Page 42 of May: Bloom & Bane

One of Sage’s massive wings, now completely skeletal, sweeps around me. The new white bones clink like a cage of ivory.

My knees threaten to give out. The vine holds me steady with little effort. Across the meadow, the bell-headed figure hasn’t flinched. He stands his ground as the symbols on his helmet start to glow. The beaked figure drifts sideways into the shadows, the tip of his beak clicking in anticipation.

“We did not come for a fight, Reaper,” says the bronze colossus. “We came for a resolution. Therael’s warning was not a threat—we just want to find our mates, as you have.”

“Your mates can burn,” Sage growls, the sound whistling through the exposed bone of his jaw. “As I told Therael, I will not rush my mate.”

The headless rider finally moves, his midnight horse taking a single ghostly step forward. Its hooves leave frost-covered craters in the dirt.

“Seal the bond, or we will be forced to improvise.”

“Did you just threaten my mate?” The warm, textured muscle of Sage’s left arm goes cold, the skin dissolving into a fine, gray ash that smells like snuffed candles. It blows away in the wind, revealing more stark white bone.

“Sage…” I whisper.

The bell-headed figure reaches up and slams a massive, gauntleted fist against the side of his own helmet.

Clang.

A ripple of distorted air tears across the meadow, shattering the glass in the kitchen window behind us. It hits like a missile, designed to deafen and disorient. But it never reaches me. Another wing sweeps over me, wrapping around me like a shield. The sonic wave hits the bone lattice and shatters against it.

“You must have underestimated what I would do to keep my mate safe.” Sage’s voice no longer comes from his throat; it’s a chorus of a thousand whispers filling the air around us. “I am the one who decides what stays buried. And if you don’t leave now, it will be the four of you, in this meadow.”

The headless rider pulls hard on the horse’s reins, the stallion rearing back as a frost-covered sword bleeds into existence.

“Leave. Now. Or there will be no bodies left for your mates to find,” Sage snarls.

The bell-headed figure hits his bronze helmet again.

Sage steps forward, his wings expanding until they blot out the moon, casting the entire meadow into shadow. The ground screams beneath his feet. Giant dripping thorns as long as lances erupt from the dirt in a circle around us, forming an impenetrable thicket.

“I said leave,” he says, the chorus of whispers rattling my teeth. “If you step foot on this soil again, I will not just reap you. I will unravel the very concept of your existence.”

The antlered one lets out a thin wail of frustration, his gaunt hands clutching at his stomach as he looks at me one last time—a look of such profound, starving grief that I have to stop myself from reaching out to him.

The headless rider yanks his reins once more, and with a sound like a million bees buzzing inside my ears, they simply dissolve into thin air.

The vine wrapped tightly around my waist lifts me until I’m eye level. I run the back of my knuckles along the polished bone of his cheek.

“Sage,” I whisper. “They’re gone. Look at me.”

He slowly tilts his head down. The lavender in his right eye flickers, softening as it meets mine.

“You’re safe, mí’vashé,” he rasps. (My calm) “I will never let anything harm you.”

CHAPTER 17

ashán

—SAGE

The air tastes like decay. The meadow is littered with scars. My body is thrumming with the aftermath of violence I was fully prepared to commit.

I would have erased them. All four. I would have reached into the fabric of time and unmade them.

What scares me is how natural it felt—like breathing.

You needed me, the voice rasps in my mind.