Page 247 of May: Bloom & Bane

I unroll the map across the desk, as I have a thousand times before, weighing the corners with the same four stones. I smooth the mortal world flat beneath my palms—rivers in faded silver ink. Mountains raised like old scars. And in the cold upper reaches, the forest where everything I have set in motion is finally coming to fruition.

I open the shallow drawer on the left side of the desk. Eleven vials lie in their velvet channels, each stoppered in the same colored wax of its owner’s hair. My fingers pass over them the way a man might touch the spines of beloved books. Black for Ilvaen. Two orange, side by side, never to be separated for the twins. And right in the middle, broad-shouldered even as glass: the deep brown of my Ørvahn§. I nicknamed him Shelter, the night I found him. A creature so large the world only ever saw a weapon, when all he had ever wanted was to be something that soft things could stand behind.

I unstop the vial and squeeze one drop onto the parchment. His blood crawls over the map toward the heart of the forest. After it settles, an icy sphere gathers itself above the desk, and through my son’s blood, I watch the world inside it. Ørvahn moves through the trees like weather, eleven feet of him, and he places each paw as though the forest were made of sleeping children. Ahead of him, staggering through the dark, is the reaper.

I hoped he would just stay away.

I fold my hands and settle in to watch one of my gentlest sons stand in the path of the most dangerous thing in the mortal realm, armed with nothing but his shifted form—because I asked him to.

Every fifty strides, the reaper stops as though he’s been struck, glancing down at his hands like they’re not his own. Then the mark on his chest flares to life and he is himself again.

Ørvahn steps out of the trees ahead of him, dropping to all fours where the trail ends. The reaper sways as his eyes fix on Ørvahn.

“Move,” he rasps. “Or I will move you.”

Ørvahn lowers his massive head, his mossy green eyes locking onto the reaper.

“I said move!”

Ørvahn takes a single step to the left, his magic turning the path’s mouth away from the heart of the forest.

Gently, I whisper to Ørvahn’s consciousness. He cannot help what is happening to him.

The reaper surges forward, a wave of razor-sharp shadow whipping out from his spine. It tears through Ørvahn’s thick fur. His blood smokes in the freezing air. He takes the blow without flinching. This is child’s play compared to the hunting grounds he grew up on.

Ørvahn resets his stance, planting himself across the new trail, and waits for the next blow to land. The next one comes. And the one after.

I open the tall cabinet beside the hearth, and grab the nine tails of braided leather hanging from the hook. They are long worn smooth by my own hand. If my boys must bleed for my war, then I must keep a ledger of my own.

I return to the desk, the nine-tails trailing softly over the floor. Hiss-hiss-hiss. Through the glass of the frost sphere, the reaper strikes again, shadow tearing another line across my son’s shoulder. I drop my robe to the floor, exposing the broad expanse of my back. The black micro-scales along my neck ripple beneath my skin. They shift restlessly. I take the handle of the whip in my right hand and steady my breathing. I cannot stop now. If I pull Ørvahn off the board, this whole thing falls to pieces. I raise my arm and bring the leather down. The crack of the whip is deafening, but the sting is old and familiar. A searing line of crimson bursts across my skin, slicing right through the center of my scales.

The reaper strikes. The lash falls. By the ninth whip, blood has run so far down my legs that it has ruined the fine silk of my robe.

In the orb, my beautiful son stands tall, gently turning the reaper away from Andrik’s cabin.

“Evhael§,” I call. (Still water) “I have need of you, sweet boy.”

The soft scrape of his fingernails slides along the familiar grooves of the stone wall outside my study, guiding him forward. He appears in the doorway, and the firelight makes his long silver hair sparkle, linen bandages wrapped where his eyes should be. He tilts his chin, nostrils flaring.

“You’re bleeding,” he whispers, taking two certain steps forward, stopping short of my bloody robe. “I thought you had stopped this.”

He reaches out a hand, his long, delicate fingers trembling as they find the air inches from my ruined back.

“You promised you’d stop hurting yourself.” His forehead rests gently against the uninjured slope of my shoulder.

“Come now.” My hand rises, settling over his hair. “You needn’t worry about your father. I am the one who is supposed to look after you.”

“But you promised⁠—”

“I know.” I exhale slowly. “And I kept it, Evhael. For a long time, I swear to you that I kept it.”

“Until tonight.”

“Until your brother stood in front of a reaper and let him open his shoulder, rather than raise a paw.” My fingers move carefully, avoiding the tails of his bandages. “I will not stay whole while I send my children into war. You may hate the cost of it. But this is not a decision I will revisit.”

“I don’t hate it.” His forehead presses closer. “I understand it—that is the part I hate.”

The fire settles lower.