Page 269 of May: Bloom & Bane

“Yeah,” Damien clears his throat. “We’re—everybody up. Field trip.”

“Babies!” Lumi snickers.

“Walking,” Andrik announces. “We are walking now.”

A blanket sails into my peripheral vision and lands in the snow a few feet away, thrown by someone who clearly thought better of getting closer.

“Poppy sent danishes,” Damon murmurs. “I’ll leave them on the—yes. Somewhere they won’t be… rolled upon. Come along, small king.”

“Told you he would pull through,” Kaeran says. “One part of him specifically… did you see the size of his⁠—”

“Enough,” Caluxe says.

“... You saw it too.” Kaeran chuckles. “There is no way anyone missed it.”

“We saw nothing,” Rasen yells from beyond the treeline.

Therael lingers a moment longer than the rest. “Both of you. Finally.”

The crunch of boots fades one by one, until the world goes quiet around us and there is nothing left in it but her breathing mixed with mine.

Eden pulls back a breath, her lips swollen, copper hair damp from the flurries. Her pupils are blown wide. “Take me up,” she breathes.

Both of us freeze.

“... Up?” Sage manages.

She glances past my shoulder, a wicked smile curling her lips. “You heard me. Take me up, rahnové.”

My hands lock around her hips, lifting her effortlessly. She gasps as her boots leave the snow, her legs wrapping around my waist.

“Hold on, luváel,” Sage murmurs against her hair.

We drive our wings down. The power of the first stroke nearly tears us free of the earth. Snow explodes outward beneath us in a white halo. We burst into the sky, the treetops blurring into a dark smudge of green and white as we break through the canopy.

Eden’s arms cinch tight around my neck, her whole body going taut as the clearing falls away.

“We’ve got you,” we tell her. “We will always have you.”

The moon is so luminous it catches the translucent emerald of our left wing and casts a verdant glow over her face. I take us up through the last of the falling snow, through the thin ribbons of cloud, until the forest is nothing but a memory. This exact span of green and shadow was meant to be the last thing she ever saw. Instead… they’re holding her against my chest. The weapon became the assurance.

“You’re crying.” Eden smiles, catching a blue tear on her thumb.

“I know.”

“Good tears?”

I press my mouth to her frozen fingers. “The best I’ve ever had.”

“I missed you.” She kisses the corner of my mouth. “Two days is entirely too long.”

“Two days,” I echo against her temple. Two mornings she woke without us, two nights she slept with our daughter, an empty space where we should have been.

“Never again,” Sage says.

“Never,” I agree.

Her fingers slide into my hair, legs tightening around my waist. “I was very lonely.”