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I sat on the bench where I'd sat three weeks ago, and I didn't feel like the same man. I wasn't the same man. I could smell the marsh on my skin from six miles away. I could hear the fireflies' frequency, a low hum at the edge of everything. My cracked rib had knit overnight. When I'd looked in the mirror that morning, the gold in my eyes had spread, and my face had settled into something that wasn't quite thirty-four anymore and wasn't quite anything else. Underneath all of it, steady as a second heartbeat, was her—the thread of her woven through me. She’d given me the consistency of her warmth, making me feel more alive than I ever have.

"You know what you are now," Seabrook said.

"I know." My voice had changed too. It was thicker, and its harmonics made the baskets on the walls hum faintly. "I'm her day husband and her bridge to the living. Her—" I searched for the word and found it in Ewe before English. "Her ʋɔnudrɔ̃la."

"The iron that was meant for her found its true target." Ms. Josephine's voice was level. "Harlan Vance had been to my archive three times. He'd photographed my daughter's house. He'd stood over my sister's grave." She nodded, once. "He's in the channel now with the others. The marsh keeps what it takes."

"You ain't dead," Seabrook said. "You ain't alive, not the way you were. You're kept but willing, and last night you proved you'll kill for what keeps you. That makes you something new." He reached into his coat and brought out a ring of sweetgrass, woven so tight it looked like carved wood. "In the old country, the Adze took day husbands who became her voice in the world. Her hands in daylight. Her warrior when the pale ones came. It's been three hundred years since she had one."

He slid the ring onto my finger, and it fit like it had been measured.

"There's one more thing," Zora said.

She rose, slowly, and crossed to the altar. From beneath it, she drew out a dented biscuit tin, and she put it in my lap. Letters, hundreds of them, tied in bundles with faded ribbon. The top envelope was addressed in handwriting I'd know anywhere—my grandmother's, the looping Ghanaian schoolgirl cursive that had signed every birthday card of my childhood: Mrs. A. Marsh, c/o Brother Seabrook, Johns Island, South Carolina.

"Akosua wrote her every month for thirty-five years," Zora said. "The last one came the week before she passed. You'll want to read it; Addie saved it for you.”

I opened it with shaking hands.

My dearest Addie,

The doctors have stopped pretending, though I’m not afraid. I lived a good life filled with love. That is more than most can say. My dear Malik is coming to you. He doesn't know it yet—but he will. He is so lonely, Addie. He is so angry and lost in the world. He’s confused and doesn't think there is a home for him. He’s come to believe who he is doesn’t fit anywhere. He thinks he has to make himself small to be loved. I told him the stories, the true ones underneath the lies. I’ve given him the knife and told him what iron is for.

Be gentle with him. Exercise patience and let him choose you because when he finally lets himself be seen, you’ll see all the beauty he’s kept hidden. He’s a fierce lover who protects what he loves, so hold on to him for both of us.

I’ll always be in the fireflies.

Your sister always,

Akosua

I couldn't see the page anymore, as if the words flitted away never to be seen again. Addie had crossed the room without my hearing her, placing her hand on my shoulder as Celeste placed a hand on my other one.

"And the community?" I asked when I could speak. "Do you accept this?"

"We accept what we've always accepted." Seabrook's voice was gentle. "She's been perceived as a dangerous killer. But has only ever shown us kindness and protected us from the tried-and-true monsters. She's ours—she came over in the holds with our grandmothers. She's stood in the dark for three hundred years so we didn't have to, and now she's got a man to stand with her in the day and the darkness.” He looked at Addie and me before something in his old face eased.

"You'll stay. Not because you fear her, but because you love her and with her is where your heart has found joy,” he assessed.

"I'll stay," I said. "I'm home."

That night, Addie took me to the marsh one more time, and Celeste came with us. The clearing where I'd killed Vance was silver and clean, and the tide had smoothed the mud. There was no sign of what had happened except that the frogs were louder than usual, as if celebrating. I watched in awe as Addie let her human shape go. Her wings were free, and her light was glowing brightly, with eyes like molten gold. Celeste walked into her embrace without hesitating, and I followed.

Addie told me the binding was never finished, only renewed. Every feeding, every time we surrendered our throats, our eyes open, and whispered, “Consume me,” the thread was pulled tighter, another coil was added to the basket, and another ring was inscribed in the oaks.

“Say it," she said breathily. The wispiness of her tone was akin to the wind and the hull of The White Lion groaning in the dark. "Both of you, I want to see your eyes as you choose to submit to me.”

Celeste went first as she stood in the mud with her head tipped back and her throat bared to the moon. She said it the way she'd been saying it for five years—without fear or shame. She said it like a woman in love who only ever wanted to please and be pleased. "Consume me."

Addie bent to her and fed slowly this time. She was more tender as her mouth sealed at the long line of Celeste's neck while one of her too-many hands slid between Celeste's thighs and worked her dripping slit in the same unhurried rhythm. Celeste's knees gave as her orgasm swept through her every nerve ending as Addie held her up. She came with a sound that let Addie know nobody could please her night wife the way she did. Addie continued to feed on Celeste as her body recovered from her release, then licked the wound closed before kissing her forehead, and let her slide gently into the grass to turn her attention to me.

I thought I knew what to expect considering I'd been fed on four times in three weeks. I’d come to realize every feeding was different and intimate in its own way. Now, standing in the clearing where Vance's blood spilled with my grandmother's iron blade and now the ring Seabrook placed on my other hand, I understood that everything before had been the first stitches. This was the coil pulled tight.

"Consume me," I said.

She enfolded me with her wings as her mouth found the scar on my throat that was hers now and had always been. She bit deep and began to take what she needed from my body. The pain was a door opening, and on the other side was everything she’d ever promised me. Pleasure fell from my lips as I poured into her. Not just my blood, but the last wall. The part of me that had stood at the edge of every room in London watching other people belong. It drained out of me and into her, and I let it go.

She gave me memory of three hundred years of our people. Not just images this time, but the weight of our ancestors. The grandmother from Anlo. Akosua at twenty-four, studying weaving in the marsh, David the night he'd knelt and asked. I saw Celeste walk into her true shape without flinching five years ago, and every night husband and wife who sought her for comfort. The memories moved into me like a congregation filling a church, and I was not crowded but instead filled with contentment.