Page 182 of May: Bloom & Bane

My fingers tremble as I pull out a pinch of shimmering dream dust. I lean forward, but as I’m about to drop the powder over his face, I freeze.

I cannot go into that dark while you’re unprotected. You said you’d pull me back. I begged you.

Ashán’s voice fills my head.

The dust shivers in the bag.

He’s already in the dark. That’s the part that kills me, while I watch the other half of my mate convulse in front of me. Ashán’s already gone. He buried himself eight days ago, in a silence so deep I’ve started to forget the weight of him.

He begged me not to. With everything he had left, he begged me.

And Sage is drowning in front of me. There is no door I can walk through without someone I love getting hurt.

“I’m sorry, Ash,” I whisper, tears blurring my vision. “I’m so sorry. I don’t have a choice. Please know I don’t have a choice.”

I drop a pinch of dust over Sage’s face, and his body stills instantly. The frantic movement of his lips slows, and the white of his eyes softens as his lids flutter shut. His head lolls sideways, crashing against my lap. I sink my fingers into his hair, stroking through the long dark strands, while my other hand presses against my belly.

“It’s okay,” I tell her, my voice cracking over the lie. “Daddy’s just sleeping. Both of them. Both your daddies are just… sleeping.”

Above us, the willow branches tremble, and a slow rainfall of pale green leaves weeps silently over the three of us.

—ASHÁN

I didn’t shut the door today.

Eight days of clawing up the inside of my own grave by my fingernails, one agonizing handhold at a time, stopping short each time until the little nestling in her belly reaches for me.

But today, with my palms against the door and Eden’s heartbeat humming just on the other side of it—I think it’s time for me to go back. I need to stop punishing us both for what I thought that sob meant. I push the door open and—the world turns to lead.

It pours from above. A sugared poison I would recognize in the deepest dark the void has ever made. It floods the void, filling my mouth and the spaces between my ribs.

I throw myself at the weight of it. No. Not now. Not when I was choosing to come back. I claw, I tear, I scream her name until my throat bleeds—Ash’kaela, I’m here, I was COMING BACK!—but the dust is already in our veins, dragging me down by the ankles into the cold I begged her never to put me in again.

The descent is a slow suffocation as the dust hardens around my mind like cement. When the screaming in my chest finally dies out, there is no peace, only dread that she’s unprotected, and the fear that I won’t be strong enough to make it back this time.

When I finally manage to drag my eyes open, the unbearable cold of the void is gone. The scent of cotton candy is replaced by the sharp, metallic tang of blood. A scream jerks my consciousness right back to the surface.

Eden.

I bolt upright. The first thing I see is white. Stark, blinding white. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. The blurry edges sharpen into focus all at once: I’m in our bedroom, but something is wrong. It’s a bleak, mid-winter gray outside. The fire in the hearth is roaring, casting an orange glow over the center of the nest where Eden is thrashing.

Her hair is damp, plastered to her forehead, her fingers clawing deep into the sheets as another contraction hits her. Her belly is huge beneath the thin linen of her gown.

Months. The realization drops my stomach. I’ve been gone for months.

I missed the quiet mornings. I missed the growth of my own child.

“Deep breaths, luváel,” Sage rasps.

He’s sitting behind her, cradling her small body between his legs.

“Sage, it hurts,” Eden chokes out, sobbing as she drops her head against his chest. She doesn’t look for me. Her eyes don’t wander for me in the mirror. They survived without me. She grabs onto the vines at his knees. “I can’t do this. I can’t.”

“You can,” Sage murmurs, kissing her temple, his long fingers stroking through her tangled hair with an intimacy that makes my soul splinter. “I’ve got you.”

I throw myself toward the nest.

“Eden, look at me! I’m here! I’m back.”