Page 104 of May: Bloom & Bane

“Ashán,” she murmurs.

Eight days of listening to her voice like a message handed under a door, and now she’s right here giving it willingly.

“Again,” I demand.

“Ashán.” Her small, warm fingers trace over the bone of my cheek—entirely unafraid.

“Enough,” I groan, my throat tight. “Enough, or I will not be able to be gentle with you.”

“Then don’t be.”

I laugh. A raspy sound like gravel dragged across a coffin. It is nothing like his calming voice. And yet, she smiles up at me.

“You should be frightened of me,” I tell her.

“Why?”

“Because I have been watching you for eight days.” My fingers spread wide across her back. “I watched you sleep. I watched you eat peaches with your fingers like a little savage. I watched him touch you and I—” The word will not come. I have never had to find it before. “I wanted. I did not know I was permitted to want anything. I did not know a thing like me could.”

“Ashán—”

“And every night I have gone back into the dark and waited for morning just so I could watch you again.” My grip tightens. “That is what you have in your lap, ash’kaela. Not a gentle male. Something that has spent every hour of its entire existence hungry for one woman.”

“Ashán—”

“I have had to break the tips of my fingers to stop from touching you the last three nights while you slept peacefully next to him.”

“You can,” she whispers against my mouth. “You can touch me whenever you want. Especially while I’m asleep.”

I study her face in silence. How can something so sweet be so sinful?

Because half of her was made for me, Sage murmurs inside our head. And half of her was made for you.

“Do you know the difference between Sage and me, mí’maru?” (My little relic)

Her head tilts. “I know the difference in what I feel from each of you.”

“Mm.” I tuck a damp curl behind her ear. “Sage is the fertility half of our soul. The life in our blood. He’s what makes things grow and bloom. He is beautiful.”

I lean in, the tip of my nose brushing against hers, letting her feel the cold contrast of my face.

“I am the death in our blood. The reaper half of our soul. I’m what happens when you’re being threatened… like the night in the meadow with the four Horsemen.”

She places a single finger over my lips to quiet me. “Sage is beautiful,” she agrees. “Do you know what I think is just as beautiful?”

My eyes fall to the shower floor, unable to hold her gaze under the weight of what I am.

She doesn’t let me hide. She leans forward and presses a soft kiss to my skull, and then, one by one, presses her warm lips to every single one of my skelva.

I wrap my hand around the back of her neck, fingers sinking deep into her wet copper hair. I drag her down until her forehead rests against mine, my void-eye flaring.

“You are a terrifyingly foolish little creature,” I rasp, my voice trembling with a reverence so thick it threatens to tear Sage’s throat apart. “To look at a grave and call it beautiful.”

“It’s not a grave,” she whispers against my cold lips. “It’s you.”

Something snaps inside our shared soul. My hands lock around her waist, lifting her clean off my thighs, and I drive all the way up inside of her.

“Can you switch it?” she whimpers against my neck.