Page 313 of May: Bloom & Bane

“You’d win that bet.” I look over at Lumi. “How did you two meet?”

“Oh, Posey and I go way back,” Lumi says, settling onto one of the chairs with Eirlys. “We went to school together, back before—” She pauses. “Well, back before everything. She’s one of the only people from then who I—” She clears her throat. “Anyway. She teaches just down the way. Little ones, mostly.”

“Preschoolers,” Posey confirms, beaming. “Three- and four-year-olds. Tiny chaos goblins, every one of them, and I adore them hopelessly.”

“And when Eirlys came along,” Lumi continues, reaching down to tuck the quilt tighter around the baby. “I started… worrying. You know how it is out here. There’s no one. No other babies, no pediatrician you can exactly take a Rhavari infant to—” she says dryly, and I huff a laugh because Elena is our on-call pediatrician. “And I just kept thinking, how do I even know if she’s growing the way she’s supposed to? If she’s hitting the marks she should? So I asked the one person I know who’s spent her whole life around children.”

“And of course I said absolutely, and I have been meddling ever since.” Posey reaches over and lets Eirlys grab one of her fingers, the baby gumming happily at her knuckle. “She’s perfect, by the way. A little advanced even.”

“Here,” Posey says, turning her warm smile on me. “Let me take a peek at her too, while I’m here. No charge for sisters.” She wiggles her fingers at Vaelína again. “Two for one.”

“She’d love that,” I say, passing Vaelína gently into Posey’s waiting arms.

Posey settles her against the crook of one elbow with the easy competence of someone who’s held a thousand babies, already coaxing another gummy smile from her.

The sky darkens, and the warmth on the back of my neck disappears. My awareness prickles. A strange tension spreads across my skin. I turn toward the snow-lined path.

Two figures are coming up it. They move with a synchronized, high-energy bounce that feels entirely out of place in Andrik’s quiet forest. They look like they stepped out of a haunted court performance.

The first has a mop of inky black hair falling out from beneath a slouched, checkered jester’s cap that sits elegantly on his head. His pale face is painted in the classic lines of a smiling jester. Sharp crimson triangles flare up his eyes, a tiny gold star sitting nestled beneath the left one, and a grin that makes him look perpetually mischievous. A long, tarnished gold key dangles from his left ear, brushing his shoulder. The rest of him is just as much a contradiction. Beautiful and wrong in the same breath. His doublet is split clean down the middle, one half deep crimson and the other black as his hair, the old fabric patterned in faded harlequin diamonds where the gold thread has worn to almost nothing. A long slash gapes beneath his left pec down across his stomach, baring a strip of defined muscle, and another tears open from shoulder to elbow, where a cuff of tarnished gold wraps around his bicep, thin chains swaying from it with every step. A ruff frames his throat, crimson, black, and slightly crushed, like something pulled from a costume trunk a few centuries too late. Tall laced boots climb his calves, the toes curling into soft points adorned with tiny bells. A chain-link belt of the same dull gold rides low on his hips.

He should look ridiculous. He doesn’t.

Beside him, his counterpart has a shock of snow-white hair peeking out from a matching purple-and-black cap. His face is painted in the traditional sad makeup, with delicate, downturned violet lines and a painted, somber pout that makes him look devastatingly melancholy. Beneath his right eye, a small crescent moon rests at the end of one violet line, like a tear that never fell. Mirroring his partner, an identical tarnished gold key earring hangs from his right ear.

His doublet is the inverted twin to the other’s, split between deep purple and midnight black. A jagged slash tears open across his ribs, exposing a pale expanse of muscle. Another rip down his left forearm exposes a matching band of gold that binds his bicep. Around his neck, a matching ruff of purple and black sits slightly crooked, giving him the appearance of a beautiful, discarded heirloom. The same heavy belt rides low on his hips, swaying in perfect unison with his partner.

The two of them just stand at the edge of the yard, taking us in—the porch, the babies, the wary cluster of women. The smiling jester’s gaze slides across all of us, brightly assessing us, until it reaches Posey.

And stops.

The perpetual grin falters around the edges, like the face beneath forgot how to hold it up. Both of them have gone rigid, their painted eyes fixed on the woman holding my baby.

The eerie quiet shatters. The tiny bells that tip the curled toes of their boots erupt in an ecstatic jingle.

The white-haired one makes a small, choked sound. And the smiling one lifts his hand slowly, dazed, like he’s moving underwater. He turns it palm-up, and gold light gathers in his cupped fingers, swirling like liquid sunshine. It pulses, and a burst of wildflowers blooms.

He stares at them like he has no idea how they got there.

—TAVI

I know what this is. I have known the word for it since before the cage and the king who put us there—Vaelùmè. (Soulbond)

I’ve heard it in a hundred tongues. I have watched it happen to other people and felt nothing but professional interest, the way you’d note the weather in a country you’ll never visit. But nobody ever mentioned the part where your lungs completely stop working, or that the cruel, rigid lines carved into your cheeks would finally stop pulling.

The scent of her reaches me, and it hits me square in the chest. Wildflowers, oranges, and something warm and golden underneath—summer, a whole season I’ve never once been allowed to stand inside.

Jovi, I force out inside our mind. Do you feel⁠—

Yes. What do we do? he asks.

Look at her. Look at the way the sun hits her hair. Why is she holding a baby? Why am I holding weeds? Why can’t I feel my legs?

Tavi, my chest hurts. Is she a witch? Do you think it’s a curse? Why are your boots jingling so loudly?

I have no idea, but I can’t make them stop. The tiny golden bells on my toes are throwing an absolute festival in the snow. They’re screaming: look at us, look at us, look at us.

She’s a human, I whisper. Jovi, she doesn’t have any magic. She’s small. Do humans like weeds? Why did my magic make weeds?