Page 241 of May: Bloom & Bane

“Therael.” He nods. “Rein it in. I can’t work in a blizzard.”

I want to scream at him and ask where he’s been. Three weeks chasing that shaen‡ tower that will never let him reach it, while my boys bleed into the dirt. (Damned)

Damon curls his fingers around my shoulder, sending a gentle wave of his magic through my body.

Runak did not have to come, I remind myself. He felt my call across the realms, and left her—the only thing he wants in any world—to help. The blizzard fights me, settling one snowflake at a time. Eventually, the wind dulls to a low moan.

His heavy boots crunch on the grass, his movements shockingly quiet for a male of his size. Devoid of any wasted emotion, he lowers himself onto one knee in the bloodied frost, his broad hand settling against Ashán’s spine, between his ruined shoulders. Beneath the edge of the mask, his throat moves once. A slow swallow. Damon’s eyes flick to mine and then away. He has never once removed his mask in a place that smells like this. I used to believe it was for the dying, so the last thing they see isn’t a predator’s jaws. I know better now. The mask was never for them.

“Hm,” he hums.

“Runak.”

“Quiet,” he commands. “Secure his head.”

His eyes have gone somewhere inward, the leashed thing inside him stirring dangerously close beneath the surface. I have always been able to feel the hunger that comes with this half of his work, the apex he holds on a chain shorter than any of us could manage.

“He’s going into shock. Do you see that?” He points to a particularly mangled section of Ashán’s flesh. “That’s stalled clean at the threshold. Too far gone to mend itself, too bound in that curse to let go.” He lifts his hand. “I can close him—make the flesh obey and force the knit. He’ll live.”

The first breath of relief rushes into my chest.

“But hear me first. I close this, and I close it for good. The way it’s tearing him now, the way it keeps trying to grow back and failing—I put a stop to all of it.” He holds my eyes, unblinking, making certain I understand. “His wings may not come back, Therael. Ever. If I close this flesh, the boy probably never flies again.”

The meadow goes silent, and Ashán makes a small, broken sound beside us. My chest tightens.

Keep the wings, or stop the agony.

Runak waits patiently.

“It’s not my choice to make,” he says quietly. “It’s his. Theirs.” His flat gaze cuts to Ashán. “So somebody had best wake him up. Because I’ll not take a man’s wings while he sleeps.”

I sink lower to the ground, gathering him into my lap, running my fingers over his blood-soaked shadow hair. “Ashán, my son,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “I need to know what you want me to do.”

Damon’s grip on my shoulder tightens.

Ashán’s eyelids flutter, the black void of his eyes dull and lifeless. “What—ever… keeps h-her safe⁠—”

CHAPTER 71

no one ever knelt for me

—SEVAHN

In a realm far from here⁠—

The fire is the first thing to go. I press my hand over the hearth, and the flames sink down into the stone, swallowed whole until there’s nothing left but the ghost of warmth and a thin gray thread of smoke curling toward the ceiling. I cross to the tall windows and unlatch them, one after another, letting the cold air pour in over the sill. The scent of burning fades to almost nothing. By the time I’m done, you would hardly know a fire had been lit at all.

Only then do I call for him.

“Ilvaen§.” (River)

I listen to the soft turn of the handle through the heavy wooden door. Once. Again. A third time. I have long stopped counting with him, but I know the number by heart all the same. Only on the seventh does the latch finally give, the door swinging open, and one of my eldest sons steps into the room.

He looks so much like the shadow of a king, majestic, and bound to the dark. Long brown hair spills over his shoulders in loose, untamed waves, framing a face he purposely keeps guarded from the world. A thin black cloth hangs over the bridge of his nose, concealing the lower half of his face.

“You cleared the room,” he says.

“I always do.”