16. What Stays Buried
what stays buried
—EDEN
Ican’t hear the words. But I can feel them through the door, and the vines Sage grew on the other side of it. His fear reaches me anyway.
It would be easier to focus if my own blood weren’t screaming for his.
Whatever his magic poured into the air, it didn’t leave when he did. It’s still in me—settled under my skin, patient as a banked ember—and every heartbeat fans it.
I press my forehead against the cool wood and try to breathe.
In. His fear, sharp and rising.
Out. My own pulse, frantic and useless.
There are two fires burning inside of me right now, and they will not stop confusing one for another.
“Nook,” I whisper. “Open the door. Please.”
The floorboards creak apologetically.
“Traitor,” I breathe.
The lights dim in guilty defeat. A cupboard opens somewhere behind me, as if a handful of snacks might somehow make up for the betrayal.
Tiny thumps catch my attention. Another cupboard swings open, and Droot pops his head out, clutching a pawful of banana crisps.
His ears fold flat.
Big Bird okay?
I sit down on the floor. “Come here, Droot.”
He hops onto my lap, stuffing every banana crisp into his mouth at once.
“You can feel it too, can’t you?”
His color pulses a worried shade of blue.
“Let’s wait for Big Bird together, okay?”
When I open my eyes, the floor is gone, and a green canopy billows softly overhead.
I blink a couple times.
I’m not curled beside Droot anymore. I’m tucked beneath blankets upstairs.
“Sage?”
He’s sitting on the floor, mismatched eyes locked on me.
“Hi, Saevúra,” he whispers.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry I had to leave earlier.”
I pat the bed beside me. “Come up here first. Then we can talk.”
He doesn’t move for a moment.
His wings pull tight against his back.
“I don’t think I should.”
I frown. “Why not?”
He looks down at his hands. “Because I’m not entirely sure what I am anymore.”
I pat the blanket again. “That makes two of us then, doesn’t it?”
He looks up at me.
“Neither of us knows who we are, Sage. But maybe…” I reach my hand out. “We can find out together.”
He crawls into the bed beside me and pulls me flush against his chest.
“I wouldn’t want to not remember with anyone else,” he murmurs.
“Sage?”
“Yes, mí’aelvára?”
“Do you ever wonder if we were together—before the glass box?”
He squeezes me a little tighter.
“I think I’ve looked for you in every version of my life,” he whispers. “Whether I remember the details or not, my sírael recognizes yours. It’s the only thing that feels familiar in a world that makes no sense.”
“I don’t care, you know?” My voice breaks the quiet.
“Care about what?”
“About whatever you did before. Even if it was horrible. I want a fresh start. Just me and you.”
“You’d give that?” he asks. “Your forgiveness before you even know what you should forgive me for?”
“You talked to a sleeping woman in a glass box every night, just so she didn’t feel alone.” I trace the leaves on his forearm. “How bad could you have been?”
Droot lets out a tiny, whistling snore against Sage’s neck.
“Do you want me to tell you about the visitor?”
“I do.” I snuggle deeper into his chest. “But you have had a very long year, Sage. And you barely slept through any of it. We can talk about it in the morning. We’ve had enough excitement for one night.”
I stare at the ceiling for what must be hours. My throat feels like I’ve been swallowing sand, and the only thing I can think of is a warm cup of tea. I look over at Sage. Droot is still cuddled in the dip of his collarbone. They look so peaceful.
I lie here until I think my bladder might burst, and then I finally decide I’m not abandoning him by using the bathroom and going down into the kitchen.
I slip out from under the heavy weight of his wing. My toes curl against the warm wooden floor.
“Did you do that for me?” I whisper to Nook.
A trail of warm light flickers to life along the bottoms of the walls, patiently waiting until I take the first step.
“Thank you, Nook.”
The kitchen is bathed in moonlight. A cupboard slowly opens. Rows and rows of teas line the shelves: peppermint, lavender, Earl Grey, green tea, jasmine. Every flavor a girl could want.
Chamomile catches my eye.
I pull down the tin and set the kettle on the stove. Nook does the rest.
While I wait for the water to boil, a soft sound catches my attention. I glance around the kitchen and find nothing. The tiny pained sound rings out again.
A small, black-and-white bird, like the one in the meadow, is sitting outside the glass door. Its wing is bent at an odd angle, and it struggles to right itself.
My heart clenches.
“Oh, you poor thing,” I whisper.
I slide the door open, and the cool night air hits me. I sit down next to the wounded bird and hold out my hand.
“It’s okay,” I coo. “I won’t hurt you. Come here, little one. Let’s get that wing fixed.”
It shivers, hopping clumsily toward me.
Nook groans behind me, the glass door slamming shut and then opening again.
The bird freezes. Every feather lies perfectly flat as it tilts its head.
“Eden.”
I look at the bird in disbelief, but the voice comes from the dark space just beyond the porch’s edge, where shadows have started to coalesce into a shape.
My breath hitches. “Come on, little bird. Let’s get inside… now.”
What steps into the moonlight has every instinct inside me screaming to run.
A colossus of bronze and raw, scarred muscle towers at the edge of the porch.
His chest is impossibly broad, tapering into hard-packed abs riddled with silver-white scars that branch out like lightning across his skin.
He has on heavy, leather breeches slung low on his hips, tucked into massive boots that somehow aren’t crushing the ground.
And where his face should be, there is a massive, oxidized bell. Its surface is pitted with age, patina creeping through the bronze between symbols I don’t understand. There are no eyeholes. No mouth. Just the imposing, silent weight of metal.
The small bird slowly begins to expand. I scramble backward, my heart hammering against my ribs.
It lets out one last, pained chirp. Then the sound cuts off. Bones crack.
The tiny body twists in on itself, wings stretching far beyond what they should. Feathers blacken before erupting into ash-gray smoke and flickering crimson fire. Limbs lengthen and its spine arches with a series of wet pops.
When the smoke finally thins, a hulking warhorse stands where the bird had been, its coat the color of dried blood and charred wood. The creature lets out a plume of steam that reeks of gunpowder and hot iron. Its eyes are twin pools of liquid fire, staring directly at me.
It stamps a massive, steel-shod hoof against the stone porch, and the bell-headed figure steps forward, taking the reins of the nightmare he just summoned.
“I knew you would not be able to resist something broken,” he says.
“What are you?” I gasp.
He takes a single step forward, dropping to one knee.
“I am here to see if your mate is as strong as Therael claims,” he says. His bell tilts slowly to one side like he’s studying me. “If the Beast of Fertility cannot protect a single flower… how will he ever protect one more?”
“What does that—”
With a speed that defies his massive size, he reaches out a hand the size of my thigh and closes it around my wrist. The moment his skin touches mine, a snarl erupts from inside the house. The stones beneath me shake violently. Glass shatters somewhere inside the house.
He pulls me forward, dragging me into the meadow. He doesn’t stop until we reach the waist-high grass.
“I should have guessed something without a face would lack a brain.”
He chuckles and releases my wrist.
Three other figures are waiting in the moonlight. The first one slides through the grass like a fever, his bone-beak catching the silver moonlight. He looks like a gigantic predatory bird. He makes no move to touch me, but his eyes study me like he’s assessing a carcass.
“He moved you from one glass box, just to trap you in another,” his voice slithers into my ears. “This one just has a better view.”
“He did no such thing.”
“Mm.” He walks a wide circle around me. “If he truly trusted your bond, why hasn’t he sealed it?”
He clicks his tongue. “Why does he leave you… exposed?”
“He’s protecting me,” I snap.
“Is he?” The bell-headed one interjects. “Every second he does not tie you to his own immortality leaves a path open for… creatures like us.”
“He’s not a creature like you, so I assume he doesn’t think like one.”
“If I were him,” he rasps, “and I finally had my mate in my arms… I would not have let the sun set before I made it impossible for anyone to take her.”
A low, trembling sound comes from the left.
A second form is hunched over, his ribs visible through his skin. His hands shake as he clutches his own stomach.
He looks as though he hasn’t slept or eaten in thousands of years. Antlers jut from his skull, gnarled and twisted toward the night sky.
“Please,” he whispers. “If he just finishes this… the door opens for one of us.”
He isn’t like the other two.
“I-I can’t stop the hunger, Eden.” His large, gaunt frame shivers. “Please tell him to seal the bond.”
It’s the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever heard. He isn’t threatening to eat me because of his hunger; he’s begging me to help him stop starving.
“Quiet.”
The antlered figure flinches and goes silent.
I follow their gaze.
Mounted on a horse made of midnight is a man with no head. His hands hold the reins with absolute authority.
“We do notwant to hurt you, Eden.” The bronze colossus steps closer. “We just want our mates. And yours is standing in the way of that.”
The bone-beaked figure slides closer until the scent of myrrh and old parchment floods my nose.
“He said he’d keep you safe, didn’t he, ílyara?” he purrs. “Is it because he wants to protect you? Or because he knows that once the bond is complete, you’ll see exactly what kind of monster he was?”
“Do not call me that!” My heart stutters. “H-he doesn’t remember his past.”
“Ah,” he hums thoughtfully. “The soul doesn’t so easily forget.” He leans in until the tip of his beak brushes my hair. “I don’t know if I could deny something that smelled as good as you.”
The ground beneath us heaves.
A massive root, bristling with gleaming black thorns, erupts from the earth between me and the figures. It lashes out like a whip, forcing two of them back.
“GET. AWAY. FROM. HER.” Sage’s voice shakes the meadow, and everything around us begins to rot.
For a split second, I don’t recognize the man standing there.
His face steals my breath. The gentle face that watched over me for three hundred and sixty-seven days is gone.
The skin on the left side is gone, revealing the smooth, polished bone of a skull.
His gold eye is missing, leaving an empty, shadow-filled socket.
A single vine of ivy snakes out and wraps around my waist with the gentleness of a silk ribbon.
It smells like Sage… and something new.
The vine pulls me backward until I’m flush against his side.
I’ve never felt more relieved to be in his arms.
“I heard you were coming,” Sage bellows. “I just thought you’d be men enough to come for me, and not my tiny, human mate.” He glances at each one of them. “That… was a mistake.”
One of Sage’s massive wings, now completely skeletal, sweeps around me. The new white bones clink like a cage of ivory.
My knees threaten to give out. The vine holds me steady with little effort. Across the meadow, the bell-headed figure hasn’t flinched. He stands his ground as the symbols on his helmet start to glow. The beaked figure drifts sideways into the shadows, the tip of his beak clicking in anticipation.
“We did not come for a fight, Reaper,” says the bronze colossus. “We came for a resolution. Therael’s warning was not a threat—we just want to find our mates, as you have.”
“Your mates can burn,” Sage growls, the sound whistling through the exposed bone of his jaw. “As I told Therael, I will not rush my mate.”
The headless rider finally moves, his midnight horse taking a single ghostly step forward. Its hooves leave frost-covered craters in the dirt.
“Seal the bond, or we will be forced to improvise.”
“Did you just threaten my mate?” The warm, textured muscle of Sage’s left arm goes cold, the skin dissolving into a fine, gray ash that smells like snuffed candles. It blows away in the wind, revealing more stark white bone.
“Sage…” I whisper.
The bell-headed figure reaches up and slams a massive, gauntleted fist against the side of his own helmet.
Clang.
A ripple of distorted air tears across the meadow, shattering the glass in the kitchen window behind us.
It hits like a missile, designed to deafen and disorient.
But it never reaches me. Another wing sweeps over me, wrapping around me like a shield.
The sonic wave hits the bone lattice and shatters against it.
“You must have underestimated what I would do to keep my mate safe.” Sage’s voice no longer comes from his throat; it’s a chorus of a thousand whispers filling the air around us. “I am the one who decides what stays buried. And if you don’t leave now, it will be the four of you, in this meadow.”
The headless rider pulls hard on the horse’s reins, the stallion rearing back as a frost-covered sword bleeds into existence.
“Leave. Now. Or there will be no bodies left for your mates to find,” Sage snarls.
The bell-headed figure hits his bronze helmet again.
Sage steps forward, his wings expanding until they blot out the moon, casting the entire meadow into shadow. The ground screams beneath his feet. Giant dripping thorns as long as lances erupt from the dirt in a circle around us, forming an impenetrable thicket.
“I said leave,” he says, the chorus of whispers rattling my teeth. “If you step foot on this soil again, I will not just reap you. I will unravel the very concept of your existence.”
The antlered one lets out a thin wail of frustration, his gaunt hands clutching at his stomach as he looks at me one last time—a look of such profound, starving grief that I have to stop myself from reaching out to him.
The headless rider yanks his reins once more, and with a sound like a million bees buzzing inside my ears, they simply dissolve into thin air.
The vine wrapped tightly around my waist lifts me until I’m eye level. I run the back of my knuckles along the polished bone of his cheek.
“Sage,” I whisper. “They’re gone. Look at me.”
He slowly tilts his head down. The lavender in his right eye flickers, softening as it meets mine.
“You’re safe, mí’vashé,” he rasps. (My calm) “I will never let anything harm you.”