Page 195 of May: Bloom & Bane

My soul will starve in this void.

The memory of Ashán’s return after the dream dust flashes through my mind. The way he clung to Eden as if she were his salvation.

Is this where he was the whole time?

The thought paralyzes me. Ten days in a pit of pure isolation. I had been so angry with him when he took Eden’s consciousness. I threatened to have Therael separate us.

How did you bear it? I whisper inside my mind. How are you still sane?

I reach out again, searching for him so I can tell him I understand now… that I’m sorry I didn’t know before.

Time stretches and warps until seconds feel like centuries. I can’t tell how long I’ve been floating in the tar. Minutes? Hours? The uncertainty is a slow poison, dripping into my mind until I start to wonder if there was anything before the dark. Was Eden ever real?

The darkness surrounding me begins to vibrate, faint at first—a quiet pulse rippling through the silence—it’s Eden’s pulse, and it’s climbing. I can feel the phantom shift of our muscles, the slick slide of skin, and the unmistakable rhythm of her climax building.

He’s making love to her.

My body is out there, worshipping her, and I am locked in the trunk, forced to feel the faint hum of her orgasm while I rot in the dark.

Jealousy cuts through my terror. That’s my mate falling apart out there. My body wringing those sounds from her mouth. My hands, my mouth, me⁠—

Except it isn’t.

Nausea rolls through my stomach, and my magic surges against the barrier.

“Let me out!” The void eats the scream, and somehow that makes it worse. He can’t even hear me raging at him. “She’s mine too! You don’t get to keep her. You don’t get to take⁠—”

His words replay in my head: You get her smiles. Her laughter. Her body responding to your touch. I’m a passenger, begging for scraps of contact.

That day in the meadow, with Eden limp between us, and terror making animals out of us both. He stood in the dark of our consciousness and told me exactly what this feels like. And I pushed it aside, because it was incomprehensible that anything could be this lifeless.

The rage drains out of me, and there is nothing beneath it to hold its shape. I call my magic back. The tendrils stop their scrabbling and curl back into my core.

There is no way out. So I do the only thing left to a creature built for growth, buried in a place where nothing grows. I gather around the one warmth I’m permitted—the faint, muffled flutter of her pulse—and I hold on. The way he must have held on, ten days around a single heartbeat.

I’m sorry, I think at the dark. When we’re whole again, I will say it out loud.

A tremor rips through the vacuum. Before I can brace myself, the nothingness spits me out, slamming me forward with a force that knocks the air from my lungs.

The scent of honey and frost floods my chest. The sound of Eden’s ragged breaths fills my ears, and I have never felt so relieved to hear them. My eyes fly open. I am still in the meadow, but I am on my knees in the dirt, my hands gripping Eden’s hips, holding her flush against my chest. Her pulse hammers underneath my palms, warm and alive, but before I can draw enough breath to speak, Ashán turns toward me.

—ASHÁN

The void inside me is quiet for the first time in ten days.

Eden’s heartbeat is slowing against our chest, her skin warm where she’s collapsed into me. My shadow lies draped over her as if it never intends to move again. My skelva still drawing lazy circles over her kísh, every pass making her twitch and squeeze around my knot, pulling those small drunk sounds I will never get enough of. The frost on the grass begins to melt as Sage floods back into our body. I open my awareness to greet him, and then I taste it. The cold, lightless residue clinging to his soul. A dark I would know anywhere. Because it is mine.

He smells like the void. My fingertips still against Eden.

Where were you, Sage?

You know where I was, he whispers.

A sickening wave of guilt slams into me. The first thing I did when I escaped the void was reach for her with everything I am—and everything I am filled every corner of his body, leaving no room for anyone else. I didn’t feel him. I didn’t even look.

Sage, I didn’t mean to, I murmur. I didn’t know.

I know, he whispers back. His lack of anger is a thousand times worse than if he had threatened to separate us again. Ashán… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.