Page 74 of May: Bloom & Bane

I tuck my wrist behind my back. “Well, you’d be the only one.”

“Come sit.” He gestures to the moss-covered log.

I hesitate.

He lowers himself onto the mossy log with the slow grace of a falling leaf.

“Sit, Eden. The trees will hide your scent for a few moments. They owe me a favor for the last pruning.”

I sink onto the log. Minutes pass before either of us says anything.

“You do understand what Sage is, correct?” he murmurs.

“I’ve been awake for a few days. I don’t even understand what I am,” I answer truthfully.

“Sage is the first of his kind,” Therael answers. “His kind normally does not survive rebirth. However, he is special.”

I nod in agreement.

“Though he is the first of his kin, there are many with reaper blood.” I don’t understand where this is going. “And I need you to know something, Eden.”

My eyes meet his.

“Had any one of them found their mate feeding another, regardless of the reason, they would not have been able to control the calling of the grave.”

“He was starving!” I shout. “I will not apologize for helping someone who was in need.”

“I am not your enemy, Eden. I do not tell you this because I think you have done wrong,” he says firmly. “I am telling you so you know that Sage did something impossible by letting Rasen go.”

“He let him go?” I peek at the meadow behind us.

“He did.”

My stomach twists in guilt, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s my own or Sage’s.

“Even if he let him go, there was no reason for him to hurt him in the first place,” I rebut.

Therael leans back and strokes his chin. He looks like a teacher waiting for me to understand the answer.

“No reason?” he hums. “Eden, to a Reaper, blood is the map of the soul. When Rasen tasted you, he did not just take a meal. He walked into the middle of Sage’s sanctuary and set a fire. The grave does not negotiate with fire. It smothers it.”

“But he did negotiate. He let him go.”

“He did.” Therael nods, a single leaf falling from his halo. “He fought every instinct programmed into his biology because you asked him to. He chose your mercy over his nature. That, Little Empath, is the most terrifying thing a monster can do.”

A shiver travels up my spine.

“I want to understand him, but he needs to understand that this isn’t something I can control… these feelings.”

Therael raises a brow at me, the corner of his lips lifting. It isn’t lost on me how hypocritical that statement is.

“If you were strolling through the meadow next week, and you found Sage kneeling with his fangs in another woman, how would you feel?”

My stomach drops before he even finishes the sentence.

“Rasen was starving… it was like his hunger was my own. It hurt.”

“That is not why you helped him.”