Page 81 of May: Bloom & Bane

Could it be?

Damon’s eyes linger one second too long. “Do not,” Tellian says, without looking at either of us.

Damon listens, looking away.

Tellian reaches beneath the star chart, toward something that looks much older, and sets it between us, already opened. The light flickers.

“Did you find the cure?”

His finger traces the page.

“I found something,” he says, “The question is whether you are going to like it.”

“Well… tell us.”

“Damon’s symbol will hold,” Tellian murmurs. “But only for forty-eight hours… after his first cycle begins.”

The book in Damon’s hand drops to the floor with a loud thud. “That is not enough time.”

“No,” Tellian agrees, turning the page. “It is not.”

“Then what do we do?” I ask.

“We better hope she can forgive him,” he says. “All of him. Before the forty-eight hours are gone and the cycle consumes what the symbol was protecting.”

“I will not allow him to go mateless a third time, Tellian.”

He finally looks up from his book, his pale blue eyes reflecting everything, revealing nothing.

“You say that as if the universe cares about your permissions, Therael,” he murmurs. “Therin was a tragedy of timing. Micah was a tragedy of intention. And now Sage… Sage is the tragedy of something that has always been after us for eons.”

I glance at Damon, who’s leaning against a stack of forbidden lexicons, his eyes flashing between gold and black, unable to settle.

I kick down the nearest stack of books, sending a flutter of loose papers through the air.

“Are you honestly pretending we did not have a hand in this?”

Tellian shoves his chair back from the desk, his hands fisting at the edge of his desk. “I pride myself on not being masochistic like you, Therael.”

“Okay,” Damon interjects. “Let us remember why we are here.”

“Ømnara‡ knows it is not to get the help from this vhaelorn‡,” I spit. (bastard) My halo bursts into flames. “You sit here, tucked away in your cozy realm, counting stars while the bond my charge shares is currently bleeding out in my meadow!”

He simply adjusts his glasses and takes a single step toward me. “And you stand in the dirt and pretend it is growth, Therael. We all have our own delusions. Mine are just quieter than yours.”

“He is the same soul, Tellian! Three times we have watched him reach for her, and three times we have let the dark trip him. And what have you done to help?”

Damon sighs, a single raven feather drifting from his cloak. “Gentlemen, please. If we are going to measure our… failures, we are going to need a much bigger tree.”

The air in the library changes gradually. Grass creeps through the gaps in Tellian’s floorboards, thin green shoots curling toward the candlelight. My magic slips its leash, vines begin to crawl the nearest bookshelf.

Tellian notices but says nothing. His jaw tightens, and gold words flicker around his wrists just beneath his cuffs.

Single letters turn into fragments that turn into full sentences. They slither toward his spine like fire finding oxygen.

“Tellian,” Damon says quietly.

The books begin to tremble, spines rattling, pages straining from the words inside responding to his power.