Page 202 of May: Bloom & Bane

His eyes hold mine, silently asking for a final concession.

I give him a single, stiff nod.

“This will not hurt her,” he says. “Either of them. I would sacrifice sustenance first.”

He sinks to one knee in front of her. “Token of intent.” He takes the tourmaline from her palm and rests the scale on the highest point of her belly. Then he reaches for the sharp tip of one great antler, dragging his thumb across it until a single bead of black wells against his fingertip.

“With this,” he murmurs, the drop falling onto the stone. “I declare the harvest of this house off-limits to hunger. What grows here belongs to the earth, and what leaves here is guarded by the Famine.”

The scale drinks in his essence, and the tourmaline flares bright, gold flooding into the black striations like dawn caught in lavarock. From under the stone, thin branching lines sweep across her skin. A tracery of antler-branches as delicate as a birthmark.

The stone crumbles, dark ashes falling through Eden’s fingers as she tries to catch it.

“Oh my,” Eden breathes, tears filling her eyes. “It’s—wow. It feels like I just drank a mug of warm soup.”

Our daughter pushes up from the inside, the same way she reaches for Ashán’s shadow in the dark—studying the new thing, tasting it, and humming back her verdict for the whole kitchen to feel.

Rasen lets out a rasp, his hands hovering over Eden’s belly.

“She answers,” he whispers. “The custom asks the child’s nature to accept the guard. They almost never—” He swallows hard.

Eden reaches out to guide Rasen’s hand to her stomach.

My heart leaps into my throat.

Ashán, I warn internally, my muscles locking as the Horseman’s massive clawed hand is drawn toward our mate’s delicate belly.

His hand settles over the curve of her like dusk settling over a field. It covers the whole mark, his claws carefully curved away from her skin.

Rasen isn’t breathing, and I’m not entirely sure I am either.

“She is… so bright,” he whispers as he stares down at Eden’s stomach. “Like the first sprout breaking through the winter soil. She is not afraid of me—at all.”

“Of course she isn’t,” Eden says softly, her fingers still resting over the back of his hand. Tears slide down her cheeks, but her smile has never looked more radiant. “She knows who her protectors are. And she knows you just promised to keep her safe.”

Droot lets out a soft chirp from my shoulder, his light fading into a sleepy lavender. The Antler Bird belongs to the nest now.

Rasen flinches, his dark eyes going wide, fixed on whatever he’s feeling through Eden’s skin.

“She’s—” his voice cracks. “She is giving. I’m not—I am not taking. I would never take from—she is pushing it into me.”

The little beastie is feeding the hungry Antler Bird, Droot observes, his little mouth pulling into a smile.

My daughter, months before her first breath, found the starving thing at her gate, and ran her small, bright energy over his endless hunger—exactly like her mother.

Rasen’s shoulders are quivering. The Horseman of Famine is kneeling on my kitchen floor, hand cradled over a child who is not his, being fed for the second time in the long history of his existence by someone who wants nothing back from him.

He weeps silently.

I wanted to hate this, Ashán says quietly, his shadow going soft against our spine. How can I? She’s exactly like her mamé.

The mark glows for a week before it fades to something only the morning light can find when it hits her skin just right. Eden starts each day standing sideways in the mirror, finding the right angle until the sun lights up the fine-gold design. She traces over it with slow fingers, smiling like she’s keeping a secret from the rest of the world.

There are now six nests scattered around the house, and Nook has grown another hook at exactly antler height to hang the basket of goodies he brings Eden twice a week. These have been the sweetest weeks of my life.

I thin the bloodroot mindlessly while I watch Eden paint on her canvas. Then, the sunlight is wrong, and pressure crushes down on my skull. When I look down, my hands aren’t my own. They’re pale and narrow—they’re human. There’s a thin white scar across the left knuckle I have never had before. When I open my fist, a single snowdrop lies in my palm. The little white flower falls, and the moment it hits the soil, my hands are green and broad again. A bee drones past unbothered. The whole world carries on like I didn’t just become a different being.

Your pulse spiked, Ashán murmurs. What was that?