Page 174 of May: Bloom & Bane

Why did the God of the Afterlife feel the need to mark him?

“Damon doesn’t do things by accident, Sage. If he marked you, it means something.” He slowly lifts his left hand, turning it over so the light hits the metallic thread holding his wrist to his forearm.

“I didn’t just visit Aevhorath, Sage. I died. My body was shattered beyond anything mortal magic could mend. But because I am one of the twelve soulbonds, Damon refused to let my soul cross over. I don’t know what he did. He made me promise never to ask… but he gave me a way back to Winnie.”

“You... let him sew you back together?” I gasp.

Damien lets out a humorless laugh as his eyes drop to the table.

“Damon couldn’t regrow what was lost. He tried. So, he reached into the soil of the afterlife and dug up the corpses of my past two incarnations. He reanimated them—and then, it was time for me to prove how much I needed to come back to my wife.”

“Wait. You’re not saying⁠—”

“Damon couldn’t do it for me, Eden,” he clarifies. “The gods are restricted by an unknown force.”

His knuckles tense where they rest on the island.

“Winnie is the only thing keeping these stitches in place. The longer I stay away from her, the more the magic starves, and my flesh starts to remember it’s supposed to be dead.”

“Why are you staying away from her?” I ask.

Slowly, his rigid posture bleeds into something more delicate. When he lifts his head, the guarded intensity in his eyes is replaced by a soft intelligence.

“I can feel your gift,” he says. “I’m Lucifer, by the way. I’m not sure if I’ve formally introduced myself. You can call me Luci, everyone else used to.”

“You can feel my empathy?” I murmur.

“I can,” he says, giving a small bittersweet smile. “And right now, your heart is bleeding for us. You should know, Damien isn’t staying away from Winnie because he has to. He’s staying away because he’s terrified of his own reflection.”

“What do you mean?” Sage asks.

“The night he finished stitching himself together, he crawled his way from the graveyard, dragged his broken body all the way across town to their front door. He was barely alive—a patchwork of dead men held together by nothing but sheer willpower and silver thread. He finally made it to the porch and knocked.”

Lucifer swallows, his eyes darkening from the memory.

“Winnie saw his reflection through the window, and she let out a bloodcurdling scream.”

My hand flies to my mouth.

“He thinks it was disgust,” he whispers. “Damien truly believes she screamed because she was repulsed by what he had done to his body. The trauma of it broke something inside him. He hasn’t been able to speak a single word to her since that night. His throat locks the moment he even thinks about speaking to her.”

My heart shatters into a million pieces. “So he’s just… not going back?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “He could never stay away from her. That’s why he’s been in your meadow the past couple of days… so no one has to look at him. But the moment the sun goes down… he goes back to her. He covers every mirror in their house, and he won’t let her turn on a single light. He only allows her to touch him when she can’t see the stitches.”

A tear slips down my cheek, and Nook vibrates softly beneath my feet.

“She wasn’t disgusted,” I breathe. “She buried him. She thought he was dead.”

Lucifer’s smile falters.

“We’ve told him, Eden. But when the soul takes a wound that deep, logic doesn’t heal the scar. Damien’s mind has convinced him that the dark is the only place he is safe from hurting her. The only place he can love her without exposing her to his reality.”

The dark is the only place he is safe.

Is that what my reaper is doing right now? Rotting in the dark corners of his mind because he thinks his reality is too terrifying for me to look at?

“You’ll stay,” Sage murmurs. “Until you’re ready to spend your days with your mate, you have a room here.”