Epilogue

EPILOGUE

ELENA

M oving into the Monarch is easy because I already live there. A fleet of bellhops carries my belongings down six flights of stairs and then down to the hotel-beneath-the-hotel where our little family resides.

Ivy is thrilled with her new room. Atlas’s mother had a flair for the dramatic, decorating Ivy’s room in sumptuous scarlet silk and glowing lanterns. Ivy has been smuggling in little treasures from all over the hotel, turning it into a proper pirate’s cave.

Making it Ivy’s permanent home takes a lot more work.

Step one is a quickie marriage between Atlas and me. Turns out, immigration is a bit of an “ask for forgiveness afterward” situation when it comes to weddings. Once Atlas and I are married, I’ll be allowed to stay in the country and apply for a new visa even though I’m technically breaking the rules by getting hitched without one.

We marry in the rose garden at the Monarch Hotel, with Ivy as our flower girl and Dane and Remi as our witnesses. The snow falls thickly down, blanketing the bushes, catching in our hair.

Atlas has never looked handsomer, tall, dark, and glowering in the snow.

I’m too excited to be cold, and anyway, I’ve got a long white cape on over my dress. The dress, however, isn’t white—it’s the teal silk from Vivian’s shop. The skirt looks blue as sea glass against the snow flowing like liquid across the grass.

My bouquet is white roses with several large lilies mixed in.

“I thought you didn’t like that scent anymore?” Atlas says.

I lift the bouquet to my nose and inhale the peppery-sweet smell of Atlas’s garden and the sad, nostalgic scent of lilies.

“I’m so happy today…I want to love it again.”

I take another deep breath and then kiss Atlas, the smell of fresh blooms lingering in my nose and on my lips.

All through that day and into the night, I carry the bouquet with me and breathe in that scent, welding it slowly and forever to the start of something new.

Lorne is gone, but his castle is not. The police comb through it over the next several weeks, uncovering more details of the surprises Lorne had in store for me. Besides hidden dungeons and torture chambers, Sheriff Henley located over thirty different “cabinets” where Lorne could have stashed me, including some under the floorboards and others high in the rafters. But the ones that made me shudder most were the ones that were Ivy-sized.

Dubbed the “Murder Castle” by the press, Lorne’s house has since been sold to an investor who turned it into an extremely popular Airbnb. You can stay in any number of the rooms where Lorne planned to torture me, for just four hundred and ninety-nine dollars a night. Twelve hundred a night during the week of the Reaper’s Revenge.

“This town is getting so fucked up,” Atlas says.

“ Getting fucked up?” Dane raises an eyebrow at his brother. “It’s just getting more obvious.”

The adoption of Ivy takes six more months, several lawyers, and a lot of money. That part doesn’t matter too much because Atlas has a lot of money, and eventually, so does Ivy.

As it turns out, Ivy’s mother Linda was very wealthy, as Lorne knew. He inherited everything, at first. But with Lorne dead…there’s a new heiress in town.

That’s what makes the adoption complicated—several of Ivy’s relatives come forward when it’s clear an inheritance is at stake. Luckily, the judge takes Ivy’s wishes into account. She’s been progressing enough in her typing therapy that she’s able to write him a very clear note on her brand-new keyboard.

I wish I could tell you that something terrible happened to Mrs. Cross. Ivy wrote a statement about how she was treated by her father and caretaker. It was not considered sufficient evidence, not even when I supplied photographs I’d snapped of Ivy that showed the blue shadows of bruises.

Though Mrs. Cross still lives in her smoky little witch’s cabin outside of Grimstone, Atlas solemnly promised Ivy that if she ever stepped foot on the property of the Monarch Hotel again, he’d toss her off the sea cliffs.

Atlas looked quite terrifying as he said it, huge as a mountain bending over Ivy, eyes dark as the grave, shoulders blocking out the lamplight.

Yet Ivy smiled up at him with trust and adoration. She’s only my shadow half the time now, often choosing to trail after Atlas as he sees to the business of the hotel. And—break my heart, little traitor—drawing in her notebook the design for her own velvet suit.

But hearts don’t break, or even burst. They only shrink or swell. And sometimes you can bruise them. There is no bruise seeing Ivy safe and happy, following along after Atlas.

We take a portrait on the stairs of the hotel to celebrate, when the paperwork is complete and we’re officially a family.

We hang the printed photograph in the same spot above the stairs, joining the generations of Covetts inside those frames who lived, and loved, and laughed inside the Monarch.

That’s not the only photograph I have to take. I promised one of a very particular sort to Atlas in exchange for reading his writing.

And I’m a woman of my word.

I take the pictures in our bedroom on a rainy day when droplets streak down the glass. I lay the bearskin blankets out and pose nude in front of the window.

The last photograph is the one Atlas likes the best, the one where I stand in front of the foggy glass, hair hanging down over my breasts, the blankets bunched beneath my feet. He says he had a fantasy about me like that once, rising out of the ocean like Venus.

I print him a smaller copy he can keep in the breast pocket of his suit, like the icon of a patron saint. I’ve seen him take it out and kiss it when he doesn’t know I’m watching.

I feel the same about my ring.

It’s been my lucky talisman ever since Atlas gave it to me—I don’t think I’ve had a truly dark day since. And I’ve never slept better than when I’m wrapped in his arms, his ring upon my finger.

Because the picture and the ring mean the same thing.

They mean, I’m with you. I love you. I’ll protect you, I’ll take care of you. Carry me with you always and keep me in your heart. Because you are there in mine.

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