But Lumi Does
—SAGE
It’s been two and a half months since we had danishes with the gods—two whole moonpetal blooms. Long enough that the curve of Eden is unmistakable now, and every creature within a hundred miles seems to sense it.
They keep arriving. We met Remavau a couple weeks ago, and he set us up with an endless supply of cloud-silk for Eden and the baby.
Famine is standing at our treeline, and he’s holding a basket.
By the time I’ve reached the porch, he’s already stopped at the edge of the yard, his antlers rough as dead wood.
He lifts the basket, holding it out from his body, the way you would hold out an apology.
No, Ashán says, his shadow seeking Eden across the house. Absolutely not. He drank from her—
And then he threatened to kill his brothers if they ever harmed a hair on her head, I remind him.
“I came to check on Eden,” Rasen calls, not attempting to come any closer. “I will not stay.”
Nook pulls the front door open.
Oh no, Ashán mutters. Nook likes him. Nook is never wrong. I hate this.
I think the Suntrap wants the Antler Bird to come in, Droot chirps, hopping up the leaves on my legs and onto my shoulder.
The door and I reach an understanding, which is that the door wins.
“You’d better come in,” I sigh, “before Nook removes a wall.”
Rasen crosses the yard, taking each step as if he’s waiting for us to change our minds. The heavy violet blooms of the moonpetals tilt on their stems, reaching toward his parched frame as if offering their own moisture to soothe his centuries of thirst.
He steps onto the porch, ducking his large antlers under the doorframe.
“Sage? Was that the door? Who—” Eden rounds the corner with a wooden spoon in her hand, a sage green sundress skimming her body like it was grown instead of sewn.
The knit clings softly over her chest, gathers beneath it, hugging the small curve of her belly.
Her copper hair is piled up and already falling, loose curls escaping down the freckled line of her neck.
There’s flour on her wrist and a smear of jam at the hem.
She is a disaster of domesticity and the single most devastating thing I have ever seen.
She stops short, her bright eyes locking on the Horseman standing in our entryway.
“Rasen!”
He freezes, the wicker basket creaking in his grip. His gaze drops to the swell of her belly.
“You’re well,” he says.
She throws her arms as far as they’ll reach around him. His hands hover above her shoulders, his body going rigid as my pregnant mate squeezes him.
If he breathes wrong, I’m taking his spine for a belt, Ashán murmurs.
The Antler Bird is crying, Droot reports from my shoulder.
He isn’t. But his eyes have gone glassy, and when Eden finally releases him and demands he come sit down, he obeys like a loyal hound.
He hands her the basket—bread, honey, small dense fruits I don’t recognize.
Food, brought by a being who’s starving…
When Eden insists on feeding him in return, he eats what she puts in front of him like it’s a sacrament—taking pieces with both hands, his eyes closing on each bite. Droot levies a tithe from the basket and declares the Antler Bird acceptable.
It’s going well until his eyes settle on the curve of her, and something different moves across his face.
“There is a custom among my kind,” he says, his hands flexing on his knees. “Even older than my hunger. A vow, for a child not yet here. It begins with a mark, and it—” he pauses. “I would never presume. Only if—”
“No.” The word is out of me before he can finish his sentence. Frost spiders across the window behind Rasen as Ashán surges up my spine.
“You want to mark her?” My vines drain from green to black, thorns punching through my flesh. “The last time you touched her, you—”
“You’re right.” He’s already bowing, attempting to fold his large frame into something smaller. “You’re right. Forgive me. I shouldn’t have—it was selfish to ask—”
Eden catches his hand, her small fingers wrapping around his wrist. She stares into his eyes, and whatever she senses makes her eyes go soft… and very certain.
“I know what the mark does,” she says. “I can feel it. It’s only protection.” Her other hand rests over our daughter. “And another mark of protection for her is something I will never deny.”
She looks over at us, her gaze steady, defying both the frost on the glass and the thorns currently bristling along my forearms.
“You wouldn’t deny protection for your daughter. Would you?”
Vyn, Ashán growls. We can’t say no, or we’ll seem against our daughter’s safety.
My chest heaves possessively, but my thorns slowly recede, sliding beneath my skin.
“What does this custom require?” I ask.
Rasen glances at me, his eyes filled with a disbelieving hope. “It requires a token of intent,” he says softly. “And a drop of essence.”
Ashán snarls.
“It doesn’t bind her to me, or my hunger. It simply tells the cosmic dark that if anyone attempts to take from her, they must answer to the harbinger that starves worlds.”
He reaches into the basket, his large fingers pulling out a small, intricately carved piece of black tourmaline shaped like a perfectly balanced scale. He holds it out in his palm.
Droot peers down from my shoulder, his nose twitching rapidly. The Antler Bird is making his own nest for the little beastie.
Eden smiles, taking the small stone from him.
“Show us,” she whispers.
His eyes hold mine, silently asking for a final concession.
I give him a single, stiff nod.
“This will not hurt her,” he says. “Either of them. I would sacrifice sustenance first.”
He sinks to one knee in front of her. “Token of intent.” He takes the tourmaline from her palm and rests the scale on the highest point of her belly. Then he reaches for the sharp tip of one great antler, dragging his thumb across it until a single bead of black wells against his fingertip.
“With this,” he murmurs, the drop falling onto the stone. “I declare the harvest of this house off-limits to hunger. What grows here belongs to the earth, and what leaves here is guarded by the Famine.”
The scale drinks in his essence, and the tourmaline flares bright, gold flooding into the black striations like dawn caught in lavarock. From under the stone, thin branching lines sweep across her skin. A tracery of antler-branches as delicate as a birthmark.
The stone crumbles, dark ashes falling through Eden’s fingers as she tries to catch it.
“Oh my,” Eden breathes, tears filling her eyes. “It’s—wow. It feels like I just drank a mug of warm soup.”
Our daughter pushes up from the inside, the same way she reaches for Ashán’s shadow in the dark—studying the new thing, tasting it, and humming back her verdict for the whole kitchen to feel.
Rasen lets out a rasp, his hands hovering over Eden’s belly.
“She answers,” he whispers. “The custom asks the child’s nature to accept the guard. They almost never—” He swallows hard.
Eden reaches out to guide Rasen’s hand to her stomach.
My heart leaps into my throat.
Ashán, I warn internally, my muscles locking as the Horseman’s massive clawed hand is drawn toward our mate’s delicate belly.
His hand settles over the curve of her like dusk settling over a field. It covers the whole mark, his claws carefully curved away from her skin.
Rasen isn’t breathing, and I’m not entirely sure I am either.
“She is… so bright,” he whispers as he stares down at Eden’s stomach. “Like the first sprout breaking through the winter soil. She is not afraid of me—at all.”
“Of course she isn’t,” Eden says softly, her fingers still resting over the back of his hand. Tears slide down her cheeks, but her smile has never looked more radiant. “She knows who her protectors are. And she knows you just promised to keep her safe.”
Droot lets out a soft chirp from my shoulder, his light fading into a sleepy lavender. The Antler Bird belongs to the nest now.
Rasen flinches, his dark eyes going wide, fixed on whatever he’s feeling through Eden’s skin.
“She’s—” his voice cracks. “She is giving. I’m not—I am not taking. I would never take from—she is pushing it into me.”
The little beastie is feeding the hungry Antler Bird, Droot observes, his little mouth pulling into a smile.
My daughter, months before her first breath, found the starving thing at her gate, and ran her small, bright energy over his endless hunger—exactly like her mother.
Rasen’s shoulders are quivering. The Horseman of Famine is kneeling on my kitchen floor, hand cradled over a child who is not his, being fed for the second time in the long history of his existence by someone who wants nothing back from him.
He weeps silently.
I wanted to hate this, Ashán says quietly, his shadow going soft against our spine. How can I? She’s exactly like her mamé.
The mark glows for a week before it fades to something only the morning light can find when it hits her skin just right.
Eden starts each day standing sideways in the mirror, finding the right angle until the sun lights up the fine-gold design.
She traces over it with slow fingers, smiling like she’s keeping a secret from the rest of the world.
There are now six nests scattered around the house, and Nook has grown another hook at exactly antler height to hang the basket of goodies he brings Eden twice a week. These have been the sweetest weeks of my life.
I thin the bloodroot mindlessly while I watch Eden paint on her canvas.
Then, the sunlight is wrong, and pressure crushes down on my skull.
When I look down, my hands aren’t my own.
They’re pale and narrow—they’re human. There’s a thin white scar across the left knuckle I have never had before.
When I open my fist, a single snowdrop lies in my palm.
The little white flower falls, and the moment it hits the soil, my hands are green and broad again.
A bee drones past unbothered. The whole world carries on like I didn’t just become a different being.
Your pulse spiked, Ashán murmurs. What was that?
Did he not feel the invasion?
Thorn, I say. Caught me under the nail.
The lie comes out easily, but if he didn’t feel it, there’s no reason to worry him.
Mm, Ashán hums, already drifting back toward his nap. Be careful with the bloodroot. Eden likes those.
Eden doesn’t even like snowdrops.
But Lumi does, a dark voice whispers in my mind.