Page 205 of May: Bloom & Bane

“Ash’kaela,” I purr back against her lips. “I think you seriously underestimate how much I would enjoy that.”

The day unfolds the way all of them do these days—slow and stupidly good.

Eden paints in the sunroom nest while Sage hovers, pretending he isn’t hovering. Droot conducts his daily inspection of all nine nests and finds them acceptable. The mark on her belly catches the light when she stretches, and every time it does, something inside of me settles.

This is the part I never let myself imagine in all those nights of being a thing locked in someone else’s dark—a nothing afternoon, Eden humming, Sage fussing, and our baby growing bigger every single day.

So I notice when it goes wrong.

Sage reaches for the pink paint, and his hand stops halfway, frozen an inch above the jar. His fingers flex and then finally close around the paint before handing it to Eden.

You paused, I say.

Did I? He murmurs. Lost my train of thought.

His pulse is elevated. There is nowhere in this body he can hide a single thing from me. He knows that, which is why the lie is so strange—Sage doesn’t lie to me. We pulled each other out of the void. We don’t do this anymore.

Thorn? I ask, because three days ago it was a thorn, and yesterday it was the sun in his eyes, and the day before he just didn’t answer at all.

Mm, he says.

I let it go, but the wrongness of it is like a draft under a door I can’t find. Eden laughs at Droot, and Sage turns to watch her. He is so helplessly in love that I tell myself I’m imagining the cold. A man this happy couldn’t be hiding anything worth the fear curling inside of me. Right?

I am very good at guarding this family from the dark outside this house.

I have never once had to guard it from the dark inside.

After lunch, Sage drifts toward the greenhouse, wiping his hands on a rag, and murmuring about the bloodroot needing attention. He kisses Eden’s forehead while she yawns and informs us she’s going to crawl into one of our eight hundred nests “for just a second,” which means in approximately ninety seconds she will be unconscious and staying that way until she needs to pee.

He walks into the greenhouse, and I am delighted. It’s my favorite room in the house, though I’d sooner reap myself than tell Sage that. Over the past few months, I’ve found I quite enjoy relaxing while I watch him work. Even the void inside me likes the way the sun pours through the glass.

We’ve been out here for most of the afternoon working—working is generous. Sage is bent over the workbench with the focus of a master craftsman, coaxing, pollinating, and murmuring encouragement to a row of his more specialized cultivars. And I am doing what I do best on this particular project: offering expert structural feedback.

That one’s crooked, I murmur.

It’s not crooked. It’s got a natural curve⁠—

It’s crooked, Sage. No one wants that. Trust me, I rasp.

Since when are you the authority? He grumbles.

Since I have a set of my own and she’s never once complained about my work, I pause, savoring the flush climbing up his pointed ears. Cultivate it like mine, and you can’t go wrong.

This is a gift, not a competition, he sighs, the vines along his forearm bristling.

Everything’s a competition, flowerboy. You’re just losing this one.

He opens his mouth to argue when the greenhouse door creaks.

We both freeze.

“There you are.” Eden stands in the doorway, hair wild, one hand resting on her belly. “You disappeared. I made those little sandwiches you guys like⁠—”

Her eyes flick to the large glass case Sage usually keeps covered. His pulse trips, and I have never in my existence been more grateful to share this body than I am in this moment.

Her sleepy gaze wanders over the plants lining the shelves, her head tilting adorably.

Here it comes, I say gleefully. Here it comes, Sage.