Page 166 of May: Bloom & Bane

Gods, Sage stammers in our mind, no longer holding the reins to anything.

This, I rasp. This I can give her.

It doesn’t break a single promise—it only bends toward her, the way I’ve been bending since the first time I clawed my way up into the light to see her face.

Sage. My voice is barely my own. I’m doing this. I won’t bite. I swear it on our vúsha.

Do it, Sage breathes. He relinquishes control of the physical threshold between us.

“I’ll give you every last drop,” I rasp. The tendril at her hip moves fast, sliding lower until it slips between her thighs. “You’ll take my shadow too, won’t you, mí’maru?”

Her breath hitches as her hips tilt forward. The shadow glides closer, tracing her heat through the damp white cotton.

“Please.” She pulls our face down, lips hovering over ours. “I want every piece you’ll let me have, Ash.”

The cool tip of my shadow slides beneath her panties until it finds the slickness covering her pélas. Her fingers tighten in our hair as it parts her, gathering her valúsha until the shadow glides easily over her kísh. I press forward slowly, and the first inch of me sinks into the tight heat of her lavína. She clenches around a piece of my soul that has never, in all my fractured existence, been inside anyone. I feel everything. The wet drag of her walls. The flutter of her pulse where she grips me. The way her body softens and yields, drawing the cold dark of me deeper like she was carved to hold it.

“Ash,” her nails rake down our neck. “I can feel the weight of you filling every empty space inside me.”

She’s validating my absolute reality—that I’m not a phantom, or a curse, but a weight that belongs inside her. The void in my chest bursts open, swallowing her words like a glutton.

Push, Sage commands, his voice thick with hunger. Fill her, Ash. Give her all of you.

The tendril surges forward, expanding as it buries itself as deeply as it can.

“Please don’t stop,” she whimpers, her hips rolling against the length of me. “P-please.”

“Never.” I slide my hand into the hair at the nape of her neck and pull backward until her throat arches toward the ceiling and her spine bows against us. The forbidden line of her pulse stretches. Venya pulses so hard it starts trickling from the length of my fangs.

“Open your mouth for me, ash’kaela.”

Her lips part on a moan, and I let the first drip of venom fall. Her eyes flutter closed as the heavy droplet lands directly on her tongue. Her fingers yank on our hair as she gives a helpless swallow, her throat straining softly to pull my venya down. My shadow responds to her neediness, stroking her with deep, torturous slowness.

“Need more,” she whines.

“Do you want another piece of me, Eden?”

She arches into us, her slicked pélas grinding directly against the base of my shadow.

“More,” she sobs drunkenly against my mouth. “I need you, Ash—need Sage—need both of you.”

Sage roars possessively inside our mind.

—SAGE

The moment Eden’s desperate cry for both of us leaves her venya-covered lips, understanding dawns on us. To pollinate the altheria, it needs a piece of each of us. My life. Ashán’s death.

Eden lets out a moan against our lips.

“Okay, mamé. We’re going to take care of you.” (Mama) I slide my hands down to her thighs, lifting her from the floor. She latches onto my lower lip with her blunt teeth, fingers tightening in our hair as she clings to us. Ashán’s shadow stretches, but never loses its deep connection as she locks her legs around our waist.

As I approach the mattress, lavásia comes off me in waves, turning the plain sheets into hundreds of heavy night-blooming petals that weave into a thick, velvety mattress of deep violet and gold.

I lay her down in the center of the soft bower. The moment her fevered skin hits the cool petals, a long, breathy sigh of relief slips from her lips.

“Sage,” she whimpers, her fingers clawing into the blooms above her head. “Ashán.”

“We’re right here,” I rasp.