EPILOGUE
MAV
From the road, our cottage is a failed painting experiment.
A patch of gold bleeds into the lavender trim.
The front door is a blotchy seafoam Quinn swore would dry darker.
It didn’t. One of the shutters is coral—just the one.
The left side of the cottage has a scatter of silver stars she painted by moonlight, because “it felt right.” Quinn’s artistic vision, I say fondly to anyone who raises an eyebrow.
The inside’s no better. The walls are a patchwork of sunlit yellows and soft greens. Canvases lean half-finished in every room. She paints the way she dreams: vividly, and without a single care for proportion or practicality.
There are wildflowers in vases. Brushes drying in teacups. Paint-streaked rags draped over books she meant to finish but never did because something else caught her interest—usually me.
Everywhere I look, there’s color. Movement. Life. It shouldn’t work. But it does.
Because it’s her.
She’s a horrific painter—a truth I will take to my grave.
And I wouldn’t change a single line.
When the afternoon light hits the far wall, one of her abstract swirls glows like stained glass.
She told me it was supposed to be a lake.
I told her it looked like a phoenix. She kissed me for that, got paint all over me, then tried to fix it and somehow made it worse.
I still wear the paint-covered shirt. She tried to clean it once. I wouldn’t let her.
“Quinn,” I say every time she doubts the magnificent mess she’s made of our home, “you’re all the art I need.”
From the kitchen window, I can see her in the garden.
She’s kneeling in the dirt, sleeves rolled up, a smudge of soil across the bridge of her nose.
Thistle says she’s terrible at weeding, but brilliant at coaxing flowers to bloom.
Quinn claims it’s luck. I think the plants respond to her voice the same way I do—as if they’ve been waiting all their lives to hear it.
She talks to them as if they were old friends. Asks the lavender how it slept. Thanks the carrots for being patient. Scolds the tomatoes for growing sideways. Then laughs at herself, knowing it’s ridiculous, but does it anyway.
A few minutes later, she comes inside, barefoot, cheeks flushed, balancing two chipped mugs of tea.
“It is new,” she says proudly, handing me one.
I sip it.
It’s awful.
I drink every drop.
Because she made it. Because she’s watching me with those bright blue eyes and a hopeful smile.
“This one almost tastes like tea,” I lie.
She beams.
Branrir stops by once a week with a new stack of books, muttering something about keeping her mind sharp.
I think he regrets it. She’s halfway through a tome on medicinal roots and debates with him about fungi taxonomy.
Last night, she corrected a passage out loud while stirring soup.
Branrir choked. I told him he’d created a monster.
She hums while she paints. Reads aloud while she cooks. Sings songs she doesn’t know the words to. She leaves me half-finished letters folded inside breadboxes, bookshelves, and boots.
If people ever ask me what my biggest accomplishment is in life, I point to Quinn. To the beautiful chaos she now feels safe enough to be.
I muck stalls in the mornings. Chop wood in the afternoons.
Haul sacks of flour from the mill to the bakery, lift barrels, mend fence rails, and patch leaks.
Nothing glorious. The work doesn’t matter because at the end of it, there’s always her voice calling my name.
When I walk through the door, and she looks at me, the world makes sense again.
I never knew peace could feel like this.
The candle on the table burns low, flickering across the walls in amber waves. The night hums with crickets and a rustling breeze. Inside, everything is still.
We’re curled together on the old settee—one we rescued from the market in Pinehelm. Quinn insisted it ‘had character’, which meant it had a wobbly leg and was an offensive shade of magenta.
Her legs are draped across my lap with a book in her hands. Her toes nudge my ribs as I knead small circles into her feet. Her hair’s a little wild, falling over one shoulder. She smells of rosemary, paint, and something sweet I haven’t found the word for.
She reads slowly, savoring each line.
But I’m not watching the book.
I’m watching her.
The way her lips move with the dialogue. The little furrow between her brows during a tense passage. The unconscious way her fingers curl around the pages.
I say something—probably nonsense, or something smug about the plot twist she didn’t see coming—and she laughs.
A real laugh.
It crinkles the corners of her eyes and sends her head tilting back enough for the candlelight to kiss every line on her face.
My chest aches with it.
Those smile lines are everything.
Proof that we made it.
Proof that we’re living.
That I get to age with her.
I slide her book gently from her fingers and mark her place with a ribbon.
“I beg your pardon,” she protests, blinking up at me. “Could you not have let me finish the chapter?”
I press my lips to the line beside her mouth. Then the other. Then the faint lines at each eye.
She giggles, breath warm against my throat. “Someone’s in a rush.”
I pull back and meet her eyes. “No, princess.” A smile tugs at my mouth.
“We have time.”