Page 224 of May: Bloom & Bane

“But he failed,” Andrik says, looking at Micah.

“He failed.” Therael’s eyes fall to the snow. “He could not control the bane in his brother because he had not yet cleared it from himself. He could not let go of what was never his. And in the end, the bitter fruit blinded him again.”

“So what now?” Lumi asks, tears spilling down her face. “Does he just... die? After all that trying? After you let him fail because of a psycho brother?” she shouts. Andrik attempts to tuck her behind him for the second time, but Therael waves him away with a single, shimmering motion.

“I understand your anger, Naya.” Therael raises his voice. “But as I said, the gods do not waste soulbonds—especially souls willing to jump into the dark for a mate that was not even theirs to claim. Therin—Micah—will be given another chance. Reborn once more. But this time...” he pauses. “This time, he will find his true bond. The one he was always meant to have. The one he overlooked because your soul was carrying fragments of hers.”

Eden? That has to be Eden.

“Wait!” Lumi whispers, her brows pinching together. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? My sister... Anna?”

“Anya,” Therael corrects her. “And Anna. Two names, one soul. She was the other half of the thread that broke on the cliff three thousand years ago. Not just your bond with Caelen—but Therin’s with Anya.”

Her knees buckle, and Andrik catches her, hauling her against his chest.

“Anya was your guardian in your first life—the older sister who left these woods and took the burden of the scout’s path so you could remain within the safety of the Archive,” Therael continues. “She bore the scars of the world so your hands could stay stained only by ink. But the wheel turns, and the debt of protection must be repaid. So she returned as the younger sister… and you became the guardian she once was to you.”

Anya is the name of our true mate. And she was brought back as Anna in her second life. And Eden in her third.

“Micah did not love you, Lumi,” Therael admits, and my chest feels a thousand pounds lighter. I knew we could never love anyone else.

“He loved the piece of her that you were holding for safekeeping. Souls do not travel alone; they travel in constellations. He was chasing a ghost that lived inside your heart, sensing the mate he hadn’t yet found, but he looked at the wrong face to find her.”

You hunted where the echo stayed, by one small piece of soul betrayed.

For two lifetimes, we chased after the tiny echo of our mate’s soul that Lumi carried inside her. Lumi, who is also our soulbond’s sister. How are we ever going to explain this to Eden?

Everything disappears, thinning like breath on glass until I’m standing in the middle of nothing at all, holding the weight of everything I just learned.

The dark begins to warm.

A single leaf spirals down, and he unfolds where it lands.

“So now you know, Little Reaper,” he says softly.

“How am I here?” I manage. “The dust always locks me in the void. I’ve never seen any of this.”

Something akin to guilt moves across his face. “That was my doing, Little Reaper. After I gave Sage the riddle, I went to Remavau, and I asked him to do what I could not. To reach into the dream beneath the dust and pull you down—all the way down—to the one place the truth has already been spoken aloud.” The leaves of his halo rattle softly. “Because I could not say it to you myself. I am bound from it. But there is nothing that says I cannot walk a man to a door that is already open.”

I want to be angry that he’s been hovering at the edge of all of this, watching us claw through the dark for answers since Sage’s first headache. But I can’t find the anger anywhere.

“Then you can talk about it now?” I say. “You’re not bound from this part.”

“What you have learned for yourself, I am free to speak of. That is the shape of the cage I live in. I cannot give you the truth until you hold it in your own hands…” He spreads his fingers. “... and then I may help you carry it.”

“I have so many questions.”

“I have endless time, though you have a worried mate to return to.”

My heart clenches. But if I’m going to get things right this time, I have to get answers.

“So we were Micah in our previous life. We were human.”

Therael is quiet longer than the question warrants.

“Sage was Micah,” he says. “There was a soul in that body that the world called Micah. And it is the same soul that the world now calls Sage.”

I wait for him to fold me into it: And you, little reaper. You were there too. He doesn’t.