Wild Reverence is a prequel installment of Letters of Enchantment series by Rebecca Ross. The story takes place hundreds of years before the events of Divine Rivals. The story follows Matilda, the youngest goddess of her clan with humble messenger magic and Vincent, the irreverent lord of the river.
This fantasy romance series follows mortals and vicines live together as Matilda traverses realm after realm. It’s a story of alliances, fate, secrets, immense sacrifice weaved in a love story.
If you’re looking for our review, you can find it here.
Otherwise, read on for our synopsis of Wild Reverence and ending explained, including how it connects to Divine Rivals.
This post contains spoilers.
Wild Reverence
Description
Born ​in the firelit domain of the under realm, Matilda is the youngest goddess of her clan, blessed with humble messenger magic. But in a land where gods often kill each other to steal power and alliances break as quickly as they are forged, Matilda must come of age sooner than most. She may be known to carry words and letters through the realms, but she holds a secret she must hide from even her dearest of allies to ensure her survival. And to complicate matters . . . there is a mortal boy who dreams of her, despite the fact they have never met in the waking world.
Ten years ago, Vincent of Beckett wrote to Matilda on the darkest night of his life―begging the goddess he befriended in dreams to help him. When his request went unanswered, Vincent moved on, becoming the hardened, irreverent lord of the river who has long forgotten Matilda. That is, until she comes tumbling into his bedroom window with a letter for him.
As Fate would have it, Matilda and Vincent were destined to find each other beyond dreams. There may be a chance for Matilda to rewrite the blood-soaked ways of the gods, but at immense sacrifice. She will have to face something she fears even more than losing her magic: to be vulnerable, and to allow herself to finally be loved.
Synopsis
Matilda the Herald, A Goddess of Underling and Skyward
Matilda is born to Zenia, the Goddess of Winter, Fire and Cunning. She doesn’t know who her father is other than the fact that he’s a Skyward, the rival divine clan.
Knowing she’ll be hunted for being a goddess of two clans, Zenia takes her to Orphia, the Goddess of Death and Matriarch of Underling to have her stars read. She tells Zenia, Matilda is a Herald and has six stars under her name, a middle court Goddess. Zenia is relieved that she’s not strong.
Orphia sees something else in her but doesn’t tell Zenia.
In the world of Underling and Skyward, divines can each other’s power by killing one another. A god can be killed via a mortal hit to their fault line, place in their throat on those who favor logic and their heart for those who favor love.
Years pass, and Matilda at the age of 13 is a cup bearer to her mother and her allies. There is unrest in the mortal world, a poet queen trying to end wars which worries Bade, the God of War.
Zenia suggests Bade charms Adria, the Poet Queen and lets her borrow some of her cunning power in exchange for Bade swearing a salt vow to Matilda. The salt vow makes it so Bade has to come to Matilda’s aid no matter what.
Bade comes and goes to the mortal realm, eventually falling in love with Adria.
One of Matilda’s mother’s allies is Phelyra, the Goddess of Revelry and Coin. Matilda discovers her mother and Phelyra trade in either scales, winged beings who take to the skies, something that’s forbidden.
Alva, The Goddess of Nightmares and Dreams keeps sneaking Matilda dream scrolls without her mother knowing. Matilda grows close to Mortals and finds a boy named Vincent is dreaming of her. His dreams are more like nightmares, in which he regularly drowns.
Matilda and Vincent become closer in Vincent’s dreams, with him calling her Red, not knowing his name. Matilda helps him escape the water, leading him out of the water. They become friends in dreams.
Adria, The Goddess of Peace
One day, Bade shows up with a wounded Adria in his arms dying. She asks Orphia to spare her. Orphia decides to give Adria four of her stars, if they can convince his sister Rowena, the Matriarch of Skyward and Goddess of Fate to do the same.
Bade begs Matilda to herald her first ever message to Rowena. Matilda agrees and runs.
On her run, she arrives at the mortal land first and runs into Vincent. They finally exchange names. Vincent’s uncle Grimald urges Vincent to keep Matilda, a Goddess captive is valuable. Matilda runs.
Matilda arrives at the Skyward. She finds Rowena at her villa in the orchard. She also meets Warin, the God of Spring and Rivers. Rowena, not wanting to be done up by her sister, gives Adria five of her stars.
Adria, given nine stars, ascends to divine godhood, becoming Goddess of Peace.
Matilda is gifted a belt with moonstone gems on it where she can keep her shield and sword Bade is training her with. One of the moonstones is different and closed, like an eye. This is the Gatekeeper’s eye which opens when someone’s dying. The Gatekeeper is Rowena and Orphia’s mother.
Matilda continues entering dreams, she is not only a herald but something more. Realms don’t keep her out. One time she hears Vincent begging her to find him. She goes through a wasted door finding herself in the Wasteland.
There, she sees Xan, wandering the wasteland, the former god of Iron, slain by a god. She asks him who killed him to which he replies with Warin.
Matilda meets the Gatekeeper herself who judges whether Xan is worthy of entering the mists and finding peace by listening to his stories.
Matilda finds a door into the dreams, realizing she can enter the dreams not just via the scrolls but through gates. She enters Vincent’s dream. This dream has a dead eithral in it. Alva notices Matilda is in the dream without her giving Matilda a scroll.
When she returns, Dacre, the head of the Underling knows that someone is trading in eithral scales. Realizing their scheme is up, Phelyra slits Zenia’s throat with a scale.
With her dying breath, Zenia tells Matilda father’s name, Thile.
Knowing she’ll be interrogated about the scales if caught, Bade buys Matilda time while she seeks refuge in her father’s court.
13 Years Later
Matilda grows up in Skyward court, carrying messages from one god to another.
When she is older, Warin and Matilda become lovers, he even wants to marry her to which Matilda refuses over and over. Eventually their romance ends.
Her father, knowing she has a weakness for mortals, does not let her herald messages to the mortal realm.
Meanwhile, over the years, Grimald makes a play for Vincent of Beckett’s throne killing both of his older brothers, leaving Vincent wounded and for dead. Vincent and his brother Nathaniel survive. During the darkest night of his life, Vincent begs Matilda to come. However as Matilda had already gone to Skyward at the time, she never receives the prayer. Vincent forsakes all gods.
Enva, Goddess of Music, is engaged to Dacre. Matilda is tasked to escort her back to Underling.
When Matilda arrives, Orphia summons her and asks her to herald a message to Vincent of Beckett. It is time for him to die and Matilda can intervene should she want to, as Orphia wants to know what happens if he lives.
Matilda enters the mortal realm, running for Vincent’s fortress. She arrives and sees there’s a war camp outside the fortress, and a river she cannot cross.
She makes a deal with Warin, in exchange for shoes that helps her cross the river, she’ll attend a dinner when he calls the shoes back.
She arrives at Vincent’s tower, letting him know that Orphia has sent her and gives him his letter. Cold and distant, and thinking Matilda abandoned him al those years ago, Vincent doesn’t want to read the letter. He gives Matilda a cold shoulder. Matilda then offers to go to parlay with his uncle with him and pretend to be his wife. Vincent reluctantly agrees.
In the parlay his uncle claims he has a right to the fortress and the title, and Matilda threatens him with her allies including Bade the God of War.
As they depart, Grimald breaks the parlay’s rules and shoots Vincent with an arrow. Matilda steps in it’s way and is hit by the arrow, defecting Orphia’s attempt to take Vincent, for now.
Later in Vincent’s room, Matilda tells Vincent to go to sleep, and then sneaks into Grimald’s camp. There she sees that he’s making a deal with Warin who can sense Matilda.
Warin chases Matilda and Matilda asks what he wants. Warin says he wants a toll from the river. Matilda knows Vincent would never agree to this.
Matilda goes to Underling burrows to ask for Bade’s help in the war, but finds that everyone’s asleep with Enva nowhere to be found.
Matilda finds Phelyre asleep. Instead of killing her what she did to her mother, she leaves a bracelet of hair on Phelyre’s arm, a debt to be collected later.
Initial fighting ensues. Bade arrives as Matilda’s salt sworn ally. The fighting continues. Matilda, realizing they’re losing, breaks her vow to the Skyward and asks an Eithral to lend her his sight, something a skyward goddess can do, in front of Vincent and Bade. The fight’s tide turns.
She gives Vincent’s uncle 3 days to leave which he says he will but Matilda doesn’t trust him and tells her to evacuate the people who can’t fight.
They evacuate the people to the meadowlands, where Vincent and Matilda cuddle and spend the night together.
The two of them talk about what they would do if they could do whatever they wish, and Vincent says he’d like to be a farmer and take up the abandoned cottage in the meadow.
Matilda Discovers Her New Power
Vincent evacuates his people to a meadowland ruled by his ally Hugh.
Matilda returns from her travels and Vincent’s frustrated with her for leaving. Matilda tells him that she won’t leave him and explains what happen to her years ago.
When they return fighting begins once more and Nathaniel dies.
Matilda, knowing she can enter the Wastelands, follows Nathaniel’s soul. She finds him with the Gatekeeper, but despite having lived a good life, Nathaniel’s stories doesn’t seem to be making the scales of Gatekeeper go down.
Matilda realizes Nathaniel won’t be able to pass the mists, and will have to wander alone. So she offers some of her stories to the Gatekeeper in Nathaniel’s stead.
Gatekeeper agrees, on the condition that Matilda serves 7 years as her personal heralde the next time she enters the Wasteland.
Matilda agrees and tells the Gatekeeper her stories, eventually tilting the scale to Nathaniel’s direction.
Nathaniel does not want to die.
Matilda realizes she can herald messages, but she can also herald souls, making her a soul-bearer.
Matilda asks if Nathan wants to go back. The Gatekeeper is rejoiced that she finally realized her true power. Nathaniel and Matilda start traversing the Wasteland until they arrive at a gate to a dream.
She realizes, she needs to make Nathaniel pass her worst nightmare before he can go back to the world of living.
They return to the mortal realm. Matilda swears Nathaniel and Vincent to secrecy about Nathaniel’s resurrection.
The 6 stars of Matilda in the sky are joined by 6 other stars, dormant for ages.
Matilda and Vincent finally get together.
Matilda however is summoned by her own father, Thile.
Thile’s Punishment
Matilda arrives at her father’s court. She finds him furious for divulging Skyward secrets. He tells her he’ll need to be whipped, revealing he’s in possession of the eithral scales.
Matilda, knowing Bade will come running if she’s hurt, asks him to let her put her affairs in order.
She goes to Underling and breaks the Salt Vow with Bade. There, Adria tells her she knows her power. Realizing by ascending Adria to godhood, Matilda realizes she’s the matriarch of the mortal world. Adria gives her two stars and when Matilda asks what they do, she tells him she’ll know when to claim them.
Bade is upset that she’s broken the salt vow. But Matilda doesn’t tell him it’s because she’ll get punished.
Matilda is whipped in her father’s court, her back is flayed to the bone. Rowena takes care of her as she recovers.
When she returns to the mortal land, her scars aren’t healing. She only makes it in the meadows Vincent evacuated his people. There she finds out people Vincent trusted Hugh with are missing.
The rogue eithral she possessed earlier finds her and blows on her back freezing her wounds. Matilda returns to Vincent’s castle on the Eithral’s back. The eithral is shot down from the sky and Matilda asks her to run.
Realizing she’s wounded, she runs to the Underling.
Alva finds her there, and tells her she knows her secret. She asks to be her ally, and offers her wine. Enva arrives and puts Alva to sleep revealing that her music can now form spells and Alva was about to kill her.
Matilda owes Enva a debt. The two part ways.
Realizing the final battle is closer than ever, Matilda calls the debt to Phelyra and borrows the power of winter.
Perplexed, Matilda returns to Vincent. The two of them reunite and when they make it to their private chambers Matilda tells her what happened to her back and where she’s been. They make up and have sex, finally getting together.
While she’s about to wake for the battle, Warin calls in the shoes. She arrives in his court, and he taunts her. Matilda suffers the dinner.
She also returns to her father’s court to gather her belongings and finds that the people from Vincent’s village that went missing are in Warin’s servitude making shoes. Matilda swears to set them free. She realizes Hugh has betrayed them and Grimald’s people will cross the river on foot.
Wild Reverence Ending Explained
Matilda returns once more finding Vincent in one of the towers while she stations herself in the other.
The fighting begins.
Grimald, Warin and their allies begin crossing the river but Matilda unleashes power she borrowed from Phelyra freezing the river and turning the tide of the battle.
Vincent confronts his uncle climbing the tower and drowns him, paying him back for everything he’s done to him.
Bade arrive to the battle, to fight alongside Matilda.
Warin shoots Bade in the chest with the eithral scale, Bade dies, but Warin does not become God of War.
Warin and Matilda fight. Matilda claims the stars Adria put onto her chest. A crown of stars appears on her head, one that only Vincent can see. She kills Warin becoming God of Iron, Spring and Rivers. But Warin stabs her in the heart.
Matilda dies in in Vincent’s arms.
They arrive in the wastelands. Matilda finds Bade walking through the mists. They arrive at gatekeeper’s door.
Realizing Warin doesn’t have powers of War, Matilda realizes what Adria’s power does, it makes it so her power is her own forever and her true love can see the crown of stars on her. Bade, also has a crown of his own, so Warin cannot steal his power.
Warin’s stories does’t tilt the scale, so he can’t enter the mists. He is doomed to wander the wastelands forever.
Matilda asks if Bade wants to go back to Adria, to which he agrees. Matilda, herald and soul-bearer still despite being dead, takes Bade through the Wastelands, his nightmares then back to Wasteland.
Bade makes it back to the mortal land, but Matilda cannot, her seven years of service to the Gatekeeper beginning.
Matilda becomes a scribe of sorts to Gatekeeper, judging the dead souls with the gatekeeper, taking people she finds worthy back to the mortal land.
Vincent, in despair of losing Matilda, gives up his title to Nathaniel and takes up the farm, making friends with the next door couple and their small boy.
When the small boy dies to the fever, Matilda is the one brings him back, thinking it’s Vincent’s son.
Matilda manages to send a story to Vincent through an Underling door, professing his love for him.
Her seven years pass and she goes back to the mortal world. She finds Vincent and the two of them, finally find peace together.
Thousands of years pass, and Matilda’s name is forgotten. She passes to the mists with Vincent after he dies. She is the herald and soul-bearer after all and she can travel to all the realms including the mists.
Enva, in a bustling city, calls Matilda, to collect the debt she owes her.
She has Matilda enchant two typewriters.
That’s everything from Wild Reverence! Did you read Wild Reverence? How was it compared to Divine Rivals or other fantasy romances you read this year? Let us know in the comments!
Note: I read an early copy of Wild Reverence via NetGalley thank you St Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the ARC! All are my own!
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