Page 203 of May: Bloom & Bane

Did he not feel the invasion?

Thorn, I say. Caught me under the nail.

The lie comes out easily, but if he didn’t feel it, there’s no reason to worry him.

Mm, Ashán hums, already drifting back toward his nap. Be careful with the bloodroot. Eden likes those.

Eden doesn’t even like snowdrops.

But Lumi does, a dark voice whispers in my mind.

CHAPTER 59

a botanical study in symmetry

—ASHÁN

There are nine nests in this house, and not one of them is defensible. I have brought this to Sage’s attention. Repeatedly. The reading nest in the alcove has two sightlines and a window at her back. A child could breach it. The porch nest is, generously, a target with cushions. The nest in the sunroom he’s proudest of has exactly one exit, which means it’s not a nest; it is a box that hope lives in. I have explained this, and he listens with the vacant warmth of a male waiting for me to shut up so he can go back to fluffing things.

So I have taken matters into my own hands. Eden is asleep in the bedroom nest with one hand tucked under her cheek, and the other draped over Vaelína. I send a thread of shadow along the windowsill, and a second drawn across the doorway like a tripwire. I’ve reinforced the seams of the nest until the whole structure kills me before it lets anything reach her—which is the point.

You’re nesting, Sage hums insufferably from the back of our skull.

I am not nesting. I am establishing a perimeter.

You rearranged the shadows by her head three times, he singsongs.

The angle was wrong. I double down.

You hummed, he chuckles.

Shadows do not hum. There is a difference between nesting, which is what birds and Sages do, and guarding, which is a serious tactical posture adopted by serious entities.

If he cannot tell the two apart, then, frankly, his security clearance was always going to be revoked.

Eden sighs in her sleep and rolls over, her belly pressing into the cushion of dark I’ve laid along her side. The small spark inside her pushes back against me through the nest’s shadow lining.

“Well, hello, míní.”

She wants a story, Sage says.

I know what my daughter wants.

Our daughter, Sage corrects.

I unspool a thin sliver of myself down toward the curve of her, the way I do every night—the way I will apparently do for the rest of my existence, because I am a creature of pure menace who has been completely undone by a legume.

“The world outside this house is very loud, and very bright,” I murmur. “People are terrified of the dark. They build fires, they light candles, and they spend their whole lives running from the shadows because they think the dark is where things go to die.”

She lets out a soft hum through the bond, her tiny energy shifting and settling into the dark.

“But they are wrong. The dark isn’t an ending. The dark is where things are kept safe until they are strong enough to grow. You are resting in the quiet dark of your mamé right now. And I am the dark that wraps around this nest to make sure nothing wakes you before it’s time.”

Eden’s breathing deepens as she burrows further into the crook of Sage’s neck. Her small hand slides over the shadow-ribbon on her belly.

“There are things in this world that love the light because it makes their targets easier to see,” I whisper. “But they have to come through the shadows to get to you. And in the dark, little nestling, they will always find me. You may carry the sun, but you are guarded by the night.”

She gives a final, sleepy kick against my palm before her energy slows, dropping into the quiet rhythm of sleep.