CUT THEM OFF!
—ASHáN
An agonizing jolt of heat shoots down our spine. The room is sideways, and there is splintered wood under our cheek. The lamp is guttering low.
Eden.
A flare of panic floods our mind. But as we scramble to get up off the floor, the room tilts again.
Why can’t we get up? Sage shouts. We need to find her!
I’m trying! I yell back at him.
Our body doesn’t respond to Sage’s commands. It doesn’t even twitch. The green skin on his half slowly starts to peel away.
Are you shifting? He snaps.
No! I grit out. I’m not the one controlling this.
Our spine arches painfully off the oak. The fronds crowning Sage’s head begin drying out until they ossify into sharp horns made of bone.
What is happening? Sage chokes out, his soul trying and failing to reverse our transformation.
I don’t know, I wheeze.
The jaw that shapes those very words is hardening, the aristocratic lines of his face sharpening into a full skull. The spaces between our ribs and along our jawline hollow out and shadows pour into the gaps.
Ash, my wing, he whispers.
A searing tear shoots through the right side of our back as the remaining iridescent wing is shredded, pale bone punching through the emerald veins until two massive, skeletal wings span the width of the sunroom. My bones elongate until my frame is at least three feet taller than normal.
Ashán?! he screams, as a freezing heat erupts across our face. It’s burning! Why is it burning?
A brilliant blue flame ignites over our skull, engulfing the bones. The shadow-tendrils around our head whip into a frenzy, fed by the frost-fire.
The void between my ribs uncoils, spilling across the floorboards and coalescing into a single column. The smoke hardens, lengthening into a heavy staff, topped by a wickedly curved blade of bone.
For one breathless, soaring heartbeat, the sheer majesty of it paralyzes me.
I did it.
I told Eden the truth. That must have been the key all along. This is a gift. The moment the scales finally balance. We are equals now. No more hiding in the dark or being stuck in the void. I am whole. I can finally mark her.
I can feel the bright living thread of her soul humming at the other end of the bond.
For my entire existence, she has been Sage’s to feel, and mine to ache toward.
Someone I loved from one room over. A joyful laugh rattles my hollow throat.
This is how Sage has always felt her. This is what it means to truly feel our mate.
Every line of her soul is vibrating against mine.
Sage. I rasp. I can feel her so clearly.
I take a step toward the door, ready to run and show her—to apologize. As my foot lands on the floor, that beautiful connection twists. The pull jerks me forward, clenching around my throat like a spiked collar.
Ashán… he rasps. The scythe. Look at your scythe.
“What?”
The invisible pull drags me another lurching step toward the door. “Sage, I can’t stop… Something is pulling me.”
LOOK AT IT! he bellows.
I force my burning gaze down to the weapon in my hand, etched into the blade in fine script, as though it was forged that way—
A name: Eden.
The world stops turning around me. I force my eyes shut. “No!” I breathe. “No, no, no.”
This isn’t a gift for telling her the truth. It’s a target. The scythe wasn’t summoned by my desire to protect her—it was specifically designed to reap the very soul I would tear the universe apart to keep.
I crack my eyes open, but her name is still there. And there is a second name listed below hers, a name I have whispered into the dark a hundred secret nights with my shadow curled around a tiny warm soul: Vaelína.
The sound of my blood rushes in my ears.
…Ash. Sage rasps. Who is Vaelína? Why is there a second name? I can feel him piecing it together inside of us.
Ash, WHOSE NAME—
“It’s hers. It’s the baby’s.” The collar tugs me another step. “I named her months ago. In the dark, when no one could hear me. Because of what Eden calls you…”
I’m dragged forward again, and my chest ignites; the golden symbol Damon drew over my sternum is finally visible—it’s a clover.
“When it gets dark, and it will get very dark, that will remind you what you’re fighting for when the Reaper can no longer remember.”
The mark pulses, and Eden’s green eyes and cinnamon freckles flash behind my eyes. The truth of who I am pours through the hunger like a hand reaching down into deep water.
My body lurches toward the door, skelva catching on the frame as we pass through, desperately trying to stop myself. The wood splinters under my fingers.
“Let go of me,” I roar.
Whatever is controlling me heaves us into the cold. My feet dig furrows into the frost. Every step is another battle I fight and lose. The wide black sky opens overhead.
Ashán, trip us! Sage yells inside our mind. Break a leg, tear a tendon—do something!
“I can’t!” I choke out. My fingers are locked in a death-grip around the scythe. She is an undeniable warmth at the end of a leash that wants nothing more than to drag me to her and open her throat.
The moment we’re clear of the house, my wings answer the call, snapping open behind me. They give a thunderous downstroke, lifting our weight just enough to clear the ground. For one sickening second, I’m rising.
“NO!”
I throw myself back down and catch the nearest thing I can reach—a sugar maple—and I wrap myself around it, arms, shadow and every scrap of will I have left.
My skelva gouge the bark, my wings beating furiously as they try to rip me loose.
My whole body shudders with the effort it takes not to fly to her.
Ash—Sage pants. How long can you hold this?
I can hold now. I can hold this minute, this hour, maybe more. The mark on my chest gives me leverage, not victory. I am only as strong as my weakest second. One moment where the grief or exhaustion wins. That’s all it takes, and these wings will carry me to her.
I can’t hold this forever. But I can make sure that even when I slip… I cannot fly to her.
The porch door opens, and Damien steps into the yard. He stops dead in his tracks when he sees me.
“Whoa!” He throws his arms wide, taking in all ten-plus feet of my burning-blue form. “You finally did it! You shifted! You absolute—” He strides toward me, beaming like a kid who just caught his best friend mid glow-up. “Ashán, this is incredible, you have to let me—”
He gets close enough to see my face, and his smile falters.
“Ashán?” He approaches slowly. “Why are you holding onto the tree like that?”
“You were right!” I scream. “When you told us Damon didn’t do things by accident. He knew... they all knew.”
“Knew about what?”
“She left, and it—it triggered something.” I shudder against the tree, skelva screaming down the bark as my wings wrench me half a foot up the trunk before I drag myself back down. “My first full shift… and it’s only to—” I can’t finish.
Sage forces the words up through our throat. “Eden’s name is on the blade. The baby’s name—”
Damien’s eyes go wide.
“The curse wants my mate and my—” I sob. “My daughter. It’s going to make me kill them. This mark on my chest is the only thing that has stopped me from doing so already.”
My wings beat again, nearly tearing me loose. I clamp down harder around the trunk.
“Cut them off!” I scream. “CUT THEM OFF!”
Damien flinches backward.
“What? Ashán, no—” He shakes his head. “No, you don’t—you don’t know what you’re asking me. I can’t—”
“You’re the only one here!” Another downstroke wrenches me up the trunk; I scream and haul myself back. “Please, Damien, please, I can’t hold them. They’ll take me to her—I’ll reap her—I’ll reap my baby—I would rather you tear me apart than let me touch a hair on her head, now CUT THEM OFF—”
He crumples, his hands flying to the sides of his head, fingers digging into his long dark hair. He squeezes his eyes shut.
“No,” he whispers. “No no no, not that—I can’t, I can’t cut, I can’t cut. The last time I held a blade—” His shoulders shake as he sinks onto the ground. He rocks back and forth, humming to himself.
“Don’t make me cut,” he chokes. “Please. Don’t make me do it. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t—”
Another monstrous downstroke and the tree gives a horrid crack.
I am losing. The sky is screaming for me.
“Damien!” I roar. “What if this were Winnie?”
The rocking stops. His hands freeze in his hair.
“What if it were Winnie at the end of this curse?” I rasp. “What if it were you, and your wings, and her name on the blade. What would you do? Wouldn’t you cut off the parts that would save her?”
“I already did.” His spine straightens, and when his eyes find mine, they’re not Damien’s anymore.
“Jack,” I whisper.
“Yeah.” His gaze flicks to my wings and his jaw sets. “Looks like you’re stuck with me.”
He stops in front of me and holds out his hand.
“Give me the scythe, Ashán.”
My wings pull violently off the tree. With the last of the grip I can spare, I press the handle into Jack’s palm.
“Good,” he murmurs. “Now hold onto that tree like your girl’s life depends on it. Because it does.”
He moves behind me, testing the base of my wings. “This is going to hurt like nothing you’ve ever felt before, big guy. Don’t hold the scream in. Nobody out here’s going to judge you for it.”
He pauses. “Least of all me.”
“I’m ready,” I wheeze. “Do it.”
The skeletal framework of my right wing gives a sudden downstroke, a frantic attempt by the curse to launch us into the sky before the strike can land.
The movement yanks my shoulder half an inch out of its socket.
The pale blade of my own scythe comes down, slashing through the root of my right wing.
The world goes utterly white. It isn’t just physical tissue being severed; it is a spiritual amputation. The part of me that has waited three lifetimes to be enough. A piece of this body, newborn and mine, shorn away while every nerve ignites into a symphony of agony all at once.
The scream that rips from me is one of pure torment.
The blue frost-fire on my skull explodes outward in a blinding wave, scorching the maple tree to charcoal in a matter of seconds.
Fluid as black as the void between stars sprays across the frost. My wing thuds against the ground, a lifeless mass of bone and shadow. My knees buckle.
“One down,” Jack says, his boots crunching over the frost while he repositions. “Stay with me, Ashán.”
The left wing, sensing its own death, beats with an agitated, lopsided fury.
“Jack!” I choke out, black ichor spilling past my teeth. “Do it now!”
The scythe arches through the air for a second time. The bone parts and agony detonates. This time when I scream, there’s no sound left to make it with. Just a silent, open-jawed howl as my second wing slides heavily down my back.
It’s over.
My wings are gone.
I collapse onto my knees before falling over. Behind me, the scythe slips from Jack’s fingers and lands onto the snow.
A heavy weight settles beside me. “I’m sorry,” Damien whispers. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t. Please. You saved her. You saved both of them. You did what I couldn’t. And I am forever in your debt.”
My eyes close. The cold ground against my skull is almost gentle now.
The pull still claws at the center of me, but my body can’t answer it anymore, and there’s a mercy in that, a terribly heavy mercy that feels a lot like sinking.
My thoughts start to slow, the agony finally dimming and pulling me down toward somewhere dark and quiet where none of this can follow.
Just for a minute, I think. Let me rest. Just for a minute.
I start to slip under.
“... Oh no,” Damien whispers.
“... what,” I slur, too weak to lift my head. “What is it…”
“Ashán. Your wings.”
I force one eye open.
“...they’re growing back.”
I blink up at him through the haze, uncomprehending his words, until a slow itch starts at the stumps on my back—a slithering spasm under the muscle that feels like a nest of insects waking beneath my skin.
No, Sage whispers. No, please gods, no—
“This wasn’t the end of anything,” I rasp, trying to push myself up. “It was just the first time.”
I look into Damien’s wide, horror-stricken eyes. “I’m going to need Jack back.”