LV
Then Break It
MATILDA I found Bade in his forge.
He stood at the anvil, his scarred face illumined by the flames. The rich light drew copper from his beard and streams of silver from his long plaited hair. I forgot how old he was sometimes, until I saw him in his element, and he made the world around him seem young when he breathed, when he moved.
He quenched a smoldering blade in a cask of water. The smoke hissed and billowed, dancing around him. He had not noticed me yet, and I took that moment to study his domain, prey to nostalgia.
“Where is Hem?” I asked.
Bade glanced at me sharply, frowning. Anyone else would have shrunk beneath such a scowl, but I knew him well. He was surprised but pleased to see me.
“Gone,” he said, setting the blade aside. He removed his leather gloves next, turning to devote his full attention to me.
“Gone?” I stepped closer, until I could feel the heat of the fire. “To the
market? To court?”
“To home.”
I was not expecting such an answer. I stared up at him. He held my gaze, unwavering.
“I released him,” Bade explained with a sigh. “Years ago, by mortal reckoning. He had served me well, but it was time for him to return to his
own realm. To take a lover, should he want it. To make his own weapons in his own forge.”
I remembered that Hem had been absent when I had raced below to ask for Bade’s aid in battle. When all the under realm had been captive to sleep.
“You disapprove?” Bade said.
“No. I simply did not expect it.” But perhaps I should have. Bade had changed in small measures since I had first met him. Once, he had been ruthless, cold, bloodthirsty, unleashing his power across the mortal realm, unfeeling to the humans who were caught in his maelstrom. Now, he
seemed softer.
“I thought I heard your voice.”
I turned to see Adria had arrived. She stood beneath the jeweled lintel that led into the burrow, her face radiant as the moon on a clear night.
“Adria,” I greeted her. “I have come for a short visit. I will not—”
“Oh, you should stay and share a meal with us! I have one set out on the table. Bade? Convince her to join us.”
Bade cocked his brow at me. “Stay,” he said simply.
“Am I a hound, then?” I countered with half a smile.
“In case you forget, hounds have sharp teeth and claws.” But he cleared his throat and tried again. “We would like for you to join us, Matilda. In fact, we will be offended if you do not.”
I was tempted to reach for the sun disk on my belt, even though it had only been early afternoon when Shale had left me on the moors, close to the Bracken Door. I would have plenty of time before my punishment, but my blood still leapt in my veins, to imagine being late for it. How my father would burn incandescent with rage. How he would think I had run, tossing honor to the wind, humiliating him before his entire court.
“I cannot stay long,” I said, at which Adria clapped her hands in excitement, and Bade frowned.
“Why are you here to begin with?” he asked as we followed her down the passageway, leaving the heat of the forge behind. “You are not in
trouble, are you?”
“Of course not,” I said quickly.
Bade only glanced at me, sidelong and dubious, as we entered the common room of the burrow.
Adria had spoken true: the table was set for a meal, with three plates and three goblets as if she had known I was coming to visit. The arrangement of food would have pleased the most famished of gods. There was a platter of roasted eel and charred lemons, oysters with split shells, and salted cheeses.
There was bread and sweetened butter, cream and berries, a bowl of olives marinated in oil, and toasted almonds.
I was too anxious to feel hunger—I thought it best to go to the whipping with an empty stomach—but I sat and filled my plate. Though the food I nibbled on trickled through me like mulled wine, warming me down to my bones, I savored Bade and Adria’s presence more. I listened to them speak to each other in smiles and jests and glances. The stories they both regaled me with, ones that had me laughing until my eyes smarted with tears. The stories that had me gasping and scolding Bade. Oh, the predicaments Adria had gotten him out of over the years. What would he have done without her?
I would have liked to have seen such stories happen with my own eyes, I thought with a dull ache in my chest. And perhaps I would have, had I not been Skyward.
Discreetly, I checked my sun disk beneath the table. Two hours until eventide. The time was flowing fast here, like a stream rushing toward a cliff’s edge, but it was only because I was enjoying myself. How I longed to remain here with them, late into the night, sharing stories and laughter and drinking the wine bottles dry.
“You have somewhere to be?” Bade asked, noticing my attention had drifted.
“Yes.” I let the sun disk slip from my fingers, let it dangle on its silver chain. “But there is something I must ask of you before I depart.”
They gazed at me, expectant. I suddenly felt shy. Absently, I traced the rim of my goblet with my fingertip.
“Would it be possible for me to borrow an ink and quill and two parchment scraps?” I finally asked.
“Yes,” Adria said. “Give me a moment to gather what you need.”
While she was in the adjacent chamber, Bade and I began to clear off the table. His motions were stiff; he did not speak to me, nor did he even look my way. He knew why I had come, why I had made the request for paper, ink, and quill. He knew, and he hid his face from me.
I opened my mouth to say something to him, desperate to fill the silence that had cracked between us, but my words were like dross on my tongue. I washed them down instead with the last of my wine, setting the empty goblet beside the water basin.
“Here,” Adria said as she returned. “Will this do?”
I took the quill, the inkpot, and the two scraps of parchment from her.
“Yes, thank you.” I sat at the table again, at the very place I had graced during the meal, and I prepared to write the breaking vow.
I was displeased to see my hand was trembling as I opened the ink.
There was a pit of doubt in me, a seed hidden so deep I worried I would break my teeth on it later. I worried I would regret releasing Bade from his vow. But I drew a breath, deep enough to sting my lungs, and I knew this was right.
He had earned his title of a salt vow ally, time and time again. I no longer wanted him bound to my safety, my well-being. I no longer wanted him shackled by duty to me. He had found love in the darkest of places, and being obligated to me was no longer fair to him.
And beyond that was my pride. I never wanted Bade to know I had been whipped by my father’s own hand, in view of the entire Skyward court. I never wanted him to know I had suffered such disgrace and pain.
“Will you join me, Bade?” I asked, keeping my focus on my task.
He dragged out the chair across from mine and sat with heavy limbs.
Adria, who had now also sensed my intention, retreated to grant us privacy.
I almost wished she had stayed, to lay her hand upon his shoulder.
“Was this your husband’s idea?” Bade asked testily.
My attention snapped upward to his. “Vincent’s? No. Why do you think
such?”
“He does not like me.”
“He does not know you. But perhaps one day, he will. And the two of you can have a proper conversation and bond over a meal.”
Bade raked his fingers through his beard. “All right, why, then? Why are you breaking my vow to you? Am I not enough?”
“You have fulfilled this vow ten times over,” I replied, struggling to keep my voice steady. It was knotted with tears. I swallowed and continued, “You have served me well. You have trained me with shield and sword until my soft bones became like iron. I know how to protect myself, to remain sharp in this treacherous world. You have been scarred for me, disgraced for me. You came for me in a battle that was not your own. How could I ask anything else of you? How can I keep you bound to me for an endless era?
This duty you are beholden to threatens to overtake everything else in your life.”
He was quiet, but he held my gaze with a scowl. It was only a mask, one that concealed the heavy beat of his heart. The way my words came around him like a cloak, thawing his bones after a long, cold winter.
“You are certain, Matilda?” he said, his voice hoarse. The resistance had been bled from him. He wore his age and weariness in that moment, a god hewn by centuries. “You are the one that desires to break this vow?”
“Yes.”
“Then break it.”
I wrote the breaking vow twice, my words dark and glistening across each scrap of parchment. One for him to eat, and one for me. When I was done, I handed his piece to him, to read along as I spoke aloud, so he would be reassured that I was not moved by trickery, seeking to deceive him.
“‘I, Matilda of Underling and Skyward, herald of the gods, break this salt vow to Bade of Underling, the god of war. He has been my loyal ally and has never betrayed me. He has aided me when I was in peril and need.
He has instructed me on how to fight and defend myself, until I became like iron. He has not broken this vow but has fulfilled it, and with such merit, I
release him from his salt vow.’”
I set the parchment on my tongue.
Before, it had tasted of the cost Bade was destined to pay for it. My mother had said it would demand great effort and sacrifice from him. But
now, as the vow began to melt, I knew this bitterness, this sadness that caught the back of my throat, was a foretaste of my own anguish.
Bade set the parchment—my words—on his tongue.
He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, as if the salt was searing, but then it was done. The vow had dissolved between us. He was no longer a sworn ally, beholden to me, and he rose from the table. As if I had cut threads from him, he left, disappearing down the shadows of the corridor.
I sat in the roar of silence, alone.
The mortal sun would not wait for any god, least of all me.
It was time for me to return to Shale on the moors, and I stoppered the inkpot and wiped my fingers on my dress. Anxious, I measured my sun disk again and saw that less than an hour remained until my scourging. I would not have time to find Alva or Dacre this visit, as I had hoped. I would have to return another time.
Adria stepped into the common room, arriving so quietly I did not realize she was with me until I saw her move at the corner of my eye.
“I have something for you,” she said.
I stood to meet her, surprised to see it was another sheet of parchment.
One with a jagged edge, as if it had been ripped from a binding. She set it within my outstretched palm, and I saw it was the constellation she had drawn for me. The one marked as soul-bearer.
“How did you know?” I asked. “How did you see the other half of my stars before I did? Before they burned in the sky?”
“I was never supposed to see such things,” Adria confessed. “But nor was I ever supposed to be immortal, was I? When I was crowned by Death and Fate, the very bones of divinity shifted, ever so slightly. I gained a portion of both matriarchs’ powers. I can foil death in my own way—not as great as your own, of course—and I can also catch a glimpse of what is to come, what is destined, as if I gaze into a murky pond. Orphia and Rowena do not realize it. Not yet, but soon they will.”
Her words stirred me like a gust of wind; my thoughts spun like stray leaves.
“Adria,” I said, but stopped myself when she pulled a small dirk from her belt.
She nicked her finger with cool precision. A drop of ichor welled upon her skin.
I made no protest when she drew two points on my collarbone with her sweetened blood. Two points that she connected, as if they were stars, gleaming in gold.
Only two other divines could take their stars and give them to another— Orphia and Rowena. My breath caught when I realized who Adria truly was. What she had become amongst us.
Death and Fate had not just created a goddess of peace.
They had made another matriarch.
If the under realm belonged to Orphia and the Skyward heavens to Rowena, then Adria was the matriarch of the mortal kingdom. There had always been three realms in our world; we should have expected a third matriarch to rise amongst us. We should have been waiting for her, knowing she would come from the mortal realm.
“You cannot give your stars to me,” I whispered. “You need them.”
“Do you remember the time when I was a mortal queen?” she said. “You were younger, then, but you must have heard that I came from nothing.
Even when I was named queen, I did not have much in the treasury that was mine save for a string of pearls. They had been my mother’s, my grandmother’s. The only heirloom I possessed. And as the war raged on, I decided that I would melt down all the golden cups from the great hall and craft circlets, crowns, you could call them, and that I would inlay in each one a pearl that I took from my necklace. I began to bestow them upon council members who were devoted not just to me but to Cambria. These people, while not perfect, were fighting for the greater good.”
“I remember,” I said. “Bade earned one from you.”
A sad smile passed over Adria’s face. “Yes, he did. It took him a while, and that is when my opinion of the gods began to change. Once, I believed that they did not care for humankind, and I was suspicious of Bade when he claimed he wanted to help us. But day after day, he returned to me, faithful as the sun rising, and he began to change. I watched as he softened to our
cause, not to obtain a golden crown, but because he cared for me and my people. Likewise, I saw men and women who I had once trusted harden their hearts. They would do anything to obtain a crown from me, to use it as a symbol of power, and I realized I had made a grave error. My intentions, while pure, had devolved into something terrible. My crowns were no longer protection but had become targets, something to steal and kill over, and I thought … if I ever wielded such power again, I would be wiser with it. I would not give away every last pearl of mine, and I would only crown those who had proven themselves selfless and good to mortals.”
I did not know if she was giving me a crown. I could not see it or feel its weight on my brow, so instead of asking about it, I said, “That power has returned to you? Giving crowns to the ones you deem worthy?”
“It has always been my power. I merely wait for the right moments to grant them, and only to ones who have proven themselves worthy of mortal love.” She drew my hair over my shoulder, hiding the two stars that continued to gleam on my collarbone. “Keep these hidden until you need
them.”
I swallowed. “When will I need them?”
Adria only smiled and said, “You will know when.”
I carried her blood-drawn stars on my collarbone as I left the under realm.
They did not sink into my skin; her power did not become a part of me.
Not yet, at least.
I did not know when I would need to claim them as my own. I did not even know what her magic would grant me. What piece of her power she had given, if it was a crown or something else entirely.
I let that mystery follow me Skyward.