Page 213 of May: Bloom & Bane

“And yet you spend your nights soaked in our⁠—”

“FINISH that sentence, and I’m telling Droot you have a secret stash of skullberries taped underneath the kitchen sink!”

Sage laughs so hard our flight wobbles.

We pitch left, dropping below the cloud line, and the forest gives way to a rolling pasture I don’t recognize. Fence lines, a scatter of barns, and paddocks stitched together like a quilt.

A pale-pink sign comes into view, swinging over a gravel lot:

CEASEFIRE CREEK WILDLIFE SANCTUARY.

A blonde woman crosses the lot below us with a bucket in each hand. She stops mid-stride when she sees our shadow, and sets both buckets down, cupping her hands around her mouth to yell: “THE LANDING ZONE IS NOT THE GOAT PEN!”

Sage banks wide of the goat pen, pointedly, I think, and sets us down soft as a falling leaf. His wings settle and fold.

The goats scream anyway.

The blonde woman picks her buckets back up and crosses over to us, and I’m finally able to see her face.

“Elena,” I say, surprised.

“Eden.” She grins, abandoning the buckets one last time. “Sage, when I got that voicemail, I genuinely thought one of the volunteers was pranking me.”

“Voicemail?” I look up at Sage. “What voicemail? And when did you get a phone?”

“Oh, it’s saved forever. I literally listen to it on repeat.” She clears her throat, dropping her voice as raspy as she can get it. “Hello, Elena Mercer. We have met. I was the tall green one. My mate requires your… machine. We will compensate you in whatever currency you prefer, including but not limited to: money, rare flowers, or assistance removing an unwanted haunting, curse, or lingering spirit from your property. We are very qualified,” she chuckles. “No compensation is necessary. Just bring Damien by sometime so Penelope can see him again.”

I turn around in the blanket. “Sage? Ash?”

“Ashán helped me with the script,” Sage says.

“I told you not to scare her,” Ashán corrects. “But you wound up sounding like a strange robotic vampire caught in the fourteenth century.”

“Why would I need your machine?”

Elena’s whole face lights up.

“Oh my God, you don’t know.” She looks at Sage and then back at me. “You didn’t tell her?” She presses both hands over her mouth, muffling a squeal. “Okay! Okay, okay, okay. Come on. Come inside.” She grabs onto my arm, pulling me toward the long building with a pink door. “Eden, you’re about to be so glad you brought a blanket.”

The inside of the building smells like clean linens and rubbing alcohol. Elena leads us past a couple of closed doors and into a small, sunlit clinic room. Sitting in the center of the space, next to jars of animal salve and rolls of gauze, is a sleek, high-tech-looking machine.

“Elena,” I whisper, “what is that?”

Sage steps into the room, and when I look up at him, the nerves I felt threaded through the bond all morning are all over his face, petals shifting uncertainly along his collarbone.

“Elena explained it to us,” he murmurs. “It works just like the ones humans use.”

He tucks a stray lock of my hair behind my ear.

“We can feel her every day, Saevúra. But we’ve never seen her. We couldn’t take you to a healer. There’s no one in this realm we would trust with what she is. And then we remembered Elena, and what she does for a living.”

Tears pour down my face faster than I can wipe them away.

“We wanted to give you her face, ash’kaela,” Ashán adds. “You give her everything. Your body, your warmth, your blood. It only seemed fair that someone finally give you something back.”

Sage’s thumb catches the tears falling as he presses his lips to my forehead.

“I confess it was not entirely selfless. I have dreamed of her face. I would like to know if she looks like you.”