Chapter 15
fifteen
. . .
Solenne
I write.
For the first time in centuries, I take up a pen and press it to the worn pages of a journal I thought I’d buried long ago. The cover is cracked, the leather hard with age, and the pages still carry the faint scent of smoke and sage.
I write her name.
Tansy.
Then I write about her laugh. The way it tumbles out of her like rainwater finding sunlight.
About the heat of her magic, the color of it …
not red or gold or blue, but something alive, shifting, a pulse instead of a hue.
About the way her eyes glowed after we kissed, after we bloomed.
The way her skin held the shimmer of morning dew, and how the vines still haven’t stopped curling gently toward the places she has touched.
The journal trembles in my hands, just faintly.
I pause, press one palm against the table to steady it, and feel the slow shift of the vines beneath the floor. Not binding me. Not demanding. Just … listening. Responding. The way the forest always promised it would, if only I could listen back.
The ancestral voices are quiet now.
Not silent. I don’t think they ever will be. But they no longer demand obedience. No longer whisper warnings or rules. They hum, low and even, like wind through old branches. At peace.
I didn’t lose the forest.
I gave it something new to root into.
I look up, toward the window where the light spills across the floor. It touches everything softly, the table, the dried bundles of herbs, the teacup she left half finished. The room smells like lavender smoke, cinnamon bark, and skin still warm from sleep.
Tansy is still in bed.
Curled among the tangled sheets and trailing vines, one hand tucked under her cheek, her hair a halo of wild gold around her face. She looks younger when she sleeps. Softer. Like someone who has finally stopped running.
I close the journal.
I set down the pen.
And I let myself reach for her.