
She was the Skyward goddess of music, and in my father’s hall, her songs had often been jubilant, powerful, cascading melodies. They stirred our blood; they made us dance and remember the old stories, the mist-laden myths from which we had emerged. They were so moving we exchanged the songs as currency. But in the mortal realm, Enva’s music was much different. It was sorrowful, full of yearning. It chased human hearts and their pain; it also filled the cavities that Death inspired.
This is how the troubled relationship between Enva and Dacre had started.
Dacre had heard of her prowess and wanted her for his wife, breaking with all tradition. Never had an Underling and Skyward exchanged wedding vows. Never had a Skyward lived in the under realm, save for me.
Enva, however, had refused him.
He chose to unleash his hounds and his eithrals into the mortal world, which had at that time settled into a decade of much-needed peace following Adria’s ascension. The unjust mortal deaths caused by Dacre’s recklessness had angered Enva. Eventually, she could take no more death and had agreed to leave Skyward to become Dacre’s bride on four conditions: The first? He must cease terrorizing humans and causing bloodshed with his pets. The second? He had to forgive the black-market dealings and make no further attempts to recover the six scales that Zenia and Phelyra had once bartered Skyward. The third? Enva would be allowed
to play her harp and sing whenever she desired. And lastly, I would be the
one to escort her to the under realm.
Dacre had agreed, which shocked me.
For years, he had been blood-bent upon those lost scales, keen to have them returned. All of us knew Warin possessed one, but no one knew that I did. The owners of the other four scales were still a mystery.
I also could not foresee Dacre keeping his eithrals shackled in the shadows, or his hounds in their dens. I could hardly fathom he would let me return without punishment. But I wanted to believe that this might be the beginning of a new era for divines, in which peace between the two clans could be maintained.
Maybe this was Adria’s doing, as if she had at last come into the height of her magic, thirteen years after becoming a goddess. Had we not speculated what she would do to our world when we brought her into it?
There had been something else lurking beneath her tranquil magic, something I had seen and recognized the day my life fell apart.
Enva finished strumming on her harp, the last note fading in the wind.
She had not played for long—just a sad, bone-aching song for the dead child’s soul—and I helped her rise.
“Are you anxious to return and see your mother’s clan again?” she asked as we walked side by side, heading toward where the door lay, hidden in a hillside.
“No,” I lied. I did not want her to worry on my behalf. To think there was a hint of fear, still lurking in my blood after all these years. “The better question is whether you are anxious. You will be the first Skyward to live
below.”
Enva was quiet, her face flushed.
“No,” she answered at last. “Although I will miss seeing the stars.”
We walked a little farther, crossing one of the meandering creeks. I could not offer her reassurance; I knew she would miss the sky. 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.
Shale blew past us, perhaps in disapproval, perhaps in farewell. It was hard to know with him, and my cloak billowed, its draws tugging on my
neck. The cloak was a parting gift from my father; it had been his for many years—an enchanted, sentient weaving. When the wool was vermillion, bright and proud as mortal blood, its wearer was visible, drawing the eyes and attention of gods and mortals alike. But the wool could shift to a dusky lavender, and then its wearer would become invisible.
This was how my father had moved, unseen, all those moments when he met up with my mother. How he had kept them hidden. The cloak had shielded them and their short-lived affair, and now it shielded me.
When Thile had handed it to me, I took it as his way of blessing my departure, as well as saying, Do not die below.
“We are almost there,” I said, pausing to draw a strip of cloth from one of my moonstone pockets. “Are you certain you want to do this?”
Enva was not looking at me. Her eyes, green as meadow grass, were on
the clouds, the patches of blue sky.
“I am ready,” she said at last.
I brought the blindfold around her face, knotting it. Then I took her hand —her fingers were icy—and led her the remainder of the way to where the door hid in the hillside. There was a moment when I wondered if it would still open to me and whether I could still find its latch.
My worries melted when my hand found the lintel with ease, the door handle flaring to life beneath my touch.
I was still Underling; I had not forgotten these old secrets.
Together, Enva and I descended into the shadows.
I kept the blindfold around her eyes, leading her through the corridors.
The well-worn passages were just as I remembered, pleasantly cold and firelit, as was the great hall. The jewels still burned in the columns, the painted eithrals still graced the walls, the trestle tables still sat in orderly rows, filled by the three courts. Smoke danced from the hearths, vassals waited with ewers of wine, and the air was spiced, evergreen.
The Underlings rose, silent, when Enva and I appeared.
I walked her down the aisle to the dais, where Dacre sat upon his throne, watching our approach. Gemstones glittered on every finger, and his crown
seemed to breathe with starlit diamonds. His robes were the color of a midsummer sky, displaying the brawn of his arms, the golden sandals on his feet. Alva stood to his left, clad in a gray dress, a belt of sapphires cinched at her waist. Her eyes were not on Enva as her brother’s were, but on me, as if curious to discover who I had become while I was gone.
Enva and I reached the footstool. I squeezed her fingers, letting her know we had arrived. She had trusted me, implicitly. I could have taken her anywhere. I could have led her to an iron cage and locked her within it or granted her a blow on the fault line, devouring her magic. Such trust she had given to me, and I could only stand in the light of it, wondering if I was dooming her in this moment. If I was dooming all of us.
Run.
I thought I heard Bade’s voice. A whisper from my past. An echo from
my childhood.
Fly.
The temptation to glance behind and look for him made me waver. I had not seen him when we stepped into the hall, but neither had I tried to find him in the sea of faces. He remained my salt-sworn ally, even after all this time.
I had missed him, more than I had thought possible.
“Welcome, Enva of Skyward,” Dacre said, and he could not hide the thrill in his voice. He rose and descended the steps to properly meet her, and I let her go when his shadow rippled over us. “You have pleased me—
honored me—by accepting my invitation.”
He removed her blindfold.
Enva gazed up at him, her expression inscrutable. She could have been hewn from pale marble; her features were delicate, her comeliness unassuming. It had always seemed to me that her beauty grew richer as time passed, like dark red wine, and that she clothed her emotions with a veil.
Only those closest to her—her allies, her apprentice musicians—ever saw her true face. I had seen it occasionally, but she had always been fond of me, becoming the first person I could trust Skyward despite my father’s warning.
Do not let her music lull you into thinking you are safe with her.
“Thank you, my lord,” Enva said, bowing her head. Her voice was dulcet and smooth, commanding the air. “I am honored by your invitation.”
She was not honored by it. She was furious, but she hid it well.
And she could have fooled me in that moment with her performance.
Dacre took her hand, and that is when he at last looked at me. I knew the court would not acknowledge me until he did. I would be ignored until he welcomed me back into the fold.
“Greetings, Matilda,” he said, to my piercing relief. “We are pleased to see you have returned to us.”
“Lord.” I cast my eyes down in respect. “It is good to return.”
“You will stay with us awhile, I hope? I would like for you to celebrate the vows with us. The first wedding feast will be tonight.”
“Of course.” I glanced at Enva, but her eyes were fixed upon Dacre, studying him for a weakness, a crack in his facade. Little did she know that she was his weakness. No other divine had driven him to such emotion, such madness. I sometimes wondered if he had broken his own laws and melted Skyward coins in his hearth, reveling in a brief stint of music. If he had listened to a sound that haunted him, one he could never forget. “I will be here to celebrate with you both.”
Dacre did not hear me. His attention had riveted to Enva again; there was a gleam of hunger in his eyes, as well as bewitchment. It made me uneasy, but this had not been my decision to make, and I stepped aside as the court was released.
Conversations hummed around me. I stayed to the outskirts, my eyes
coasting the upper court for Bade.
“You have grown into something lovely.”
I turned to see Alva. Her eyes were bright, her blond hair falling around her like wisps of sunlight. She genuinely looked pleased to see me, as if she did not remember our last meeting. Quiet, she offered me a chalice of wine, and I took it, shoulders tight with misgiving.
“Have I?” I countered. “They cast bets in the Skyward court that you would not recognize me.”
“Then the Skywards are fools. Do they forget that we were the ones to raise you? You belonged to us first.” She took a sip of wine, continuing to
study me. My eyes drifted to the crowd again. “You will not find him here.”
“Who?”
Alva’s smile deepened. “You know whom I speak of. That old, stubborn ally of yours.”
“I thought everyone was expected at court.”
“Then you have not heard?”
My heart gave a sudden lurch. “Heard what?”
If someone had killed Bade, stolen his magic, I would be devastated.
The Underlings would regret welcoming me back into their hall.
But then I traced the moonstones on my belt and thought, No. I would know if he were dead.
Alva’s dark-stained lips were parting to speak, but she never had the chance to reply. Another goddess joined our circle, appearing at my periphery heavily perfumed with myrrh and jasmine and charred amber.
“Matilda! What a delight to see you again, child.”
That voice. The sound of it turned me to ice so cold that I burned.
Slowly, I angled my face to see none other than Phelyra, dressed in a sumptuous gown and dripping in pearls.
“You have bloomed at last, I see,” Phelyra continued, eyes roving over me. “A true reflection of her beauty.”
Her as in Zenia, and no, I was not the image of my mother and her winter-forged radiance.
Phelyra was very fortunate that I was unarmed, although my fingers twitched, eager to recall my shield. I gave myself one heady moment to imagine slamming it into her chest, knocking her to the ground. Breaking her nose, her teeth. Watching her ichor creep across the floor, as I had once watched my mother’s.
I had never desired to kill, but I felt it then. A dark thread, tangling my insides. Pulling and yanking and knotting my lungs until I could not breathe.
“Matilda?” Alva said, a hint of amusement in her voice as if she could read my thoughts and was keen to see if I would enact them.
I set down the chalice, sloshing the wine in my haste. Quickly, I departed the hall. My blood was hot and I needed a long walk through cold
fog and shadows to bank my rage.
But memory is a curious thing. I did not think about where I was going until the moonstones winked above me and I realized I had followed an old pattern. A route grooved down by childhood. My heart fell to a quiet beat as I came to a stop outside the door of my old burrow.