Page 230 of May: Bloom & Bane

“—chased her⁠—”

“Ashán? I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” she cries.

“It was always—” Sage hauls the word back down our throat before I can finish it—before I can say the only part that matters.

“Ash, you’re scaring me. Who chased who?”

“Your—” The room tilts. Sage’s gold magic floods everything, and I force the last of my air into the worst possible choice. “—sister.”

“… I don’t have a sister.”

“Couldn’t—” have Anya, never got to meet her—but it comes out gutted. “—couldn’t have her.”

My vision swims as my words land completely wrong. I can’t fix it. I can’t breathe. Everything is going dark at the edges.

“It was always—” I reach for it one last time, the only words that could undo the wreckage of all the others. The dark takes me before I reach the last word.

You. It was always you.

CHAPTER 66

hello anya

—EDEN

Their body struggles against itself, gold light and black shadow wrestling with one another until they crumple sideways onto the splintered oak with a sickening thud.

“Ash! Sage!”

I drop to the floor beside them. Sage’s hand stays around their throat until they both go slack.

“No, no, no—” I press two fingers to the clammy side of their neck, praying for a pulse. “Don’t do this, please, please⁠—”

It’s there. Thank God. It’s slow, but it’s there. Their chest rises shallowly, and I sag over them, my forehead dropping to their shoulder.

“You’re okay,” I whisper. “You’re both going to be okay.”

Neither of them utters a sound.

Another woman. We chased her. Your sister. Couldn’t have her.

The pieces fall into place, one terrible shard at a time, and none of them fit anywhere that doesn’t hurt.

I don’t have a sister. Or do I? I didn’t remember anything from before I woke up. I didn’t even know my own name. I woke up in this strange, beautiful life with no past and a male who looked at me like I was the answer to a question he’d been asking forever. And I let myself believe it. I let myself believe I was the answer. The only answer.

Another woman. We chased her. Couldn’t have her.

The words repeat again and again.

There was someone they wanted—wanted so badly he chased her and couldn’t have her—and she’s my sister, and—I’m what came after? The version he could actually have? The woman asleep in a glass coffin who couldn’t say no?

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. They were choking. Ashán was trying to say something else. He kept saying, “it was always…”

Always her?

Beneath my dress, a tiny pulse of magic nudges against my belly. She’s awake, her small, innocent consciousness reaching out for the shadow that usually cuddles her in the dark.

I press a trembling hand over my stomach.