XXIX
Poison That Grows, Wild and
Beautiful
MATILDA I had forgotten two important things about mortal kind.
The first? Consummation on a wedding night was very important, particularly when it came to marriages forged by alliance.
The second? Humans needed to sleep at some point.
When Vincent and I returned to his room in the tower, it was late. The rain had ceased, leaving behind cloying, damp air, and the clouds had broken into ribs, exposing a setting moon and a smattering of stars. Mere hours from sunrise, I realized. Even so, I was not expecting the two attendants to be waiting at the door, to help me undress. I did not expect them to wash and perfume my skin again, to remove the pearled snood and brush every tangle from my hair, and to leave me in nothing more than a thin chemise. My belt remained firm about my waist.
Vincent, likewise, was again seen to by his brother, who removed his armor, piece by piece, his glittering chainmail, and his boots before fetching him a clean tunic from the wardrobe and nothing else.
“Sleep well,” Nathaniel said with that mischievous smile of his, a gleam in his eyes as the attendants bowed and followed him out the door. “We shall see the two of you at sunrise.”
Vincent said nothing. In fact, it looked as if he had just set a lemon wedge into his mouth.
“Good night,” I said, and Nathaniel closed the door, leaving Vincent and me alone, hardly dressed, with distance that felt like the ocean between us.
A tense moment ticked by. I anxiously traced one of the moonstones on my belt. Vincent looked at me as I looked at him, and a thousand words seemed to gather on my tongue. A thousand words, and yet I could not utter a single one.
“You can take the bed,” Vincent said brusquely. “I will sleep on the floor.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary,” I replied, clearing my throat. “I do not need to sleep. Or if I do, very rarely, and it will not be done here. You may keep the bed, and I will sit before the fire, and think about all the things your uncle said tonight, and what we should plan for.”
To make my point, I moved to the chair I had sat in earlier, sinking deep within it. I gazed at the fire, watching it dance.
“What we should plan for?” Vincent repeated, and as I hoped, he followed me, settling in the adjacent chair. “Tell me your thoughts.”
“To begin with, your uncle has no intention of retreating. He will use these next three days to craft a new plan, one that now accounts for me. And I would not have agreed to give him this interim had I also not needed time
to prepare.”
“What preparations?”
I glanced at him. “I need to go below tomorrow and speak with Bade.
While I am gone, I believe you should not only call upon your own allies, if you have not already done so, but also begin to evacuate the children, the elderly, the craftspeople, the most vulnerable who live here and have no desire or skill to fight. Relocating them to a safe place will also be wise in case there is a siege. Your resources will last longer for the people who can fight, delaying starvation as long as possible.”
“I did not think to evacuate anyone,” Vincent confessed. “This castle is a difficult one to siege, due to the river. That is why the Becketts built here to begin with. If the eastern bridge falls, we still have the western one to transport provisions.”
“Yes, but you must consider that there is a chance someone could ally with Grimald from the western side of the river, cutting off resources.” I
paused, watching Vincent frown. “Do you have allies? And, if so, where are they?”
“The western side of the river,” he answered wryly. “That is why I am not afraid of a siege. Hugh of Delavoy’s lands border mine. He fought with my father and brothers for Adria’s cause before Bade took her from us.
They were brothers-in-arms then.”
There was a hint of anger in his voice when he spoke of Bade’s decision to take Adria below, to save her life by making her immortal. It was a myth that had drenched mortal lands like a flood once Adria had become the goddess of peace. I held my tongue, thinking this needed to be a conversation for another day. But a memory rose all the same, one that hinged upon Adria and my first assignment as herald.
The moment I had seen Vincent, not in a dream but in the real world.
There had been two heraldic banners when his brothers had arrived on the moors, weary and broken from a lost war. The white flowers and river- blue banner of Beckett, as well as another that had been stark and torn
against the sky.
“The three mountains?” I said.
“Yes. That is Hugh’s sigil.”
“And he is a sworn ally of yours? He has given you a vow he cannot break unless you release him?”
“He made an agreement with my father, which I have honored. He is permitted to cross our bridge whenever he needs to but that means he must also help us defend it should it come under fire.”
“So there is no sworn oath to you?”
Vincent was silent. It made me uneasy.
“Where is Hugh now?” I pressed. “Why is he absent? Where are his warriors, ready to defend the bridge?”
“Grimald arrived yesterday morning. As soon as he made camp, I sent a missive to Hugh by way of my fastest rider. It will take him time to gather his warriors, but he will come.”
“Do you want to send me?” I asked. “I can go and deliver any message
you write.”
“No.”
I was surprised by how swiftly he answered, as if he had considered it.
“I want you here,” Vincent said. “The words I sent before are enough.
He will come.”
“Then let us speak of the evacuation, because it should commence as soon as the sun rises. Where can your people go for the interim, where they will be safe?”
“The closest place I can think of is Drake Hall, the Delavoy ancestral home.”
Good, I thought. If this was a reluctant ally, it might change things when Vincent’s people arrived, eager to find refuge.
Vincent continued, “When you go below tomorrow, I will begin the evacuations to Drake Hall. Do you know how long you will be away, or when I can expect you to return?”
I shook my head. “No. But I should return soon. No longer than a day.”
A weariness began to steal over me until I remembered our moment in the hall. Our wedding feast, and how—when I had grasped his sleeve and leaned into him during the kiss—he had flinched. “I am sorry if I made you
uncomfortable tonight.”
“What are you speaking of?”
“During our kiss. I should not have taken hold of you. I should not have leaned into you.”
Vincent sighed, gazing into the fire. “You did not make me uncomfortable. You merely surprised me. I am not accustomed to such
things.”
“Being touched?”
His eyes flickered to mine. “It has been a while, yes. And don’t think I failed to notice the very same in you, when we were walking to Fury Bridge.”
I knew what he implied. He spoke of the moment when he touched the small of my back.
And I did not tell him that the last hands to touch me in such a way had been possessive, sometimes rough, eager to draw out my secrets. I did not tell him that I rarely slept in another’s presence because I feared they would kill me for my power, even when I was beside a lover, and that to fully rest
and surrender beneath someone else’s hands and mouth and eyes was a vulnerability I could not risk.
But with Vincent … he had always been gentle, even in dreams when childhood had started to melt from our bodies and we had slowly become more aware of ourselves. How easily he could have used me in those moments, and yet he never had.
“Would now be a good time to practice?” I asked.
He stared at me for such a long moment I thought he had not heard me.
That perhaps I had only thought it, an echo of what I wanted. Until he held out his hand.
“Yes,” Vincent said. “Come closer to me.”
My fingers slid across his. When he tugged on mine, I rose, walking to where he sat. Wordlessly, he invited me to sit on his lap and I settled close to him, feeling the warmth of his legs seep into the backs of my thighs.
I turned until I could look upon his face, our mouths close, our eyes aligned. I draped one of my arms across the expanse of his shoulders.
“Will you show me?” he asked, a throaty whisper that made the hair rise on my arms. “Show me where I should touch you?”
I swallowed and reached for one of his hands.
“You can touch me here,” I said, bringing his palm to my shoulder, the shadowed dip of my collarbone. “And here.” I guided his fingers down the full length of my arm. “As well as here.” I set his hand on my waist, just below my belt. I watched as Vincent glanced down, his thumb gently pressing on one of the moonstones.
I realized, too late, that it was the Gatekeeper’s eye.
“This is an odd stone,” he said, studying the shadows within the gem.
How they resembled lashes, fanning across pale skin. “Like a sleeping eye.”
I huffed a nervous laugh, drawing up my sundial on its chain, keen to distract him.
“And this is how I keep time when I am in another realm,” I explained, and my plan worked. Vincent cupped the sundial in his palm, gazing down at it. “I can see the sun’s strength here, and can tell if it’s dawn, midday, afternoon, or eventide. And this”—I paused to grasp its companion chain
and orb—“is my lunar disk.” I set the mirror that reflected the moon’s phase into his palm. “Another way for me to keep time.”
“Where did you come by these?” Vincent asked, unable to hide his awe.
“The disks are from my father. The belt was from my mother.”
“And who are your parents?”
I hesitated, realizing too late that he had snared me as I had snared him.
Vincent’s gaze lifted, meeting mine. He let the sundial and lunar disk slip from his palm; I felt them dangle on their chains.
“You don’t have to answer me,” he said, his palm returning to my waist.
My chemise gathered beneath his touch. “But I would like to know more about you, Matilda.”
I was not certain I was strong enough to tell him such a story. The divines I had come from. The places I had been. I smiled, but it was weak, and I began to run my fingers through his hair. At once, he stifled a groan, his eyes closing.
I took that private moment to study his face, taking in the high-set cheekbones, the slight cleft in his chin, the small scars along his jaw. The blue dapples beneath his eyes from sleepless nights, the proud bridge of his nose, the slight furrow between his brows, as if he frowned more than he smiled. The wry tilt of his lips.
His appearance fascinated me; the closer I looked, the more stories I found within the details. And I wondered how each winter would leave its mark on him as he grew older. The wrinkles, the scars, the silver tresses.
The unique characteristics that I rarely encountered amongst my fellow gods and goddesses because aging in physical ways took centuries.
“Tell me a story about you,” Vincent whispered, opening his eyes. My caress had softened his body, his breaths, but his gaze remained like steel, piercing me. “I always wondered where you dwelled, after you left me in dreams. What home you returned to.”
His question inspired a lump in my throat. It hurt to breathe, and I glanced away. No one had ever voiced such a thing to me before.
“My mother was the Underling goddess of winter, fire, and cunning,” I said, tracing the silver stitched embroidery on his tunic sleeve. “My father is the Skyward god of summer, oaths, and dusk.”
And so I began to tell him slender fragments of my past. Little jagged pieces, like I was putting together a mirror that had shattered. How I had not known who my father was, how I had lived only in the under realm, how Bade became my salt-sworn ally.
“Salt sworn?” Vincent asked, gently interrupting.
“Yes,” I said. “He is sworn to aid me, no matter the cost to himself.”
“Hmm.” We were quiet for a moment. Only the fire crackled in the hearth, and now my eyes were the ones to feel heavy as Vincent’s fingertips began to graze my arm, following a path up the inner crook of my elbow to my collarbone. The sleeve of my chemise had slipped from my shoulder; he let it be, drawing languid patterns on my skin. “You speak of your mother in the past. What happened to her, if I may ask?”
“She was killed by one of her closest friends. Phelyra, the goddess of revelry and coin.”
His hand went still, heavy. “I’m sorry.”
“There is nothing for you to apologize for.”
“Yes, there is. What I said to you on the bridge, about being the goddess of revelry. Forgive me.”
I stroked his hair again, his apology making me feel far too tender, but he remained tense with regret. “You did not know.”
“How long ago was this? When you lost her?”
“Thirteen years ago.”
His mind went distant. I could see it in his eyes, how they glazed as he reeled back in time.
“Thirteen years is when I last saw you,” Vincent finally said. And now he was the one to pick up the pieces, attempting to make an image from fragments. “What happened after she died?”
“I had to flee Skyward and seek sanctuary with the father who did not know I existed.”
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.
Enough, I thought. I had told him too much, and I felt terribly vulnerable for it.
I rose from his lap, thankful his hands slipped away. That he let me go, and I walked to the window, which was still cracked open to the night.
“Matilda,” he said, also standing. And it was the softness in his voice, the pull of sorrow, that made me stiffen. “I—”
“Don’t,” I cut him off. “Don’t be sorry for me. I only grew wiser after my mother’s death, and stronger in the Skyward court.”
“And that is what you want most? To be stronger than you are now?”
He was posing this question of want back to me, and I did not like it. I kept my gaze on the world beyond the glass windowpanes, the baron’s camp glittering across the wide blade of the river.
“All I know is I will not let another divine kill me, steal my magic, and send me disgraced into the wasteland,” I said. “I will not follow my mother’s fate.”
Vincent was silent, but I could hear him breathe. I could feel the expanse between us. Only moments ago, we had been close enough to feel each other’s hearts, beating like drums as we touched. Now, a chasm had cracked the floor, but I did not regret it. I should never forget that he was mortal while I was not.
“You should get some rest,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. He was regarding me; I had a feeling he had not looked away once. “The night will
be over soon. I will keep watch.”
Vincent submitted with a nod.
My attention returned to the window, and I listened as he walked to the bed. As he threw back the coverlet and made a sound of surprise.
“What is it? A serpent?” I asked, wondering if mortals played such games. Perhaps an old lover of his was angry, putting something venomous
on my side of the bed.
“No. But it is a gift for you.”
The intrigue drew me.
I left the window to see what he spoke of, discovering a necklace beside my pillow. On a chain was a small glass vial, the length of my pinky, and
within it, sealed by cork and hardened wax, was a stem brimming with white flowers.
I held the necklace up to the light. I recognized the flowers; they were the poisonous blooms that Orphia had once boiled for my mother to drink.
Their likeness had been stitched along the hem of my wedding gown. They were woven into the tapestry on the wall, the blossoms that filled the four foxes’ wake.
“I know this flower,” I confessed. “We call it bittertongue below, but what is its proper name?”
“River blythe. It only grows here on the island.”
I met Vincent’s gaze across the bed. “How odd.”
“It likes cold, rocky places that are prone to flooding,” he replied, a touch wry. “Like the people who live here. But yes, the Underlings love to trade their gemstones and scraps of obsidian for a handful of blooms, as
well as a bottle of wine.”
I could have laughed; he was not wrong.
“Am I supposed to wear this necklace now?” I said. “As your wife?”
“Anytime someone from beyond the river island comes here to live, whether by marriage or by choice, they are given a vial of blythe to wear around their neck,” Vincent explained. “They are to wear it for a full year, an entire turning of seasons, and it makes them immune to the poison of the flowers. Although as a goddess, I do not think that applies to you.”
I studied the flowers again, carefully preserved in glass. I felt foolish for acting as Vincent’s cupbearer earlier that evening, sipping his wine while all along he was immune to poison that grew, wild and beautiful, on his island.
I decided to follow tradition and draped the necklace over my head. The vial came to rest close to my fault line, a pleasant weight.
Vincent watched, darkly intent, before his eyes dropped to the blankets before him.
“Did you know that I carry a small vial with me everywhere I go?” I said, reaching into one of my pockets to withdraw it. The glass orb cast a blue shadow over my palm when the light struck it.
“What does it hold?” Vincent asked.
“Nothing.”
“Then why carry it with you?”
“I do so in case someone burns a Skyward prayer to me. I can bottle the smoke and carry it with me.”
“And did you receive many prayers? When you were Skyward?”
His question made me feel shy. Perhaps it made me feel my age, my inexperience as a goddess. I tucked the blue bottle back into my pocket and said, “No. I have never received a prayer by smoke.”
He was quiet, as if he did not know what to say.
This is the moment, I thought. I should bring his prayer to the light. His bloodstained words. I should swallow them in his presence, so he could see me tether myself to his request. And yet as the seconds passed, I could not find the courage.
“Good night,” I said instead, returning to my post at the window.
“Wake me if something happens.”
I nodded, savoring the crisp air and the fog that began to rise from the river. But 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.
I do not know how much time passed me by, standing at that window. It felt like a mere breath and a full season, but when the fog began to dissipate, I realized why the air was so pleasant to me, why I had been
inhaling so deeply.
Smoke was rising from the baron’s camp.
I leaned closer, pressing my hands on the rain-speckled glass. Grimald and his warriors were burning prayers. I could see the pinpricks of fire, smoldering fiercely through the darkest hours of night. Who was he praying to? Which Skyward divine would he try to bring against me in battle?
I bared my teeth, my hand flying to my neck, seeking the draws of my enchanted cloak for comfort. There was only the softness of my chemise, the silver chain, and the dangling river blythe, and I turned to scan the room. Where was my cloak? Panic shot through me until I remembered that humans stored garments in cedar chests and behind those wasted wooden doors they called wardrobes, and I strode, soundlessly, to Vincent’s.
The twin doors creaked in greeting as I opened them, and there, hanging amongst Vincent’s raiment like it was finally where it belonged, was my cloak.
I sighed in relief, pulling it from the hanger.
“Do not worry me like that again,” I scolded, although I knew it must have been Alyse who had moved it.
The cloak only fluttered in reply as I brought it around my shoulders, knotting it at my collar. I did not need to command it; the fabric went from bright crimson to a dusky lavender, rendering me invisible. It must have sensed my determination, my reckless plans. But I would not sit here, tucked away in a tower, while the baron plotted to move against me.
I glanced at Vincent. He slumbered onward, deep and peaceful, and I climbed out the window, taking the same path I had previously forged.
Down the tower, which was far worse than ascending, the stones slick from
the storm, the river churning up mist.
This time, no one saw me.
I was nothing more than a shadow in the night as I slipped into the dark, star-flecked water.