You Cannot Feed The Nothing
—SAGE
We’re definitely going to need new sheets. Ours are destroyed. I should have brought her in the shower last night, before pulling the bedding down to the canvas. But I couldn’t stand to see my lavásia washed from her skin.
Our sheets.
I smile at that thought, letting the scalding water sluice down my wings. The canvas we made together. The way she looked at me when she asked what my velásira was called. The trust in her eyes when she offered herself to me.
Ním. Every ounce of her.
I grab the soap and work it through my hair. I inhale the warm vanilla scent. She’s probably still curled on the canvas.
Not on the canvas, Ashán growls.
I wonder what she’d like for breakfast. Maybe those berries she likes that grow near the—
Blood. My hands freeze in my hair. The soap slips from my fingers, clattering against the tile.
It’s her blood.
Everything stops and fast-forwards at the same time.
Ashán roars inside my mind. Eden. Blood. Mate hurt. Protect! Protect! Protect!
The left side of my face tingles, skin disappearing in an instant.
The ceiling groans, the heavy timber beams peeling back like the petals of a dying flower. The wood splinters as a large skylight appears. My wings snap open with a wet crack. I shoot through the opening.
I will kill them.
We will kill them, Ashán corrects.
Below me, the meadow is a blur of gray and green, until my eyes snag on a little spot of copper.
She’s directly in front of the antlered Horseman, his body leaning over her, his fangs in her—
I hit the ground with the force of a felled oak, dripping and half-calcified.
“Get your fangs out of my mate,” I snarl, the voice coming from both sides of my soul at once. “Or I will show you a hunger so great that not even Famine can survive it.”
He releases her wrist immediately, stumbling backward, her blood still wet on his lips.
“Reaper, I—”
“Silence!” Thick roots punch through the ground. They surge forward, wrapping around his ankles and pulling him to his knees.
Eden’s eyes find mine, and her hand instantly covers the wound on her wrist.
“Sage, wait. Stop!”
“He put his mouth on you. He tasted the only thing in this world that belongs to me.”
I storm toward Famine.
“I told him to!” she screams.
“You—” My magic falters. The thick, thorny roots stop their crawl. I stand frozen, the water in my hair turning to steam against my heated skin. “You what?” The skin on the left side of my face flickers.
She smells of him, Ashán snarls. Mark her again. NOW.
Eden steps forward, shielding the Horseman kneeling on the ground.
“He was dying, Sage! Not the kind of death you handle, the kind that never ends. I could feel it. I had to help him.”
The roots resume their path, coiling around his torso. He keeps his eyes trained on the ground, a single smear of her blood at the corner of his mouth.
“I did not ask,” he whispers. “I warned her, but she does not know how to be empty. She only knows how to give.”
My wings give a reflexive twitch. The rage hasn’t left me; it’s moved to a suffocating knot in my gut. I look at the smear of red on Eden’s wrist, and jealousy consumes me.
“You offered your blood to a Horseman,” I say. “After last night. While I was in the shower, waiting for you, thinking about our sheets.”
“I’m sorry, Sage. I didn’t do this to hurt you.” Her voice cracks. “But I will not apologize for helping someone in pain.”
Three more figures step from the mist. Bronze armor, a bone-beaked shadow, and a headless Horseman.
My wings flare wider.
One. Two. Three. Four, Ashán counts. I have always wondered what a Horseman’s soul tastes like.
“No,” Famine whispers from the ground, his eyes widening as he sees his brothers. “You will not touch her. She helped me.”
“She helped one,” Pestilence murmurs, his voice like dry husks rubbing together. “But we are a choir of needs, Reaper. And your… mate—”
“Do not finish that sentence.” Lush vines spread from my chest, wrapping around Eden and pulling her to my side. “This is why you were waiting in the meadow. You kept him out here where he couldn’t feed. You let him starve so she would feel it.”
“We did not make him starve,” War says, stepping closer. “He’s been starving for centuries. Your mate simply… noticed.”
I glance at Famine, at the genuine horror and guilt on his face, and something twists in my chest. This wasn’t his plan at all.
But the others…
“If you take one more step, I will make sure the earth opens up and buries you under it.”
“We would leave peacefully if you would stop fighting the bond,” War counters.
“As if I would listen to you. You used your brother’s suffering as a pawn in your game.”
“Yes,” War says simply. “We are desperate for our own mates. The same way you are for yours.” He gestures to Eden, still cradling her bleeding wrist. “We need our mates. And the curse binds us all. If you will not seal your bond, then we have no choice but to keep relying on moments like this.”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Famine chokes out, still bound in my roots. His eyes find Eden’s. “I told you to stay away. I warned you.”
“But she didn’t listen,” Pestilence cuts in. “And I find that I’m rather fond of a soft heart.”
The guilt and confusion on Eden’s face make the jealousy in my gut twist tighter. She went to him willingly. And I can’t be angry at her for it, because that’s who she is.
But gods, it hurts.
“Seal the bond,” War says. “Claim her fully and let the curse move forward. We will have no reason to ever come back.”
“But if you don’t—” Death finally speaks. “We will keep waiting, and the next time we find an opening—”
“It won’t be just a few drops of blood,” Pestilence finishes.
I go deathly still. “Did you just threaten to kill my mate?”
Let me out, Sage. Let me out. Let me out. LET ME OUT! Ashán’s voice tears through my head.
“Brothers.” Famine’s voice rattles. He glances at Eden’s wrist. “Enough.”
“Rasen,” Pestilence starts.
“I said enough.”
His dark eyes find mine.
“She helped me,” he says, each word enunciated as if he’s spending something he doesn’t have much of. “Without being asked. Without being compelled. She knew what I was, and she chose to help anyway.”
His jaw tightens, fangs lengthening past his chin, and I realize he could have bitten Eden in half had hurting her ever been his true intention.
A circle of absolute nothingness begins to spread from his knees.
He looks toward his brothers.
“If you intend to touch her—” The single obsidian iris in each of his eyes splits.
Two pupils now sit in each socket. They move independently: one locked on War’s throat, another tracking Pestilence’s shadow, a third studying Death’s horse, the last on me.
“—I will not fight you. I will consume you.”
Pestilence takes a step back.
I finally understand why the world fears Famine more than any other Horseman. You can fight a war. You can cure pestilence. You can even bargain with death.
But you cannot feed the nothing.