Page 44 of May: Bloom & Bane

For me. For the monster holding her.

How?

I am hideous like this. Half bone. Half flesh. I cannot even manage to stay whole for her.

“Eden,” I rasp, my voice softer now. “How can you—” I search her face, flushed and feverish. “Look at me. Look at what I am.”

Her eyes meet mine.

They trace across the skeletal side of my face with a slow, heavy heat that makes my heart pound.

Her pupils are blown wide, swallowing the pale green of her irises, until all that’s left are two shimmering pools of darkness.

“I have always known what you were, Sage,” she whispers. “Did you think a few beautiful bones would change that?”

Her hips shift against me, and though it’s not where I need her, the friction sends a jolt of pleasure straight through my core. My hand tightens on her thigh, skelva pressing careful divots into her soft skin.

Claim her, the voice snarls. She’s ours. The bond is right there. Take it. She’s ready.

No, I rasp. She’s been awake for a few days. She needs rest. She needs⁠—

She needs us, it sneers.

Black dahlias have begun blooming in a circle around us, their petals glowing softly in the moonlight.

“Sage,” she breathes. “I want you.”

She leans forward and runs her tongue along the smooth vorí of my jaw. The sound that escapes me is inhuman.

“Eden,” I gasp, my hand trembling where it grips her thigh. “What are you⁠—”

She does it again, her warm tongue slowly licking the edge where bone meets flesh. “Please,” I choke out. “Please, ílyara. I’m trying to hold it together.”

“I don’t want you to,” she whispers.

I sink down onto the cushion of dahlias that have rushed upward to meet us, their black petals as soft as velvet against my skin. My wings flare over us, shielding her from everything but me. The same golden dust as earlier floods the air.

She’s so small beneath me. Her nightgown has ridden up, and I can feel the heat of her bleeding through the thin fabric into me.

“I don’t deserve you,” I rasp, my skelva sliding from her ankle to her knee, while the other cups her face. “But please—please let me have you anyway.”

She looks up at me for a long moment.

Both of me.

I don’t know how else to describe it—her eyes move across my face, the flesh and the vorí, the violet and the black, and she isn’t choosing between them. She’s holding all of it at once, the way she holds everything. The way she held the death-fox and the wounded bird…

And the monster fresh from his grave.

Her fingertips trace the seam of my jaw.

“You already have me,” she whispers. “Both of you.”

Her fingers hook under the strap of her nightgown. She slips it from her shoulder. Then the other. My breath catches as the fabric slips down her chest.

“Please…” she whispers. “Ashán.”

The world turns on its axis.