Page 77 of May: Bloom & Bane

“Eden, are you in there?”

She doesn’t answer, not even a ghost of her heartbeat.

Tear through it. Use your vel’thurá. You control the meadow! Ashán urges.

“What will that prove?” I counter.

You are a Solvernah. There is no door in this world or the next that is meant to be closed to you.

I rest my forehead against the barrier.

He is hiding her! Ashán roars.

“He won’t hurt her,” I whisper, claws digging into my thighs until golden blood runs down them like rain.

You are such a vreshing coward! He sneers. You are letting him turn your scythe into a walking stick. When the Horsemen return, and they will, you will have nothing but a handful of lavender and a broken heart to fight them with.

“ I will not scare her by charging through this wall like a mindless beast.”

CAW.

The scent of chocolate and woodsmoke drifts past me.

I look over my shoulder, and there is a man hovering in the air beside me. Skin as dark as midnight, with an unnatural blue hue underneath. Long, silky black hair spills over his shoulders, braids threaded with gold charms. He’s wearing a coat that moves like it’s breathing, thousands of dark feathers fluttering at the edges. I can’t quite tell if it is a coat or wings.

His eyes find mine, and I immediately wish they hadn’t. They’re the color of nothing, deep and endless like a starless sky.

A single raven feather drifts loose and falls, dissolving before it hits the ground.

“You’re not a Horseman.”

“No.”

“You also don’t belong in the meadow.”

“Also no.”

His voice is warm, unnervingly mollifying. He floats easily, like he has nowhere to be and infinite time to get there.

I study him, pressing against his presence with my vel’thurá, trying to place what he is.

Something ancient presses back, and his lips curl slowly.

“What are you?” I ask.

His dark eyes slowly shift into the same shade of gold that lies on top of a dead man’s chest, shimmering with a light that doesn’t quite belong to the living world.

“Someone who knows what it looks like—” His eyes drift to the invisible barrier. “When a male cannot reach his mate because of a blockade.”

He drifts closer, the gold charms in his braids clinking lightly.

“Are you a reaper?” I ask.

He lets out a boisterous laugh. “No, although I do have a hand in Death.”

“Are you being needlessly cryptic on purpose?”

That earns me another laugh. “Too bad you’re not one of mine,” he says, drifting around me in a circle. “I rather like you.”