Page 245 of May: Bloom & Bane

“Two days?” I whisper. “I have two days to fix this?”

“You have exactly thirty-three hours, forty-four minutes, and sixteen seconds left. You’re counting in hours now, Ashán,” Therael rasps.

“If you don’t break these vreshing chains, I will,” Sage growls.

“Easy, both of you.” Damon lifts a hand, and the spelled iron at my wrists hums, the golden runes along the links flaring crimson a single time before they go dark. “No need to break anything. They’ve done their work.”

The chains fall away.

I launch myself off the wood, the lack of balance from my missing wings sending me crashing heavily against Therael’s legs. My newly closed back wails at the sudden jarring movement.

Therael catches my wrist.

“Ashán, listen to me. The path will be hard. Harder than you know yet. The closer the clock gets to zero, the worse the curse will press on you, and there will be moments—” His throat works, the spell choking him again. He changes course, saying only what it allows. “There will be moments—when they come, remember who you are. Whatever happens, however far it drags you, you can make it through if you just steer true. Do you understand?”

I don’t. I don’t understand what moments he means, or why his face is gray. But I need to get to her, so I can think about it on the way.

“I’ll remember,” I tell him.

“Then go.” Therael releases my wrists. “Go, my son. Run like the world is ending.”

Because if I don’t reach her in time… it will be.

Hold on, ash’kaela. I throw it down the bond. Hold on. We’re coming.

… and this time, we’re going to tell you everything.

CHAPTER 73

whose name?

My bare feet hit the frozen dirt outside the house, and I stumble hard, my left shoulder slamming into one of the oak trunks.

The night is so wide and black overhead that, for one disorienting second, I try commanding muscles that no longer exist, flexing the area between my shoulder blades. Reaching for them is a reflex I will apparently have to lose one wretched attempt at a time. I teeter hard to the right, overcorrect, and nearly go face-first into the dirt.

Center us, Sage says. We don’t have them anymore. You keep throwing your weight like they’re still there. Lean into me.

I lean. Our balance steadies, barely, like a drunk creature held up by a weak friend. Together we find the new mechanics of running. Every stride feels heavy and slow. I keep my eyes on the dark line of the trees ahead, the place where the winter meadow swallows the trail Eden took. I throw everything I have down the bond as I go.

Ash’kaela. Please hear me. We’re coming.

The bond doesn’t snap back; it only vibrates faintly. I don’t understand why distance would do this to a bond that has survived multiple lifetimes. Unless it isn’t distance.

Don’t, Sage warns.

You feel it too, I murmur.

I feel it, he admits. But I’m not talking about it right now. Keep running, Ashán.

He doesn’t have to talk about it. We both know bonds don’t thin from a walk in the woods. Bonds thin when someone lets go of the other end.

I’m vaulting a fallen log at the edge of the meadow, the old gray one Eden used to sit on in the early weeks when her belly was still flat, and she’d tip her face up to the sun like a flower, and the next breath, I’m twenty paces past it, on the down-slope into the trees, and I don’t remember the landing. I freeze and look back at the log.

“Sage? Did we just clear the log?”

… Yes, he says after a moment of silence. Why?

“I don’t remember it.”