Chapter 25
Forbes had been carrying the ring for eleven days.
It sat in his coat pocket like a small, insistent heartbeat—a constant reminder that he’d decided and then immediately lost his nerve about executing it.
Eleven days of reaching for it and stopping. Eleven days of telling himself tomorrow would be better.
And yet.
“You’re brooding again,” Alan observed from the library doorway. “Ye’ve been staring at that same page for twenty minutes.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Ye’re panicking. There’s a difference.” Alan crossed to the window, arms folded. “Just ask her. It’s not complicated.”
“It’s extremely complicated. There are... factors.”
“What factors?”
Forbes set down his pen. “What if she says no?”
Alan’s expression shifted from amused to something gentler. “She willnae say no.”
“You doonae know that.”
“I ken that woman sealed an ancient evil with ye standing beside her. I know she introduced ye to her coven as ‘mine.’ I ken she looks at ye like ye hung the moon and also like she wants to argue with ye about footnotes.” Alan shrugged. “She’s no’ going to say no.”
Forbes’s hand drifted to his pocket. The ring was still there. Still waiting.
“Where?” he asked quietly. “Where do I ask her?”
Alan considered this. “Where did it start for ye? The moment ye knew?”
Forbes thought about it. Really thought.
Not the graveyard, though that was when he’d admitted it to himself. Not her mother’s kitchen, though that was when he’d seen her magic. Not even the moment she’d sealed the breach, blazing with power, the most magnificent thing he’d ever witnessed.
Earlier. Before all of it.
“The gate,” he said slowly. “When I first arrived. I touched the iron and felt something—a hum. I didn’t know what it meant then. But looking back...” He shook his head. “Something in me recognized that this place mattered. That something here would change everything.”
“The gate, then.” Alan nodded once. “Tonight. After dinner. I’ll make sure no one interrupts.”
“How?”
“I’ll lock the children in the cellar if I have tae.”
“Ye willnae.”
“No, but Lilith has a very effective bribery system involving hot chocolate and extra stories.” Alan clapped him on the shoulder. “Tonight, Forbes. Stop waiting for the perfect moment. The perfect moment is whenever ye decide it is.”
The November air bit cold against Forbes’s face as he led Gwen down the front path after dinner.
“Where are we going?” She was bundled in her burgundy coat—the one he’d complimented in that first text, the one that made her eyes look like sea glass. “It’s freezing.”
“Just to the gate. I want to show ye something.”
“At the gate? In the dark? In November?” But she was smiling, letting him lead her, her gloved hand warm in his.
The old iron gate stood waiting, frost already forming on its scrollwork. The streetlamp cast everything in soft gold. Beyond the fence, Salem was quiet—windows glowing, smoke rising from chimneys, the kind of stillness that only came on cold nights when sensible people stayed inside.
Forbes stopped at the gate and turned to face her.
“This is where it started,” he said. “For me.”
Gwen tilted her head, curious. “At the gate?”
“I touched it. That first day. And I felt—” He searched for the words. “A hum. Something I couldn’t explain. I told myself it was nothing. Imagination. But I think...” He reached out, resting his hand on the cold iron. “I think some part of me knew. That everything was about tae change.”
She was watching him now with that focused attention she gave to things that mattered. The wind stirred her hair, and she didn’t move to fix it.
“I came here for research,” Forbes continued.
“Documents and genealogies and facts I could verify. I had no intention of believing in anything I couldn’t prove.
No intention of—” His voice caught. He pushed through it.
“Of falling in love with a woman who made my carefully organized world feel small and gray by comparison.”
“Forbes—”
“Let me finish. Please.”
She went quiet. Waiting.
“Ye terrified me.” The admission came easier than he’d expected.
“From the first moment. Ye were everything I’d trained myself not tae want—warm, open, unapologetically yourself.
Ye believed in things I couldnae see, and instead of making me think ye were foolish, it made me feel like I was the one missing something. ”
He reached into his pocket. His fingers found the ring—a simple band with a small sapphire, the exact blue-green of her eyes in certain light.
He’d had it shipped from Edinburgh, from a jeweler his grandmother had used.
It felt right. Traditional and practical, but with something unexpected at its heart.
Like her.
“I watched ye seal something ancient and terrible. I stood beside ye while you saved this town. And do ye know what I thought, in that moment?”
Gwen shook her head, her eyes bright.
“I thought: this is the woman I want tae stand beside for the rest of my life. Not because you needed me there—you didn’t.
But because there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
” He opened his hand, letting her see the ring.
“I’m not good at this. At... feeling things out loud. But I’m trying. For you, I’m trying.”
“Forbes.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Gwen Bishop.” He held her gaze, steady despite his hammering heart.
“Ye taught me that some truths doonae need evidence. They just need courage. So here’s mine: I love you.
I want to build a life with you—in Salem, surrounded by your impossible family and your chaotic magic and everything I never knew I was missing. ” He took a breath. “Will ye marry me?”
The gate hummed beneath his hand.
Not imagination. Not cold. A vibration in the iron, the same frequency he’d felt that first day—except now he understood what it meant. The magic of this place, recognizing a moment that mattered.
And Gwen felt the answer rise in her own chest—her magic stirring, reaching toward the hum like a hand finding its match in the dark.
Her eyes had gone bright with tears. Her hand came up to cover her mouth, and for one terrible second Forbes thought he’d miscalculated, misread, ruined everything—
Then she laughed. A wet, overwhelmed sound that was somehow exactly right.
“You planned this,” she said. “The gate. The speech. You actually planned this.”
“I’ve been carrying that ring for eleven days. Alan threatened to lock me in the cellar with the children if I didn’t ask tonight.”
“Eleven days?”
“I kept losing my nerve.”
She laughed again—really laughed—and closed the distance between them. Her hands came up to frame his face, cold fingers against his jaw, looking at him with an expression that made his chest ache.
“Yes,” she said. “Obviously yes. Did you actually think I’d say anything else?”
“I considered several catastrophic possibilities. It’s a professional hazard.”
“Well, stop considering.” She kissed him—soft, certain, tasting of cold air and joy. “The answer is yes. It was always going to be yes.”
Forbes slid the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly—he’d asked Iris for her size, which had somehow required a fifteen-minute digression about parsnips—and the sapphire caught the lamplight like a small, bright promise.
“Mo chridhe,” he murmured against her lips. “My heart.” He pulled back to look at her—this impossible woman who’d dismantled every wall he’d ever built.
She hadn’t expected joy to feel like this—wild and grounded all at once. Like her magic when it finally worked right. Like coming home to a place she’d never been.
They stood there for a long moment, foreheads touching, breath mingling in the cold air. The gate hummed softly between them. The night held its breath.
Then, somewhere inside Herrick House, a window opened and a child’s voice—Sinclair, probably—shouted something unintelligible but enthusiastic.
“They’re watching,” Gwen said, not looking away from him.
“Of course they are. Privacy doesnae exist in this family.”
“You’re about to officially join this family.”
“I know.” He kissed her forehead. “Best decision I’ve ever made.”
“SHE SAID YES!” That was definitely Sinclair, followed by what sounded like Andrina shrieking and multiple sets of feet thundering toward the door.
“Brace yourself,” Gwen murmured.
“Always.”
The front door burst open, and the MacBean children poured out into the cold—Sinclair in his pajamas, Andrina still clutching a stuffed dragon, Kinloch trying to look dignified and failing. Alan and Lilith followed at a more measured pace, though Lilith was already wiping her eyes.
“Did she say yes?” Andrina demanded, skidding to a stop in front of them. “Mum said she’d say yes. Did she?”
“She said yes,” Forbes confirmed.
Andrina flung herself at his legs. Sinclair attached himself to Gwen’s knees. Kinloch stood back, watching with that solemn expression that occasionally cracked into a grin—which it did now, small but real.
“Welcome tae the family,” he said. “Officially.”
“Thank you.” Forbes meant it more than he could say.
Alan reached them, clapped Forbes on the shoulder hard enough to rattle his teeth, and said nothing. The look in his eyes said enough.
Lilith hugged Gwen, then Forbes, then Gwen again. “I knew it,” she kept saying. “I knew it the moment you caught her in the garden.”
“That was barely six weeks ago.”
“Magic doesn’t care about timelines.” She beamed at them both. “Neither does love.”
They stood in the cold November night, surrounded by children in pajamas and friends who’d become family, the old iron gate humming softly beneath Forbes’s hand. Their breath fogged between them. Gwen’s ring glinted in the lamplight. Her smile was the brightest thing he’d ever seen.
“So,” she said, leaning into him. “What happens now?”
Forbes looked at the chaos around them—Sinclair trying to climb Alan’s back, Andrina demanding to see the ring, Kinloch quietly herding everyone toward the warmth of the house. He looked at the woman beside him, who’d taught him that some truths didn’t need proof.
His chest felt full and steady. The way it always did around her.
“Now,” he said, “we live happily ever after. Whatever that looks like.”
“It looks like this.” Gwen gestured at the beautiful mess of it all. “Chaos and magic and too many people in our business.”
“Perfect,” Forbes said.
And meant it completely.