Chapter 27
Two days had passed since Dunharrow, and the castle had thrown itself into celebration with an enthusiasm that bordered on desperate.
Cook had roasted a pig. Miles had composed seventeen verses of a victory ballad that made Gareth visibly suffer.
And when the travelling merchants arrived for the annual Samhain fair, Bertram had declared the gates open to all.
A show of strength and normalcy after Alaric’s shadow had hung over them for so long.
Now the bailey bustled with colour and noise.
Stalls lined the walls, draped in autumn fabrics and piled high with goods—carved wooden toys, bolts of dyed cloth, copper pots that caught the weak sunlight.
The smell of roasting meat mingled with spiced cider and the earthy scent of dried herbs.
Children darted between the crowds, and somewhere a fiddle was playing a tune that had people tapping their feet.
Elodie wandered through it all with a smile she couldn’t seem to hold in.
Happy? Gareth signed from beside her, his grey eyes warm.
“Ridiculously,” she admitted. “Is that allowed? After everything?”
Especially after everything. His hand found the small of her back, steadying her as a child nearly bowled into her legs chasing a runaway apple. You’ve earned it.
She had, hadn’t she? She’d survived kidnapping, and finally, finally, stopped being afraid of wanting things. Of wanting him.
Mine, he’d said in the courtyard at Dunharrow, and she’d said I love you, and everything had clicked into place like a key turning in a lock.
“That stall has ribbons,” she said, pointing. “Marian would love something for her hair.”
Spoiling the servants already.
“She saved our lives. I think she’s earned a ribbon or two.”
His mouth twitched. Go. I need to speak with Miles about the patrols.
She rose on her toes and kissed his cheek, still a thrill, being able to do that whenever she wanted, and waded into the crowd.
The ribbon stall was picked over but still had some lovely pieces, deep green and gold that would suit Marian’s colouring. Elodie was haggling cheerfully with the merchant (her medieval bargaining skills had improved dramatically) when she felt it.
A prickle at the back of her neck. The sense of being watched.
She turned.
An old woman stood at the edge of the market, slightly apart from the bustle.
Her cart was rickety, piled high with oddities—cloth bundles, pottery jars, strange wooden carvings that seemed to shift when you weren’t looking directly at them.
She looked ancient, with pale eyes that seemed to look through rather than at the people around her. Those eyes were fixed on Elodie.
Something cold slithered down her spine. She knew this woman, was certain of it, though she couldn’t say from where.
“There you are.” The peddler’s voice was like dead leaves scraping stone. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Elodie’s feet carried her forward without permission. “Do I know you?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” The woman’s laugh was dry as autumn. “Time is strange that way, isn’t it?”
She reached into her ragged cloak and produced something wrapped in a scrap of frayed cloth. Slowly, deliberately, she peeled back the layers.
Fire opals blazed in the pale afternoon light. Gold worked into an intricate setting. A clasp that seemed designed to close itself. The necklace.
Elodie’s hand flew to her throat. The world tilted sideways. “That’s not possible. It vanished when I arrived. It disappeared—”
“Things don’t vanish, child. They simply go where they’re meant to be.” The old woman pressed the necklace into Elodie’s hands. The metal was warm, warmer than it should have been, and humming with something she could feel in her bones. “And this has been waiting for the right moment.”
The sky darkened. Not gradually, all at once, clouds boiling out of nowhere, blotting out the weak sunshine.
Wind shrieked through the courtyard, tearing the last leaves from the trees and sending them swirling like spirits.
The market erupted into chaos, merchants grabbing for their wares, people scattering, children crying out in alarm as everyone took shelter.
Thunder rolled in the distance, then closer, then directly overhead. The necklace pulsed with heat in Elodie’s hands.
“Samhain,” the peddler said, and her voice had changed, gone strange and resonant, as if more than one person were speaking.
“The night when doors open. The night when choices must be made.” Her pale eyes held Elodie’s.
“You came through on Beltane, when the veil was thin. Now Samhain offers you a path back, if you want it.”
If you want it.
Lightning cracked across the sky.
“ELODIE!” Gareth’s voice, his actual deep velvety voice, rough and desperate, cut through the thunder. He was fighting through the panicked crowd, his face stark with fear.
But Elodie wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at the clearing, she could see it in her mind’s eye, that patch of forest where lightning had torn a hole in the world, and she knew, with bone-deep certainty, that if she went there now, if she held this necklace when the storm peaked—
The portal would open.
She could go home.
“A choice isn’t real until it costs you something,” the old woman said. Her strange eyes were kind now, almost gentle. “You said you chose him. But saying and doing are different things, aren’t they? Words are easy. Walking away from everything you knew—that’s harder.”
The necklace burned in her hands. The storm screamed overhead. And for one terrible moment, Elodie understood what this was. A test.
Not of her love, she knew she loved him. Not of her commitment, she’d already declared it. But of her certainty. The universe was asking … Are you sure? Really sure? Here’s the door. Here’s your way back. What do you choose when the choice is real?
She looked at Gareth, still fighting toward her through the chaos. At his scarred face and desperate eyes. At the man who had offered to help her leave if that’s what she wanted. Who had loved her enough to let her go.
She looked at the necklace. And she ran through the courtyard, through the gates. The clearing was alive with lightning.
Elodie burst through the treeline into a maelstrom of wind and rain and raw, crackling power. The storm had centered itself here, directly above the spot where she’d first arrived, as if the magic had been waiting all this time, gathering strength for this moment.
The trees were skeletal now, stripped bare, their black branches clawing at the churning sky.
Dead leaves whipped through the air like a thousand grasping hands.
Thunder rolled overhead, so loud it vibrated in her chest. Rain slashed at her face, blinding her.
She stumbled forward, one hand raised to shield her eyes, the other clutching the necklace against her heart.
The opals were screaming, she could feel it, a high keening vibration that resonated in her bones. The emeralds pulsed in counterpoint, steady as a heartbeat. The gold setting burned against her palm, but she couldn’t let go.
She tripped on a root, classic Elodie, and her knee split open on a rock. Blood welled, hot and red, dripping onto the ancient metal.
Storm. Blood. Choice.
The world shimmered.
A door opened in the air before her, a shimmer like heat haze, a distortion that shouldn’t exist, and through it, she saw another world. Her own time.
Lady Baldridge’s garden. But different now. The fairy lights were gone, the maypole dismantled. It was autumn there too. The roses had faded, the hedges had gone brown at the edges. She could see the stone manor in the background, windows glowing against the dusk.
Elodie stared at the portal. At the life she’d left behind, and at everything she’d thought she wanted, once upon a time.
And she felt... nothing. No longing. No regret. No desperate pull toward the world she’d lost. Just clarity. Crystal clear, bone-deep certainty.
She’d already made her choice. Had made it in Alaric’s dungeon, when she’d promised herself she’d stop being afraid. She’d made it in the courtyard at Dunharrow when she’d said I love you and meant it.
“ELODIE!”
She turned.
Gareth stood at the edge of the clearing, soaked to the skin, his dark hair plastered to his face. He must have followed her—run through the forest like a madman, heedless of the lightning crashing around him.
His eyes were wild. Not for himself, she realized that with sudden, devastating clarity, but for her. Always for her.
He touched his throat, tried to speak, then shook his head.
Don’t. His hands moved desperately through the rain. Please. Don’t go.
She smiled.
It wasn’t a sad smile, or a conflicted one, or the smile of a woman being torn in two. It was the smile of someone who knew exactly what she wanted.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said as she pulled off the opal ring Gareth had given her, somehow knowing it belonged with the necklace. With a deep shuddering breath, she threw the ring and necklace into the portal.
Not with anguish or tears. But with the same matter-of-fact certainty she’d use to throw out old rubbish. This doesn’t belong to me anymore. This isn’t my path.
The necklace and ring flew true, fire opals trailing light like a comet’s tail. They struck the portal at its center and sank into the shimmer like a stone dropped into still water.
For one endless moment, nothing happened.
Then the portal screamed. Light exploded outward, blinding white, consuming everything.
The wind rose to a howl, a shriek, a sound like the world tearing itself apart.
The ground shook beneath her feet as she fell to her knees in the mud, hands pressed over her ears, eyes squeezed shut against the brilliance.
And then—
Silence.
She opened her eyes. The storm was fading, the rain slowing to a gentle drizzle as the thunder retreated to distant grumbles.
The wind died down to a whisper. The portal was gone.
Nothing remained but the clearing. Wet grass, bare trees, grey sky.
And Gareth, staring at her like she’d just performed a miracle.
She laughed—a bright, startled sound—and held out her hands. “Well? Are you going to stand there gaping, or are you going to come kiss your future wife?”
He crossed the distance in three strides and caught her, swinging her up into his arms, crushing her against his chest, holding on so tight she could barely breathe. She buried her face in his shoulder, breathing him in.
“You stayed,” he said. His voice—his real voice, rough as gravel, broken as old stone. “You could have gone back to your own time. You stayed.”
“Of course I stayed.” She pulled back to see his face, to cup his scarred cheek in her muddy hand. “I told you, you ridiculous man. I’m not going anywhere.”
His eyes were wet. His hands came up to cup her face, thumbs brushing away rain and tears together.
“My love,” he said. The words were a rasp, barely human, and the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard. “Say you’ll be my wife.”
“Yes.” She was laughing and crying at the same time. “A thousand times yes. In any time. Yes.”
He kissed her. The kiss was fierce and tender and desperate all at once.
His hands tangled in her wet hair. Her fingers clutched the leather of his jerkin like she’d never let go.
When they finally broke apart, he was smiling.
Actually smiling—a real smile that turned his scarred face into something beautiful.
“You spoke,” she whispered, reaching up to touch his throat. “You spoke again.”
For you. His hands moved against her back. Only for you.
“You don’t have to—I never needed you to—”
I know. His thumb brushed fresh tears from her cheek. But some words should be spoken. Some answers should be heard.
They walked back to Greywatch hand in hand as the storm clouds scattered and pale autumn sunlight broke through.
The castle came into view as they crested the final hill, grey stone against a clearing sky.
Smoke rose from the chimneys—the household had kept fires burning through the storm, waiting.
Figures moved on the battlements, and as Elodie and Gareth approached, a shout went up.
The gates swung open.