Page 263 of May: Bloom & Bane

Damien’s bottom lip wobbles.

“Every one of them is another hour she got to keep breathing,” Ashán says. “Every one of them is another hour my daughter kept growing. Twelve scars because the only thing that stood between my mate and my own hands was a man who couldn’t cut—” his grip tightens, “—and picked up the blade anyway.”

Tears run down Damien’s face. “I maimed you⁠—”

“You saved me.” Ashán corrects. “They’re not what I lost. Do you understand me, Dam? “They’re what I kept.”

Damien sobs. It is the quietest thing that has happened in this clearing all night, it is also the loudest. His shoulders collapse, and he presses his face into my son’s shoulder. This enormous, silver-threaded creature folds down onto the snow, crying like a boy, and Ashán holds him, one hand cradling the back of his skull, and lets him.

Damon’s claws have dug burrows so deep into his chest that gold drips down his midnight skin.

I look away, because some things are not mine to watch.

When Damien finally lifts his head, he drags the heel of a stitched hand down his face and clears his throat.

“Jack says you look like hell,” he rasps.

“Tell Jack he’s welcome to come say it himself.”

“He heard you. He says big words for someone who cried on him.”

“I did not.”

“Big guy.” Damien wipes his face again. “You wept.”

Ashán scoffs.

“... Luci would like it noted that he found the display very moving.”

The forest parts for them all at once. Four riders come out of the darkness on the north side of the clearing. The Horsemen have arrived.

Famine is off his mount before it’s stopped. He hits the snow at a sprint, his hood thrown back, robes dragging through the drifts. He does not stop for me or Ashán. He drops to his knees in front of Eden.

“May I?” he asks.

Eden nods.

Rasen’s hand hovers a careful inch over the curve of her belly, and the mark he left answers him. The antler branch flares to life beneath her coat, like sunlight through a window. Rasen closes his eyes and exhales. “It held.”

“It did,” Eden whispers. “You can touch her, Rasen. You know that.”

He looks toward Ashán, always respectful, the other three could learn a lot from him.

Ashán takes Rasen’s hand and lays it over Eden’s belly.

“She’s kicking!” Rasen bows his head over her stomach.

Kaeran comes through the snow with his hammer still out and blood on his knuckles. He stops in front of Ashán and looks at the fractures running through his flaming skull. His eyes follow the black ichor crusted down his chest, and over the ruined places where his wings used to be.

“You look like shit,” Kaeran says.

“I’ve had a rough couple days.”

“You finally sealed that bond.” He sets down his hammer, rolls one shoulder, and looks at a tree. “Glad you are not dead.”

“Me too.”

He walks off toward the horses without another word, which, from Kaeran, is a sonnet.