Epilogue
Nearly three months had passed since the night the Grove Core had purged its poison.
Ashenvale Ventures, predictably, had backed out within forty-eight hours of the incident.
“Force majeure,” their statement read, which was corporate for we don’t mess with gods.
Their stock plummeted, their public relations team melted down, and Bellwether collectively threw a parade in the comments section of the online news site.
The Solstice celebration, though pared down, turned out to be one of the most beloved in recent memory.
With the bonfire moved out of the Grove Core’s heart and into one of the gentler meadow clearings on the Green Holdings’ edge, the whole event held a smaller, cozier footprint.
People gathered close instead of scattering across half a dozen vendor paths.
Goldie, as Herald, lit the bonfire with a quiet, resonant invocation that rippled through the crowd like the susurrus of spring leaves.
Attendance doubled, sales tripled, and, for the first time in years, there wasn’t a single metaphysical mishap.
No spontaneous combustions. No ley line hiccups.
Not even a mischievous pop from the wards.
Everyone left agreeing it was a success.
Even Nadia Fromme admitted the scaled-back celebration had been “surprisingly tasteful.”
Splice, meanwhile, was officially recognized as a “magical person of independent agency” after three exhausting hearings and one spectacularly awkward interview with the Department of Metaphysical Affairs.
Goldie had sat beside him the entire time, smiling through gritted teeth while he answered bureaucrats’ questions about “employment history” and “preferred pronouns.”
When they asked for a legal surname, he calmly offered “Assistant.” Goldie nearly sprained an eye rolling at the literalness of it, but the clerk typed it in without blinking, and that was that.
Karen Vesuvius’s injunctions all dissolved as soon as Splice gained “personhood” (a bureaucratic label Goldie still wasn’t convinced wasn’t an insult), which meant every seal the woman had slapped on Marlow Truckenham’s records and the Grove Core investigation peeled back in a single, brutal afternoon.
The police, abruptly free of red tape, invited her in for a “conversation” about why, exactly, she’d worked so hard to keep anyone from looking into the councilman’s affairs too closely.
Faced with her own motions blown up on a projector, Karen sputtered, backpedaled, and finally requested counsel. By the end of it, she was on “indefinite leave,” her calendar cleared by a flurry of politely worded cancellations, and the smug tilt of her mouth at City hearings was notably absent.
Splice’s first official act as the Thornfather’s representative had been to dissolve the Green Holdings Land Trust. He called it “returning stewardship to the people,” though the legal paperwork made Goldie’s head spin. What mattered was that it worked.
Smaller, local groups were already stepping in: the Parks Department’s Witchcraft and Conservation Division; the Gardeners’ Guild; and half a dozen civic covens who had spent years rallying outside City Hall.
The Holdings were no longer an asset to be managed, but a responsibility to be tended.
For the first time in decades, the Green Holdings, under Splice’s careful watch, would belong to Bellwether again.
A week after the paperwork was filed, a quiet ceremony was held at the edge of the Grove Core. No press, no speeches. Just a single stone, marked with Elijah Pell’s name, placed beneath the roots of a newly planted hawthorn tree.
Goldie had taken Splice’s hand, laced their fingers together, and pressed a kiss to his temple. They stood there for a long moment in the dappled light, heads bowed, paying homage to the boy whose death had been buried for thirty years, and who had, inadvertently, brought them together.
Shortly after the ceremony, the newest Land Trust members, the ones who’d inherited their shares through money, not blood, had recovered enough to reenter the picture. Confused, cranky, and dressed in their most expensive couture, they arrived at Greymarket Towers to “discuss next steps.”
That discussion ended the moment Splice met them in the lobby and said plainly, “There will be no next steps.”
The floor had groaned beneath his words. The marble beneath their imported shoes had cracked like sugar glass.
None of them had stayed long after that.
Swale, Mischra, and Idris remained in comas. The doctors had no answers, the police had no charges, and no one honestly had much sympathy left to give.
And the protestors, once furious and waving handmade signs, had found a new pastime. Writing fan mail. Literal fan mail. To Splice.
The first batch had arrived with handwritten letters, wildflower bouquets, and an alarming number of paintings featuring shirtless, idealized versions of him with strategically placed vines.
It was awkward. And, Goldie admitted, kind of adorable.
The new quiet was most noticeable in Goldie’s apartment—or rather, their apartment, as she was learning to think of it.
The space had settled into its new, larger shape as if it had always been that way—the widened doorways, the softened light, the extra space that somehow felt like it had been waiting for them all along.
Splice moved through it with a strange, hesitant grace.
He was still quiet, intense, and prone to standing out the window for long stretches as if listening for a sound only he could hear, but his restless edge had faded.
The Thornfather slept peacefully in the atrium, and for the first time, Splice was simply Splice. An I, not a we.
He was also, to Goldie’s amusement, trying very hard to be responsible about his new position. Most mornings she’d find him at the kitchen table with the tablet Detective Oseki had dropped off, poring over legal documents with the wary patience of a man translating a cursed scroll.
He hated every second of it. She could tell by the way his jaw worked, by the faint patterns of vines blooming at his temples. But whenever she came up behind him and slipped her arms around his shoulders, he’d sigh, lean back into her, and let the tension go.
He was trying. And gods help her, she loved him for it.
The building approved of the entire situation wholeheartedly.
Mr. Lyle now greeted Splice with the same formal, slightly fond nod he gave Goldie, and the older elevator now played soft, jazzy harmonies whenever they rode it together.
All in all, Greymarket Towers seemed to have decided that Splice’s personhood and Goldie’s happiness were the new normal, and it was delighted about it.
It was on a quiet Tuesday night, while Splice was dutifully attempting to understand something called a ‘riparian rights clause,’ that Nell and Jem arrived, armed with three different kinds of sugary treats and a bottle of sparkling wine.
Splice emerged from his paperwork, gave the women a polite, slightly awkward nod, and then announced, “I believe it is time I consult with Sig.”
Goldie arched a brow. “On riparian law?”
“No,” Splice said gravely. “On composting. And women.”
And with that, he disappeared out the door, off to meet Sig for what had become a semi-regular ritual: long, muttered conversations in the community garden, where they bonded over soil pH, dietary restrictions, the baffling resilience of human women, and the burdens of divine purpose versus municipal bureaucracy.
It was a new friendship. It was adorable.
Nell and Goldie were both over the moon about it.
Nell popped the cork on the wine and gave Goldie a long, appraising look. “Okay,” she said, pouring three generous glasses. “Spill it. How’s domestic life treating you? You’ve never had a live-in boyfriend before, and doing it with a cryptid is a whole new flavor of strange.”
Jim, whose husband Hollis was a dapper and charming Tariaksuq, leaned forward eagerly.
“Does he molt? Does he leave dirt smudges on the upholstery? I swear, Hollis’s face flickered at me the other day when I used the last of his fancy olive oil.
He claims it was my imagination, but I know a passive-aggressive shimmer when I see one. ”
Goldie laughed. “No molting, but he does talk to the plants. Last night, I caught him having a very serious discussion with the fern in the hallway.”
It was a funny, absurd little detail, but as she said it, she felt a wave of affection so strong it almost stole her breath. This was her life now. It was strange and complicated and absolutely perfect.
“But for real,” Jem said, tucking her feet under her. “The sex. We need to talk about the sex.”
Goldie grinned into her wine glass. “Finally, we get to the important part of the debrief.”
“I’m serious!” Jem insisted, gesturing with her cupcake.
“Hollis is wonderful and attentive, but sometimes it’s like making love to a concept.
A very handsome, well-dressed concept, but still.
” She shrugged and grinned. “Not that I’d change him.
I just usually like to know which plane of existence I’m kissing, that’s all. ”
Nell snorted with laughter. “Try having a partner who believes sex is an event on the level of the Olympics. Sig is the most considerate lover I’ve ever had, but sometimes I would like it if he wasn’t so serious and we could just have a quickie without him waxing poetic about my body and my ethos.”
Goldie felt a wave of warmth spread through her chest that had nothing to do with the wine.
“It’s pretty fantastic,” she said, her voice softer than she intended.
“With Splice, it’s like everything is new.
He’s learning how to be tired. How to be hungry.
How to just be in a body without a divine purpose driving his every move. ”