I Like Your Stitches
—EDEN
Istare into Sage’s eyes through a blur of hot tears.
“He’s still here,” he whispers, but his voice shakes. “He’s just… hiding.”
“Hiding?” I choke out. “From me?”
His jaw tightens.
“No, Eden. From himself. He made you cry—he felt your fear. And he can’t forgive himself for that.”
“No!” I yell so loudly Sage recoils. “I was never afraid of him.”
“Eden…” His hands cup my face, thumbs wiping away the tears running down my cheeks. “He sensed your sobs through the tendril left around your ankle.”
“But I need him,” I sob. Half of my chest feels empty. “Tell him, Sage. You share the same mind—the same heart. Tell him that I was never afraid of him, please.”
He closes his eyes.
“I’ve tried, Saevúra,” he admits. “I don’t know how to reach him. I think he just needs time.”
Dread washes over me. If Sage can’t reach him… how am I supposed to bring him back?
My hand slides down to rest over my stomach, where a tiny, innocent soul is now growing.
Ashán helped make her. His soul is woven into hers just as much as Sage’s. And now he’s gone.
“Sage,” I whisper. “I don’t want to do this without him. She needs him. I need him.”
“Oh—oh no, Eden. He’ll come back.” Sage scoops me off the floor and into his lap. “He loves you too much to stay away. I swear, Saevúra. He just needs to breathe.”
The kitchen is quiet except for the soft creak of cabinets.
Sage insisted that I eat something, though food is the last thing on my mind.
I sit at the island, my hands wrapped around a cup of herbal tea I have no intention of drinking.
He’s been staring at an unopened box of Saltine crackers for at least two minutes.
“Sage?”
He clears his throat as the cabinet clicks shut on its own. A plate with sliced fruit and a small cup of broth appears in front of me.
“Thank you, Nook,” he whispers under his breath.
A warm creak ripples through the floorboards in response.
“Damien is still on the porch,” he says quietly.
“Why don’t you tell him to come inside?”
“Nook made enough for an army anyway.” I point to the two plates popping up on either side of the island.
He studies my face.
“I don’t want to overwhelm you with company right now.”
“He won’t overwhelm me, Sage. He needs comfort just as much as we do. Please... invite him in.”
“Okay, ílyara.”
When Damien steps into the kitchen, his shoulders are rigid, and his pale eyes sweep the room, checking for threats before they finally land on me.
“You didn’t have to invite me in, Eden,” he says, staying near the edge of the kitchen. His nostrils flare once, and his eyes drop to my stomach before snapping away.
He knows.
Sage stiffens beside me, his fingers curling around the edge of the counter. The air between the two of them is thick with unspoken tension.
“Sit, please?” I say, nodding at the stool across from me. “You must be hungry.”
“I don’t think I—”
“Damien.” My voice cracks. “It’s okay, really. You can sit.”
He glances at Sage.
Sage gives a single tight nod.
Damien lowers himself onto the stool, his bad leg stretching out at that unnatural angle. His hands lay flat on the island like he doesn’t know what to do with them.
“Truth is,” his voice rasps. “I don’t even know if I can eat anymore.”
Nook gives a mournful groan, and a steaming plate of eggs and thick-cut meat slides softly across the polished stone.
Droot comes barreling down the banister, skidding to a stop on the island beside the untouched plates. He looks at the food. He looks at Damien. He nudges the plate a few inches closer to him with his nose and pulses a worried gray.
One bite, Droot chirps. Then another. That is how eating works. I am very good at eating. Just ask Big Bird.
“... Okay,” Damien rasps, picking up his fork. “I’ll try.”
Sage keeps his eyes trained on Damien. “What do you mean you don’t know if you can eat?”
A strangled noise escapes him as he looks down at his body. “I just came back… a couple days ago.”
“Came back from where?” Sage asks.
“Aevh?rath,” he murmurs. “Damon’s realm.”
“Damon? Who’s Damon?”
“Therael’s brother. He rules over the Afterlife,” Sage explains to me.
“You’ve met him? When?”
“When we had our fight, and Therael helped conceal you from me—he hit on me.”
Despite everything that’s happened this morning, a laugh bubbles out of me.
“He… what?”
“He hit on me,” Sage repeats, crossing his arms over his chest.
Damien lets out a choked cough. “That sounds like Damon. He has zero shame.”
Sage’s hand drifts to his chest, fingers tracing slowly over his sternum.
“Before he exploded into a flock of ravens, he drew something over my heart with his finger, and called it insurance.”
Sage’s claw digs slightly into his skin.
“He marked you?” Damien leans forward. “What else did he say?”
“Nothing that made sense,” Sage says. “It was very cryptic.”
Why did the God of the Afterlife feel the need to mark him?
“Damon doesn’t do things by accident, Sage. If he marked you, it means something.” He slowly lifts his left hand, turning it over so the light hits the metallic thread holding his wrist to his forearm.
“I didn’t just visit Aevhorath, Sage. I died. My body was shattered beyond anything mortal magic could mend. But because I am one of the twelve soulbonds, Damon refused to let my soul cross over. I don’t know what he did. He made me promise never to ask… but he gave me a way back to Winnie.”
“You... let him sew you back together?” I gasp.
Damien lets out a humorless laugh as his eyes drop to the table.
“Damon couldn’t regrow what was lost. He tried. So, he reached into the soil of the afterlife and dug up the corpses of my past two incarnations. He reanimated them—and then, it was time for me to prove how much I needed to come back to my wife.”
“Wait. You’re not saying—”
“Damon couldn’t do it for me, Eden,” he clarifies. “The gods are restricted by an unknown force.”
His knuckles tense where they rest on the island.
“Winnie is the only thing keeping these stitches in place. The longer I stay away from her, the more the magic starves, and my flesh starts to remember it’s supposed to be dead.”
“Why are you staying away from her?” I ask.
Slowly, his rigid posture bleeds into something more delicate. When he lifts his head, the guarded intensity in his eyes is replaced by a soft intelligence.
“I can feel your gift,” he says. “I’m Lucifer, by the way. I’m not sure if I’ve formally introduced myself. You can call me Luci, everyone else used to.”
“You can feel my empathy?” I murmur.
“I can,” he says, giving a small bittersweet smile. “And right now, your heart is bleeding for us. You should know, Damien isn’t staying away from Winnie because he has to. He’s staying away because he’s terrified of his own reflection.”
“What do you mean?” Sage asks.
“The night he finished stitching himself together, he crawled his way from the graveyard, dragged his broken body all the way across town to their front door. He was barely alive—a patchwork of dead men held together by nothing but sheer willpower and silver thread. He finally made it to the porch and knocked.”
Lucifer swallows, his eyes darkening from the memory.
“Winnie saw his reflection through the window, and she let out a bloodcurdling scream.”
My hand flies to my mouth.
“He thinks it was disgust,” he whispers.
“Damien truly believes she screamed because she was repulsed by what he had done to his body. The trauma of it broke something inside him. He hasn’t been able to speak a single word to her since that night.
His throat locks the moment he even thinks about speaking to her. ”
My heart shatters into a million pieces. “So he’s just… not going back?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “He could never stay away from her. That’s why he’s been in your meadow the past couple of days…
so no one has to look at him. But the moment the sun goes down…
he goes back to her. He covers every mirror in their house, and he won’t let her turn on a single light.
He only allows her to touch him when she can’t see the stitches. ”
A tear slips down my cheek, and Nook vibrates softly beneath my feet.
“She wasn’t disgusted,” I breathe. “She buried him. She thought he was dead.”
Lucifer’s smile falters.
“We’ve told him, Eden. But when the soul takes a wound that deep, logic doesn’t heal the scar. Damien’s mind has convinced him that the dark is the only place he is safe from hurting her. The only place he can love her without exposing her to his reality.”
The dark is the only place he is safe.
Is that what my reaper is doing right now? Rotting in the dark corners of his mind because he thinks his reality is too terrifying for me to look at?
“You’ll stay,” Sage murmurs. “Until you’re ready to spend your days with your mate, you have a room here.”
Lucifer’s brow furrows, clearly caught off guard by the offer. “We don’t expect sanctuary. That’s not why we helped you.”
“Damien protected my mate,” Sage rasps, stepping closer to the island. “I’ll admit, the last few days haven’t been easy for me, and I reacted… hastily last night. Eden’s scent change has made me very territorial. But there’s no one I know who is more deserving than him.”
Lucifer takes a shaky breath. “Thank you, truly.”
“Nook will show you where to go—and I suspect you’ll have an escort.” Sage nods at Droot, who has already stationed himself at the kitchen doorway, glowing the officious lilac of a creature with a job.
With a quiet shift of his shoulders, Lucifer begins to recede, and the heaviness of Damien’s despair returns.
“We’re going into the greenhouse for a while. If you need supplies for your wounds, just ask, and Nook will provide those also.”
Sage grabs my hand and leads me out of the kitchen.
“Oh, and Damien,” he calls without looking back. “I like your stitches.”