Page 239 of May: Bloom & Bane

“...they’re growing back.”

I blink up at him through the haze, uncomprehending his words, until a slow itch starts at the stumps on my back—a slithering spasm under the muscle that feels like a nest of insects waking beneath my skin.

No, Sage whispers. No, please gods, no⁠—

“This wasn’t the end of anything,” I rasp, trying to push myself up. “It was just the first time.”

I look into Damien’s wide, horror-stricken eyes. “I’m going to need Jack back.”

CHAPTER 69

no one ever comes looking

—SEVAHN

In a realm far from here⁠—

The fire has burned low in the curved hearth, throwing long amber shapes across the stone. I stare at the flames. I have always liked this room best at this hour. It is the only hour I am ever truly still.

“Vaelu§,” I call, without looking over my shoulder. (Steady) I know by heart which one of my boys is at the threshold; the softer one comes in carefully, his weight barely touching the floor. “Come in. You do not have to hover.”

He enters. So does his shadow. They are never far apart, my two. Wherever the smaller one goes, the larger one follows, a half-step behind and a head taller. Vaelu’s ears are pinned flat, his tail drawn tight against his leg. Behind him, Ryn§ says nothing—the muzzle sees to that. (Song) I have told him a hundred times he can remove it, but he chooses to keep it fastened. He doesn’t trust the teeth behind it. In fairness, neither do I.

“Tell me,” I say, gentling my voice for Vaelu. He startles so easily.

“She’s safe, Father. In the Rhavari’s territory. Andrik has found her.”

“Good.” The tightness in my chest loosens. “Go on.”

He hesitates, his ears flattening further against his head. Ryn’s shoulders draw up, the muscle in his forearm curling beneath his skin as his hands ball into fists at his sides. His tail winds around Vaelu’s ankle.

“And the other one?” I murmur.

“Father, he’s—” Vaelu’s voice drops.

“How many times?”

The fire pops.

“Twelve,” he whispers. “He’s cut them off twelve times.”

The silence that follows is heavier than the stone walls of the manor. The fire pops again, a lonely, bright spark that dies instantly on the hearth.

Twelve sets of calcified wings left to rot in the dirt while he tries to keep himself from clawing back to her. The number settles over me, and I make the mistake I always make—the one I have never in all this time learned how to stop making—I let it become a picture.

A creature I have never met, alone, somewhere cold and far from here, in the dark. Dragging a blade through his own wings because they refuse to stop growing back, because the pull I wove into the bones of the world will not let him keep what’s his. Twelve times he has opened himself to the bone, twelve times the wings have returned, and twelve times he has reached for the blade again.

I set that in motion. Threads I pulled ages ago, to keep the broken halves of them apart, to make sure none of them ever held the thing that completed them—and look. Look what it does. Look what it makes of a person.

Vaelu keeps his head bowed, his shoulders trembling. Ryn’s chest heaves beneath his leather harness, a low rumble vibrating against the iron of his muzzle.

Anger erupts through me before I can close my hand around it—I sweep my arm across the desk and everything goes flying. Glass, ink, and a hundred years of careful paperwork fling across the room. The decanter bursts against the stone, and a candle tips into the scatter, flames catching hungrily along the spilled pages.

Vaelu flinches back into Ryn.

I stand in the ruins of my composure for three seconds before I make myself do the only thing that has ever carried me through this. I take the picture—the boy, the blade, the wings—and I put it away and lift my eyes to the end of all this instead.

The day every last one of them knows, in their own flesh, what it is to have everything they love taken and no one—no one—ever comes looking.