Page 217 of May: Bloom & Bane

“I just need a minute,” I tell her. “Would you put the kettle back on?”

She doesn’t want to leave me. I can feel it, but she kisses my forehead and makes her way into the kitchen.

The moment she’s gone, I call for him.

Therael. If you can hear me. I need you.

A swirl of leaves spirals up from nothing in the center of the sunroom. Therael steps out of the vortex, takes one look at me, and his face falls.

“How much did you see?”

I push myself up, and my head revolts.

“Who is Micah?”

Beneath his translucent skin, the warmth of amber traveling through his veins halts, replaced with a pale winter blue. The leaves of his halo turn yellow and brittle.

“Where did you hear that name?”

“From my own mouth,” I rasp. “I was in a closet with a little boy named Mark.” My hands won’t stop shaking. “Therael, I had a brother. I had a life I don’t remember, a name that wasn’t this one—and I need you to tell me.” My voice cracks. “Who is Micah?”

He slowly lowers himself onto the floor in front of me, the way you would approach a wounded animal.

“I cannot” he whispers.

“You can’t?”

“I cannot tell you who Micah is.” His eyes find mine. “Not because I don’t know. I know exactly who he is. I have always known.” The color of his eyes begins to swirl. “But there are things about you that I am bound from saying. You know that. I have never once hidden it from you—I told you there were truths I would not be able to give you, no matter how badly I wanted to.” He pats my knee. “And I want to, Little Reaper. You cannot imagine how badly I want to.”

The Horsemen tried to convince me that Therael had been keeping things from me for the fun of it. But staring into his eyes, at the way he can’t quite hold my gaze without the glowing currents of his veins stuttering in his throat, I know they were wrong.

He isn’t toying with me. He’s grieving while he watches me drown an inch from his hand without any way to throw me a rope.

“I believe you,” I murmur. “If you can’t tell me who I was, then tell me what you can. Anything. Give me something to hold onto before I lose my mind trying to fill in all the missing pieces by myself.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. The frost in his veins slows, like grains of sand falling into an hourglass.

“I cannot tell you who you were,” he says finally, “but I can tell you what is true—and you must listen closely, Sage, because this is the most I am able to give you.”

The leaves of his halo resume their twirling.

“The seed that withered in the frost, still remembers what was lost.

In every life, beneath the sun, the hunter’s chase was never done.

You chased after a mirrored light, a phantom spark beneath the night.

A sister’s shroud, a borrowed flame, to find the hearth that knows your name.

You hunted where the echo stayed, by one small piece of soul betrayed.

But look behind the iron door, the ghost you fear, the skin you wore.

Is not a curse the heavens made, but a shelter where your grief was laid.

To wake the man, you break the bough, and bleed the past into the now.”

The brittle, yellow leaves of his halo rattle as the last line leaves his mouth. A puff of gold magic snaps through the air. He winces, the frost in his veins pulsing erratically. Whatever he just did hurt him, and he did it anyway.