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.
“Her secrets are not yours to glean, god of rivers,” said Bade. He stood between two elms, a shield upon his arm, his sword drawn. “Show yourself, or we shall fight by no rules.”
“Ah, I suspected you would come, god of war.” Warin was directly before me, somewhere, but it sounded like he was moving, weaving through the trees. “You could not stay away, could you? Matilda, I take it this old relic was your salt-sworn ally? The one whose vow you wanted to break before you were whipped at court? You should have let the vow stand! How entertaining it would have been, had the god of war come to your aid. How are your wounds, by the way? I imagine they are still tender.
Those scales cut you to the bone.”
The blood drained from my face.
I did not want his words to bruise me, but they did. They pelted me like stones, and I was suddenly anxious to look at Bade. To watch the truth flicker across his face.
Bade said nothing, his expression unchanged—harsh and guarded, as was customary. Only his breath betrayed him; I could see him exhale a burst of air, as if he had also been struck.
“Draw your sword, your shield,” he said, striding to my side. Something dark and terrible glinted in his eyes as he searched the trees surrounding us.
As he sought Warin.
I recalled the sword and shield from my belt, and we stood back-to- back, the forest falling quiet around us.
“He has an eithral scale,” I reminded Bade.
“Yes.” A growl of a word. “I remember.”
Together, we waited.
I knew Warin lurked somewhere at the periphery of my sight; I could still feel his gaze on me, a chill I could not shake away. Bade was a complication he had not accounted for, and as the moments stretched on, tense as a bowstring, I saw footprints marring the snow.
The snow was exposing his steps. As soon as I realized this, Warin lunged in my direction. I felt myself pressing against the wall of Bade’s back, the snow shifting before me in a flurry.
“Shield!” Bade barked, and I held it up, my arm stronger than it had ever been, corded with muscle.
Warin’s blade hit my shield with such force that I felt it reverberate in my teeth, rattling my magic down to its core. I saw a ring of glittering stars; I could taste iron and ice, salt and loam. I drew a breath and felt it ignite my blood.
I held my ground, pushing back with my shield.
I wanted to knock him to the ground. To lay him flat on his back with his neck exposed. That is where I would need to cut him. His mind was his fault line, and I would shred his voice, his throat. I was hungry for it, to see his blood stain the snow.
Warin chuckled somewhere close to my ear. He was enjoying this game of taunting, and he was fast, darting away like a windstorm. Bade, however, was watching and took a cut at him next, marking Warin’s movements by the snowy dust. Soon, we would lose this advantage. The more our feet churned up snow into cold mud, the more difficult it would be to find Warin’s location.
We seemed to spin around and around like this for hours. Warin would slash at me, then at Bade, then Bade again before coming back to me.
I remained on the defensive, my shield my greatest weapon. I was desperate to learn his patterns before I made myself vulnerable by taking a hack at thin air. Warin seemed to want that—for me to swing my sword and overextend myself, potentially exposing my weakest point.
The snow continued to fall, settling into our hair and refilling old footsteps. The ice coated the branches above us. They creaked in the wind, glinting like silver blades as the moonlight reflected, brightly, all around us.
I almost called fire from my palm, to smite Warin with it. He would go unscathed, but the cloak would burn and give him away. My mind teemed with the image until I recalled that magic was anchored to my right hand, the one gripping my sword hilt. I would have to sheath the sword to cast it, and a blaze would only distort my vision more.
I let my mother’s winter spell continue to spill over us instead.
At last, I saw my chance.
Bade was parrying a cut from Warin. Invisible feet were slipping in the snow, and I came up behind him. I cut my sword through the air and spirals of snow, my blood pounding like a drum. I felt the steel connect, and though I was aiming for his neck, I knew I got his shoulder.
My blade cut deep. I felt it part flesh, sing against bone.
Warin hissed and pivoted. My sword remained embedded in him, but as soon as he ripped the hilt from my hand, the weapon also went invisible, falling prey to the cloak’s enchantment. But I had made a mark upon him; his blood began to drip onto the snow, steaming like smelted gold.
I moved back, shield up, but he did not engage.
He fled.
Panting, I watched as his feet kicked the snow, up to a dense cluster of pines. I was about to pursue him when I felt Bade’s hand on my shoulder.
“He wants you to chase him,” he murmured, his gaze also on the trees that shivered from Warin’s retreat. “Remain on guard.”
“He will only take this time to heal himself and return,” I argued. “And we will begin this cycle all over again. This will never end.”
Bade was silent, his own breaths frayed from the revolution of parrying, cutting, blocking. But then he looked at me, and his eyes softened.
I wondered if he was thinking about what Warin had said earlier. About my whipping.
His lips were parting to say something to me, but I would never hear his words.
The hum of a bowstring broke the silence. A sound I had heard many times before.
My skin pebbled with warning, but it was too late.
Bade jerked.
He made a grunt of pain, and I saw the tip of an arrow protruding from his breast. Golden ichor bloomed across his armor; it dripped down the steel, scintillating in the dark.
My hands went numb, and yet I told myself, He will be fine. This was a humble arrow. Mortal made. An irritant, but not lethal to divinity. He had taken plenty of arrows and swords and axes before during battles. He will be fine.
He held my stare, wide-eyed. When he stumbled into me, losing his balance, I grasped his arm. He dropped his sword, his shield. I struggled to keep him standing but I could not do it; I could not hold us both upright. He was heavy as iron, and he was melting to the ground.
“Bade,” I said hoarsely. “Bade, your sword!”
He did not seem to hear me. His face had gone pale; his teeth were clenched in pain. And as he settled onto his back, surrendering to the snow, I saw the glimmer of iridescence. This was no arrow but an eithral scale on an arrow shaft. The very weapon that had once killed my mother.
Warin had shot it from his bow.
I had expected him to use the scale like Phelyra had, close enough to strike with his hand. But I should have remembered his skill as an archer. A terrible sound was wrenched from me.
“Bade.” I knelt beside him, shaking his arm. “Bade, get up!”
He reached for my hand and gripped it, weakly. “Your shield, Matilda,” he whispered.
I had dropped mine as well, and I did not care to pick it up.
My entire body went cold, pricked by a thousand needles. But I felt the dreaded heat on my belt. I knew the eye was opening. His heart had been pierced; his soul was about to drift away.
“You must go,” he said. His voice was raspy and pitched so deep I had
to lean closer to hear him. “To Adria.”
Her name was his last word.
But his eyes were still on me, full of a strange light, as if he saw something I could not see.
I swallowed, watching them dim. I heard his shudder of a breath, his final one, before his hand slipped from mine.
And the world around us went quiet again.