Epilogue
There is a sense of peace when the world turns to spring.
Daisies crop up along the banks of the river, their sunny faces a promise.
Life returning. Ice melts, trees bud, and the air fills with the scent of thawing earth and brightening blooms. All around me, the stalks of last autumn’s rye crop sway like a gentle, gold ocean.
I pluck a shaft, slicing away the remaining seed, and watch while they are caught up in the wind, carried toward the dip of the hill below.
Avery Manor winks into existence through the branches of oaks and willows.
Rascal runs a few paces ahead, nose to the ground, ears perked.
He has taken a liking to hunting game, and I enjoy watching him run. Wild and untethered and free.
And he is not alone.
Since returning from the rowan wood, the slipping of my heart has not stopped. The pain still brushes the back of my neck some days. A remembrance of all I am, the power I could wield if I wanted.
Even the souls still come to me. Ghosts caught between living and dead. They cry out some nights, their voices whispers on the wind. Sometimes, I wonder if they are the voices of my mother or Ransom. So, I did the only thing I could think of to close the door to the rowan wood behind me.
The brass key rests against the tepid skin of my chest, tucked beneath the woolen bodice of my dress. I lift a tentative finger to trace its outline.
The bell was easy to melt down, forge into something new, to keep the door locked shut behind me.
The magic sings through the metal, not the shape, and with this key I hold the power to come and go as I please.
I have the power to leave Death and all it is in my past. But the key’s weight around my neck is still a reminder of the things it could unleash. I close my fist around it.
No more devils. No more deals. The dead can make their own way.
I do not belong to either Ithrandril or Erybrus.
There are enough Reapers in this world. Let them carry the burden the gods gave them. If ever I need to pass back between the rowan trees, the key will see me through. But for now, for this moment of freedom, the dead can find other Reapers. Other doors.
A shout comes from below the hill, and Rascal’s head perks up between the rye. Laughter lilts on my tongue when he bounds through the field, ears flopping like wet mops. At the crest, I spot a figure. It grows as it comes up the hill.
Bram. Holding something in his left hand. He swings it high over his head when our eyes meet, a grin on his face.
My guts twist. This man. My unmoving piece. Something to lean against. Something to hold and be held by in the storms. When he nears, I smell his ink-stained fingers, old coffee a film on his lips. He wraps an arm around my waist, pulls me flush against him.
“And how are you this fine morning, Ms. Thorn?”
I smile, study the curve of his jaw. “As fine as anyone could be, Mr. Avery.” His face goes stern, a hard line, and I laugh. “Oh, excuse me. Lord Avery.”
The title is new. Passed to the only remaining nobility left in Rixton. Blackbourne has been left to rot, the remaining staff carried over to attend to Avery Manor.
We found the bones there, buried where I knew they would be: in the castle gardens beneath the dead and dying plants.
Bram and I dug them all up and laid them to rest, and the village blinked in shame.
Apologies lay thick on their tongues, and I smiled, nodded, and heard them all.
But my duty was not to them. My promise was not for them, to weave empty words to resolve them of their guilt.
It was for Lilith. For Hester. For Dinah and Rosalyn and Frances.
I put their bones back beneath their graves.
Bram lifts the small box to my nose, and instantly, I am drawn in.
“Did Clara send marmalade cakes?” I lean toward him, greedy hands reaching for the box.
He pulls it back, a mischievous grin licking his lips. “Ah, ah, ah, there is a tax, Ms. Thorn. Delivery fees and all that.”
I glare at him, but before I can speak a word, his lips are crushed against mine. All I can taste is the black coffee, the twist of orange, the catch of clove.
I pull back, swatting him on the shoulder.
“You already ate one!”
His smile widens, a thing so delicious I want it back between my lips. “Sorry, can’t help myself. Here, you want one?” He pops open the lid of the box.
I rise on my tiptoes, catching the scents of citrus spice, vanilla, a hint of cardamom. Four pale brown cakes dusted in frosting sugar sit on lace cloth, tucked beside a brown bone that smells of only one thing: pumpkin.
Rascal sits eagerly at my feet, tail wagging, hunt forgotten. I wriggle my nose.
“You wouldn’t happen to want one of Clara’s pumpkin bones, now, would you?”
He scrambles forward in the grass, his tail a whip, lips peeled back, and he bays a desperate wail. I chuckle again, tossing my head to the yellowing sky.
It feels so good to laugh. So necessary. I wiggle my fingers between the treats and pick up the bone, holding it above Rascal’s head.
“You ready?” I tease.
He jumps high, his wet nose slapping against my hand. I pull the bone back.
“Fetch, boy!” It soars from my hand, end over end, and Rascal becomes a black blur. Bram chuckles, and I turn, catching him taking another bite of marmalade cake. “You’re going to eat them all before I have a chance!”
I launch myself at the box and trip when he pulls away, rolling into the rye, my belly tight with laughter.
Bram collapses beside me, smothering my lips with his until I can no longer breathe.
I sit up, wipe hair from my face, forcing my fingers into the box, and pull out a cake.
After taking a bite, the crumb melts on my tongue.
Cinnamon, sugar, orange, the sweet sting of ginger.
Clara knows me so well.
“If she keeps sending us sweets in the post every week, we’ll have to buy a whole new wardrobe come summer!”
Bram laughs and wipes his hands on his trousers. “I’m sure that can be arranged.” He props his head on his hand, lying in the grass beside me.
In the spring light, he is beautiful. So new, so alive. The sunlight reflects in his amber eyes, and warmth blooms bright inside me.
The people of Rixton questioned us, of course, when he showed up breathing at the steps of Avery Manor, not a moment older than the day he died. Lady Avery would take none of their cynical words, though. A miracle, she called it. The resurrection work of Ithrandril.
When asked, Bram tells people he was sent back for a reason. The god of light knew Rixton would be without a leader once Ransom and my father were found out, and Ithrandril had breathed life back into Bram so he could lead the people away from this dark chapter.
They believe him. Or, at least, they don’t ask for particulars. To question the judgment of Ithrandril is to doubt the very fabric of reality itself. And sometimes, people are more willing to walk through life in a fog than see with the truth and clarity that would shake their world apart.
I finger the key at the base of my collarbone. But maybe they are right. Perhaps it was all a work of the gods.
Or just a woman.
A woman who only wanted to live.
Bram stirs in the grass, closes the box. “I almost didn’t see this come in with the post. Polly was hurrying them upstairs, and I just happened to catch her.”
I roll my eyes.
Polly, Bram’s youngest sister, was the most excited to see him return, and she hasn’t left his side much in the past few months. Really, the only alone time we get together is either in the fields or in the small cottage, where I now live on the manor grounds.
After Bram and I returned, the village questioned the whereabouts of my father.
We told them the truth. Or a version of it.
That Vicar Thorn and Lord Ransom Black had been caught with the blood of village girls on their hands in the wood and, in their rage and fear of being discovered, turned on one another, slicing each other’s throats.
Soon, the seat of the church in Lysdin will send another vicar to Rixton, another man to yell from a wooden box every Sunday. But Bram and I will not be there to hear. We find the fields to be more our church than any building could ever be.
Bram’s finger sweeps my brow. “You deserve this, Addie. A soft ending to all the madness.” He leans over, kisses me. A gentle brushing. “I love you.”
He scrambles to his feet when Rascal comes whipping back, a stick between his teeth and pumpkin smeared on his upper lip. Rascal growls and drops the stick before Bram’s feet.
“Meet you back at the manor?” Bram turns down to look at me.
I finish my cake and nod, the wind a gentle kiss at my cheek. He calls Rascal after him.
“Bram?”
He pivots back around, a grin so wide it might swallow the world.
“I love you too.”
He smiles and jogs through the bramble. I watch him go. The key weighs heavy at my neck, a reminder of so many memories and lines my name is still signed to.
But what can dead things do against Death herself?
I stop, the wind whipping my hair into knots.
No.
I am not Death.
Death does not define me.
I lift a finger to my throat. Bram throws the stick for Rascal and grins back at me with a look that makes my bones ache. The wind shifts, a scent like apples and rye carried toward me, and I feel the gentle return of my heart. One sweet, beautiful true word.
A-live, a-live, a-live.