Both Your Daddies Are Just Sleeping
—SAGE
“Did Damien say if he was coming back today?” Eden asks as we sit in the center of the greenhouse, letting the baby drink in the magic of the vines wrapped around her belly.
I keep my hands deep in the soil beneath us, forcing my breathing to remain steady. It takes a ridiculous amount of concentration. My core feels like a bed of hot coals. I haven’t been able to cool it down the last few days.
Hold it together. She has enough to carry.
“He didn’t say, Saevúra,” I rasp, my throat feeling like sandpaper. I clear it quickly, offering what I hope is a reassuring smile. “But he’s been here every day since the Horsemen ordeal, so I’m sure he will be.”
She nods, her eyes remaining fixed on the vines cradling her midsection. She lifts a slice of melon, then drops it back onto the plate.
“You need to eat something,” I murmur, nudging the plate closer to her knee. “Please?”
Her shoulders drop. “I will, Sage. I’m just… not really hungry.”
I press my palms deeper into the soil and let the cool dark draw some of the heat out of me, just enough that she won’t feel it bleed across the bond.
The moment my magic sinks back into the earth, a white-hot spike drives straight through my left temple.
My mind is yanked from the soil, dragged backward through a freezing void until the smell of loam and jasmine is swallowed by the crisp scent of clove and frost. The world that forms around me is brutal.
Endless white flurries. Heavy drifts of snow pull at my legs.
The cold sinks its teeth into a body that feels entirely different from my own.
Ahead of me, darting through the branches, is a flash of dark hair.
Is she running from me, or to me?
I push forward through the storm, and a massive cabin looms amidst the blizzard; its wooden logs are blackened with age, and its curved roof is half-buried under a thick blanket of snow. Smoke pours from the chimney into the night sky.
Why does this feel so familiar?
Before I can step any closer, a shimmering glow floats down from the sky.
The howling wind drops to a dead silence.
The cabin, the winter, and the dark-haired woman all dissolve into a cloud of gold dust. The cold bites one last time before there’s nothing but the scent of cotton candy and the deep weight of sleep pulling me down.
—EDEN
Sage has his hands buried wrist-deep in the soil. His breathing is slow in the careful way he thinks I haven’t noticed yet. Every plant in the greenhouse recoils at once.
“Sage—”
His spine arches, and his eyes roll back until there’s nothing but white. His breath comes in panicked bursts.
“It’s okay,” I breathe, reaching into the pocket of my dress where the little pouch now lives. I’ve learned how fast things escalate. “I’ve got you, Vaelí. It’s all going to get better in just a second.”
My fingers tremble as I pull out a pinch of shimmering dream dust. I lean forward, but as I’m about to drop the powder over his face, I freeze.
I cannot go into that dark while you’re unprotected. You said you’d pull me back. I begged you.
Ashán’s voice fills my head.
The dust shivers in the bag.
He’s already in the dark. That’s the part that kills me, while I watch the other half of my mate convulse in front of me. Ashán’s already gone. He buried himself eight days ago, in a silence so deep I’ve started to forget the weight of him.
He begged me not to. With everything he had left, he begged me.
And Sage is drowning in front of me. There is no door I can walk through without someone I love getting hurt.
“I’m sorry, Ash,” I whisper, tears blurring my vision. “I’m so sorry. I don’t have a choice. Please know I don’t have a choice.”
I drop a pinch of dust over Sage’s face, and his body stills instantly.
The frantic movement of his lips slows, and the white of his eyes softens as his lids flutter shut.
His head lolls sideways, crashing against my lap.
I sink my fingers into his hair, stroking through the long dark strands, while my other hand presses against my belly.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, my voice cracking over the lie. “Daddy’s just sleeping. Both of them. Both your daddies are just… sleeping.”
Above us, the willow branches tremble, and a slow rainfall of pale green leaves weeps silently over the three of us.
—ASHáN
I didn’t shut the door today.
Eight days of clawing up the inside of my own grave by my fingernails, one agonizing handhold at a time, stopping short each time until the little nestling in her belly reaches for me.
But today, with my palms against the door and Eden’s heartbeat humming just on the other side of it—I think it’s time for me to go back. I need to stop punishing us both for what I thought that sob meant. I push the door open and—the world turns to lead.
It pours from above. A sugared poison I would recognize in the deepest dark the void has ever made. It floods the void, filling my mouth and the spaces between my ribs.
I throw myself at the weight of it. No. Not now.
Not when I was choosing to come back. I claw, I tear, I scream her name until my throat bleeds—Ash’kaela, I’m here, I was COMING BACK!
—but the dust is already in our veins, dragging me down by the ankles into the cold I begged her never to put me in again.
The descent is a slow suffocation as the dust hardens around my mind like cement. When the screaming in my chest finally dies out, there is no peace, only dread that she’s unprotected, and the fear that I won’t be strong enough to make it back this time.
When I finally manage to drag my eyes open, the unbearable cold of the void is gone. The scent of cotton candy is replaced by the sharp, metallic tang of blood. A scream jerks my consciousness right back to the surface.
Eden.
I bolt upright. The first thing I see is white.
Stark, blinding white. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. The blurry edges sharpen into focus all at once: I’m in our bedroom, but something is wrong.
It’s a bleak, mid-winter gray outside. The fire in the hearth is roaring, casting an orange glow over the center of the nest where Eden is thrashing.
Her hair is damp, plastered to her forehead, her fingers clawing deep into the sheets as another contraction hits her. Her belly is huge beneath the thin linen of her gown.
Months. The realization drops my stomach. I’ve been gone for months.
I missed the quiet mornings. I missed the growth of my own child.
“Deep breaths, luváel,” Sage rasps.
He’s sitting behind her, cradling her small body between his legs.
“Sage, it hurts,” Eden chokes out, sobbing as she drops her head against his chest. She doesn’t look for me. Her eyes don’t wander for me in the mirror. They survived without me. She grabs onto the vines at his knees. “I can’t do this. I can’t.”
“You can,” Sage murmurs, kissing her temple, his long fingers stroking through her tangled hair with an intimacy that makes my soul splinter. “I’ve got you.”
I throw myself toward the nest.
“Eden, look at me! I’m here! I’m back.”
I reach out to grab her shoulder, to press my hand against her belly, but my fingers slide straight through her skin like smoke.
Neither of them flinches.
Eden lets out a final, ear-splitting cry and throws her head back against Sage’s chest. A tiny wail pierces the air—a baby. Our nestling.
Sage reaches down, his face slick with tears as he cradles her small body, bringing her straight to Eden’s chest.
“She’s beautiful, Saevúra,” he whispers, his voice cracking with a father’s pride. “Look at her.”
I drop to my knees beside the nest, trying to force my shadows to solidify, to make them see me.
“Please gods, let them see me,” I plead. “I’m right here, ash’kaela.”
Eden smiles through her tears, staring down at the baby. As I lean closer, Vaelína’s eyes pop open.
They aren’t purple and gold like Sage’s, or the striking green of Eden’s. They are two tiny pits of endless, swirling black void.
Her mouth opens, but instead of a cry, a deep, raspy distortion of my own voice bleeds out of her tiny lips.
“You left us in the dark.”