Page 267 of May: Bloom & Bane

He eats it the way he always has, with his claws, hunched over it, watching me the entire time as though I might change my mind and take it back.

I never have.

I never will.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Do not be.”

“I was supposed to⁠—”

“You were supposed to herd a beast away from his mate,” I say, “and instead you got caged, and you were relieved about it, and now you are lying in my study eating honey and apologizing to me.”

I look at him.

“Which part of that would you like me to punish you for?”

He lowers his ears another inch.

When he’s finally asleep in front of the fire, snoring like a collapsing barn, I go back to my desk and sit down. I wave my hand over the crystal, and I watch it again.

There is a moment I keep returning to. Not the bond sealing, or the scythe passing through Eden. It’s not even Therael crossing that boundary on a burning foot, though I confess I watched that twice.

It’s after.

It’s the way they all came out of the trees—the bunny, the human, the stitched one, the Horsemen, and the antlered beast with the baby on his chest—and they fell into each other. Not one of them had to be invited.

They just came.

And they stood in that clearing and wept while they held each other, and not once did it occur to a single one of them that they might not be welcome there.

I watch it over and over again.

They’ve always had each other, and they’ve always shown up for each other, crossing burning boundaries and sacrificing pieces of themselves, and they never once stopped to wonder whether someone was out there in the dark who hadn’t been called.

Ørvahn shifts in his sleep, mumbling something about the honey.

I sit in the dark for a long time.

Two seals in under two years.

I can take their memories. I can take their tongues, their wings, their names, their bodies, their lifetimes. I have made men believe they were monsters, too dangerous to be held⁠—

And then somebody holds them anyway, and nine thousand years of architecture falls down like a house of cards.

I take off my glasses, set them on the desk, and press the heels of both hands against my eyes until the dark goes white. I exhale as silently as I can because my son is asleep six feet away and he worries.

And then I put them back on. I have lost two. I will not lose the rest. The curse on the reaper failed because I underestimated the empath. Humans have not always been so… forgiving.

That’s a flaw in design, and a flaw in the design is not a defeat.

It is information.

I have spent nine thousand years learning what they love. I know what they would burn for, who they would run to, and what they’d cut off their own backs to protect. I have been very patient, and I am not finished.

Ten left.

And the next one⁠—