Page 216 of May: Bloom & Bane

“Wait—” she shouts, her voice cracking with desperation. “Stop!”

I try to turn, but my legs won’t budge. My boots are rooted to the ground.

A familiar thrum hums deep in my chest, and the feeling is so familiar, it makes me sick. It’s an aching pull that I recognize instantly. It’s a soulbond. The same frequency that connects me to Eden.

“Mark!” she screams. “Mark, stop!”

Who is Mark? Why is she calling me that?

Suddenly I’m dropped into a dark box that smells like stale dust and cheap alcohol. In front of me is a small brunette boy. He’s shivering so hard his teeth are clicking together, his knees pulled tight against his chest. He switches on a flashlight, and I realize we’re sitting in an old closet. His eyes are wide with terror. From outside the heavy slatted door, a crash echoes. The sound of glass shattering, followed by a woman’s scream. It’s a raw, wet sound that makes the little boy in front of me flinch so hard he hits his head against the wall behind him.

A sob hitches in his throat, his small hands flying up to cover his own face.

“Don’t look, MK,” someone whispers.

I look around, searching for whoever said it, and my mind reels when I understand it came from my own throat. I am the other person. I’m not watching a memory play out; I am a memory playing out, hiding in the dark, shifting forward on my knees until my small shins press against his.

My hands are tiny, with a white scar across my left knuckle. They tremble, but I force them steady as I pull his hands away from his face.

“Look at me,” I whisper to my twin brother. “MK. Open your eyes.”

His wet, bloodshot eyes lock onto mine as he reaches for me, his fingers digging into my torn sleeves.

Another scream rips through the wood, and MK lets out a whimper, burying his head between his knees. I slide my small palms over his ears, pressing down hard until the sharpest edges of the violence outside our tiny sanctuary are muffled.

I lean in until my forehead is resting against his, and I start to hum. The same way I hum to calm the soil in the greenhouse.

I never learned it from the earth—I brought it with me.

I hum until the vibration fills the tiny closet, creating an invisible barrier between my brother and the monster on the other side of the door.

“Once upon a time,” I whisper against his skin, “there was a prince who lived in a castle made of iron. No one could get in. No one could hurt him. He had a brother who was a great knight, and they sat in the highest tower where the sky was always quiet, and the air always smelled like cotton candy…”

A small gold dragon made of dust floats in the air between us. MK’s breathing starts to slow, his small forehead pressing harder into mine. I keep humming, weaving new stories, while I hold the walls of our little box together.

“I l-love you, Micah,” he mumbles as his body gives way to exhaustion. We stay there for hours. Long after the screaming stops and the house goes silent. The gray morning light finally peeks through the slats in the closet door.

Micah.

The name lands the way a stone drops down a well.

That’s my name. I am Micah—the boy who hums into the dark to keep his brother safe—and the brother clinging to my sleeve, MK… is Mark.

The closet disappears, and I am back in the brutal winter forest, and the woman from before is still there, frozen mid-stumble. Her dark hair covers her face, but I know that I know her. Why else would she be screaming a name that belongs to the boy I held in the dark?

I don’t know how long I lie on the sunroom floor after the vision lets me go. Long enough that the light has changed, and the blood at my temple has dried. Eden smooths her hand over my hair, whispering I’ve got you over and over again.

Ashán? I call out, even though I know he can’t answer yet.

“Vaelí?” Eden’s hand finds my jaw. Her eyes are red-rimmed. “You’re scaring me. Talk to me. What did you see? Was it the woman again?”

I open my mouth to tell her.

And I can’t.

How do I look at my mate, round with our daughter, and tell her I don’t know who I am? That I had a brother. That I had a name before this one. A life where I hid away in a closet, humming to keep someone I loved safe—and I still don’t know what any of it means. I can’t tell her until I understand it myself.

I reach for the one person who has never once pretended the ground was solid.