93. Life & Death Are Finally At Ease
life & death are finally at ease
—ASHáN & SAGE
The house is finally asleep. The last of the family left hours ago—Damon with one braid less than he arrived with.
Droot escorted home half-conscious in a danish coma, and the brute lingering on the porch a moment longer than security required.
The fire has burned down to embers. Frost draws slow patterns up the window glass.
We cannot stop staring at them. Eden is curled deep in the heart of the nest, one hand tucked beneath her cheek, the other resting against the edge of the petal pod.
Vaelína sleeps inside the bloom with both fists thrown above her head, utterly surrendered, her little golden heart flickering steady beneath its window.
Flick. Flick. Flick.
“She sleeps like Eden,” Sage murmurs.
“She scowls like you,” I add.
“She does not scowl.”
“She scowled at Damon.”
“… She did scowl at Damon.” A warmth moves through our chest. “She has excellent instincts.”
Nook settles around its new weight—one more heartbeat under this roof than it has ever held before. The vines woven over the walls have all turned, slowly, through the evening, until every leaf in the room faces the girls. My shadows pooled beneath them hours ago and refuse to be recalled.
“Three thousand years,” I say, at last. “Twelve times they cut the wings from our back. A curse built to destroy us. And she undid all of it in eight months.”
“She undid it the first morning she opened her eyes,” Sage says quietly. “Everything since has just been the curse learning what we already knew.”
Vaelína sighs in her sleep. Her shadow, small and drowsy, rises from the petals and drifts to her mother’s resting hand. It curls around Eden’s smallest finger.
“Do you remember,” Sage whispers, “when we believed we were meant to be separate?”
“I remember,” I murmur. “We would have missed all of this.”
Our wings—one green, one bone—fold forward, stretching slowly over the nest until the two of them sleep beneath the whole span of what they gave back to us. For the first time, in three lifetimes, life and death are finally at ease.
“Dova’Saevúra en vaelira. Eth ves duvai. Ael’bela. Aelvasha. Bela kai’vesha.”
There are twelve soulbonds written across lifetimes. Ours is the second. The bloom. The bane. And every clover in between.