Zenia: The Underling Goddess Who Shaped Matilda's Destiny

Overview of Zenia

Zenia is an Underling goddess who embodies winter, fire, and cunning—a volatile combination that defines her every action. She appears exclusively through Matilda’s memories and the events leading to her death, yet her influence permeates the entire narrative of Wild Reverence. Zenia is the mother of Matilda, the first mixed-heritage divine, and her murder by the goddess Phelyra with an eithral scale sets in motion the central conflicts of the story.

Her authority among the Underling court is clear: she advises Bade, the god of war, and conspires with Phelyra and Alva. Zenia operates in a world of divine hierarchy, where power is measured by constellation points and magic can be stolen. She is both protective and calculating, willing to drink bittertongue poison to learn her daughter’s horoscope and to forge an alliance with Bade through a salt vow that binds him to Matilda.

Plot Role and Chronological Arc

Zenia’s role is confined to the first third of the book, yet her absence drives the remainder. Her arc unfolds in flashbacks that reveal Matilda’s origins and the secrets that eventually destroy her.

• Chapters 3–4 (Matilda’s birth and childhood): Zenia gives birth to Matilda after a secret affair with a Skyward god. She hides the father’s identity, visits Orphia for a horoscope, and later negotiates a salt vow between Bade and Matilda. During these years, Zenia’s cunning nature shines—she advises Bade to woo the Poet Queen Adria rather than kill her, and she drills her own child in the dangers of divine politics.
• Chapters 5–7 (Matilda’s growth and the shadow trade): Zenia continues to train Matilda in survival. She partners with Phelyra to smuggle eithral scales—a forbidden trade that bypasses Dacre’s authority. This secret puts her at odds with the Underling court. In Chapter 5, she gifts Matilda a moonstone belt, one stone of which darkens at the touch of Matilda’s hidden power.
• Chapter 8 (The Poet Queen crisis): Zenia sleeps deeply as winter ends, trusting Matilda. The drums summon the court, and Bade arrives carrying the wounded Adria. Zenia is not active in this scene, but her earlier advice shapes the events that follow.
• Chapter 16 (Zenia’s murder): Phelyra, under pressure from Dacre, stabs Zenia in the neck with an eithral scale. Zenia’s dying word is “Thile”—the name of Matilda’s father, the god of dusk, oaths, and summer. Phelyra flees, and Matilda takes the arrow, becoming implicated in the crime.
• Chapters 17–22 (Aftermath): Zenia’s death forces Matilda to flee the Underling realm, seek sanctuary with her father Thile in Skyward, and eventually return years later to reclaim her mother’s legacy. Her ransacked burrow later reveals that mortals had been praying to Matilda, not Zenia—a poignant twist that shifts Zenia’s role from protector to legacy.

Motivations and Traits Through Actions

Zenia’s actions consistently reveal a mother who values her daughter’s survival above all else, yet she employs the ruthless calculus of divine politics.

• Cunning: She advises Bade to borrow her cunning magic to woo the Poet Queen, knowing that war is sustained by strategy, not brute force. This trait earns her the trust of powerful allies.
• Protective secrecy: She hides Matilda’s parentage for decades, understanding that a mixed-heritage child would be a target. She even refuses to speak Thile’s name, fearing he would find her.
• Risk-taking: She drinks bittertongue poison to force truthful answers during the horoscope reading, demonstrating her willingness to accept temporary vulnerability for long-term knowledge.
• Trust and betrayal: She trusts Phelyra enough to trade scales, but that trust proves fatal. Her murder occurs precisely because she lowered her guard when confronting Matilda about her own secret journeys.
• Courage under pressure: Even as she dies, she uses her last breath to impart Thile’s name to Matilda, ensuring her daughter will know her paternal heritage.

Key Decisions and Their Consequences

Relationships

• With Matilda (daughter): Zenia’s relationship with Matilda is a blend of fierce love and calculated distance. She trains Matilda in survival but keeps her in the dark about the scale trade until it is almost too late. She slaps Matilda in Chapter 4 for pressing about forbidden items, yet later trusts her enough to sleep deeply. Matilda’s grief and rage after Zenia’s death become her primary emotional driver for years.
• With Bade (ally and father figure to Matilda): Zenia and Bade share a deep tactical friendship. She advises him on war and wooing, and he makes a salt vow to protect her daughter. He is the one who holds Matilda at birth and later sacrifices his court status to help her flee.
• With Phelyra (ally turned murderer): Zenia and Phelyra trade in eithral scales, but Phelyra keeps a scale for herself. Under pressure, Phelyra betrays Zenia without hesitation. This relationship underscores the book’s theme of divine politics and power struggles, where alliances are fragile and self-preservation trumps loyalty.
• With Thile (lover, father of Matilda): Their dalliance ended unpleasantly, and Zenia never speaks his name aloud. Yet she keeps a lock of his hair for the horoscope. This forbidden relationship crosses realm boundaries, linking to the theme of forbidden love across realms.

Theme and Symbol Connections

Zenia’s story weaves into several major themes of Wild Reverence.

• Divine politics and power struggles: Zenia navigates a court where magic can be stolen and alliances are transactional. Her death is a direct result of her involvement in the black-market scale trade, a political gamble that fails.
• Sacrifice and redemption: Zenia’s sacrifice is not voluntary—she is murdered—but her dying gift (Thile’s name) redeems her secrecy. Matilda later carries the burden of her mother’s unfulfilled desires. The sacrifice and redemption theme echoes in Matilda’s own choices.
• Fate vs free will: The horoscope declares Matilda a herald, a messenger. Zenia’s actions—hiding her identity, seeking the horoscope, making the salt vow—are attempts to shape fate. Yet Orphia sees something disturbing in the stars and conceals it. Zenia’s free will ultimately cannot prevent her own death, which seems preordained by the very trade she entered. This connects to the fate vs free will theme.
• Identity and belonging: As a divine of mixed heritage, Matilda belongs neither fully to Underling nor Skyward. Zenia’s secrecy about the father is an attempt to delay this crisis, but it also robs Matilda of her true identity. The identity and belonging theme is central to Zenia’s legacy.

Symbol: Winter, Fire, and Cunning

Zenia’s three magics—winter, fire, cunning—are stolen by Phelyra after her death. Winter represents concealment and endurance; fire represents destruction and passion; cunning represents strategy and survival. These symbols recur in Matilda’s own borrowed magic (she later uses Phelyra’s constellations of fire and winter to freeze Grimald’s army in Chapter 73). The transfer of magic mirrors the transfer of Zenia’s essence into her daughter’s hands.

Five Book-Specific Questions and Answers

1. Why does Zenia never reveal Matilda’s father’s name during the horoscope reading?
   Zenia swore an oath to Thile that she would not speak his name; if she did, he would hear it and find her. She respects this vow even though it forces her to rely on a lock of his hair for the horoscope. This secrecy is both protective (shield Matilda from his potential wrath) and a remnant of their difficult parting.

2. What role does the eithral scale trade play in Zenia’s murder?
   Zenia and Phelyra secretly sold eithral scales from Dacre’s wyvern pits on the black market. When one of those scales was used to kill the god Xan, Dacre began investigating. Phelyra, fearing exposure, killed Zenia to silence her and claimed self-preservation. The weapon was an eithral scale—the same commodity they trafficked—making Zenia’s death a direct result of her own greed and trust in a false ally.

3. How does Zenia’s advice to Bade reflect her cunning nature?
   Rather than kill the Poet Queen Adria, Zenia advises Bade to “woo” her by borrowing cunning magic. This strategy turns an enemy into a potential asset and lengthens the war, keeping Bade’s power strong. It shows Zenia’s preference for manipulation over brute force and her understanding of mortal politics.

4. What is the significance of Zenia’s dying word, “Thile”?
   Zenia’s last breath is her daughter’s father’s name. This revelation gives Matilda a direct path to her Skyward heritage. It also suggests that Zenia carried guilt or unfinished business regarding Thile—perhaps a desire for Matilda to know her father despite the oath. The name “Thile” echoes throughout the rest of the book as Matilda seeks him out.

5. Does Zenia truly trust Matilda, or is her trust calculated?
   Zenia’s trust is conditional. She sleeps deeply during winter’s end, indicating vulnerability, but she also hides dangerous secrets (the scale trade) until it is almost too late. When Matilda returns from her secret journey in Chapter 16, Zenia is furious and slaps her. This suggests that Zenia trusts Matilda in small measures but ultimately keeps her at arm’s length—a survival tactic in a court where even children can steal magic. The ending explained shows that Matilda inherits this guardedness.

Conclusion

Zenia is a mother who wields winter, fire, and cunning in equal measure—but none of these powers can protect her from betrayal. Her murder transforms Matilda from a sheltered herald into a fugitive and later into a force capable of reshaping divine boundaries. Though dead before the main plot begins, Zenia’s secrets, alliances, and final whispered name echo through every realm. For deeper discussion, see the questions and answers page.