EPILOGUE NORA #2
Aidan, carrying a tray of cups, nearly tripped over the rug.
Maeve's expression cooled into something polished and alert. "Kavanagh has been dead for eight years."
"His daughter is not," Cormac said.
Gabriel held out his hand. Cormac gave him the card. I caught only one line before Gabriel folded it away.
You wrote the contracts. Now read mine.
Declan's fingers tightened once at my waist. The world was already turning toward its next fire. Stone men shifted. Maeve's mouth curved without warmth. Cormac looked almost bored, which meant he was anything except bored.
I looked at Declan, and he looked back with that rough, steady face I had learned in blood and fluorescent light and rain. "Future trouble?"
"Likely," he said.
"How soon?"
"Soon enough that Cormac will pretend he isn't interested for at least a week."
"Generous estimate," Cormac called without looking at us.
Declan guided me toward the hall before the room could pull him into another war. His hand settled at my back, not steering, only there. The difference mattered. He had learned it. I had learned to let the touch stay.
A black coat waited over his arm. Mine. He held it open, and I slid into it slowly, careful of my healing shoulder. The lining smelled faintly of cedar, rain, and him.
"We can stay," I said.
"We can," he answered.
"You want to leave."
"I want you somewhere with fewer children using soldiers as shelves."
"Grace has leadership skills."
"Grace scares Aidan. That is different from leadership, though useful."
I smiled as we passed the staircase. Six weeks ago, the thought of leaving my mother would have torn through me.
Today Marian had Liam in her lap, Isabella at her side, Siobhan within shouting distance, Gabriel's guards at every door, and a future measured in appointments rather than machines that stole names.
It still hurt to walk away. It also felt possible.
The car waiting outside did not take us to the Stone townhouse guest wing, or Saint Brigid, or the apartment I used to rent before men with Mercy badges made old locks useless.
Declan drove himself, left hand careful on the wheel, right hand occasionally brushing my knee when traffic stopped.
He had refused a driver because he said a man deserved to take his woman home himself.
I had told him ownership language would get him stabbed with my pen.
He had replied that he liked my pen and hoped to see more of it.
The brownstone sat on a narrow street near The Black Harp, close enough for Stone cars to reach fast and far enough that I could hear church bells instead of Gabriel's captains arguing on the phone.
Red brick, black door, clean windows, new locks.
I had chosen the locks. Declan had chosen the reinforced back gate.
We had compromised on the kitchen because I wanted light and he wanted sightlines.
Inside, the house smelled like fresh paint, old wood, and the stew Mrs. Keane from The Black Harp had delivered because she had decided we were both too thin and morally unreliable with groceries.
My books sat in stacks along the sitting-room wall.
Declan's coats occupied the chair I had told him not to occupy with coats.
A ridiculous plant Isabella had sent leaned toward the window like it was trying to escape.
Home had arrived in pieces, and somehow all of them were ours.
Declan shut the door behind us and turned the deadbolt. Then he waited while I checked it, because love in our life sounded sometimes like metal sliding clean into place.
"Approved?" he asked.
"For now."
"Harsh."
"Standards are important."
He took my coat, hung it neatly, then frowned at his own coat on the chair with solemn accusation. I raised my brows. He picked it up and placed it on the hook beside mine.
"Look at you," I said. "Civilized."
"Temporary condition."
I crossed the room and stopped in front of the small table by the window.
Thomas's ring lay there on its chain, beside a framed photo of my father, Isabella, Marian, and me from years before any of us knew how expensive grief could become.
Beside it sat a new photograph taken at Saint Brigid that morning.
Marian in her chair. Liam in her lap. Isabella leaning in, Gabriel's hand at her shoulder, me beside Declan, his arm around my waist. Liam had moved at the last second, so the picture was blurred around his smile.
I touched the frame. My throat tightened, then eased.
Declan came up behind me, slower than usual because the ankle still complained on stairs and cold days. He did not hide it from me anymore. That was another lock we had changed.
"I bought something," he said.
"You buy many alarming things. Be clearer."
He reached into his pocket and set a key on the table beside Thomas's ring. Plain brass, without ribbon or velvet box. Just a key, warm from his hand.
"You've already given me a key," I said.
"Front door, back door, medical lockbox, roof access. This one is different."
I looked down at it. "Declan."
"It opens the safe upstairs. Half the house papers are in it. Your name is on them. The rest will be, if you want that."
My breath caught.
He turned me gently, his hands careful at my waist. His eyes held mine, green and tired and completely awake.
"I know a paper doesn't make a home. I know a name on a deed doesn't make a promise.
I also know men in my line have taken too much and called it protection.
I won't do that to you. So I am asking. Keep the key.
Keep the house. Keep me in it, if you still want me there. "
The room blurred. I hated crying and had done too much of it lately, yet the tears came anyway, hot and fast and mine.
"You are terrible at simple romance," I said.
His mouth twitched. "I was aiming for binding romance."
"Better."
"Nora." His hands tightened a fraction, then eased, like he was reminding himself I did not need holding down to stay.
"Marry me. Live with me. Fight with me about locks and coats and the correct number of weapons in a kitchen drawer.
Let me love you where nobody gets to turn either of us into a route again. "
My heart hit hard. The old Nora might have reached for a joke first. The new one had spent enough nights almost losing him to know the shape of a gift when it stood in front of her with scars on its hands.
"Yes," I said.
His face changed. Only a little. The line of his mouth softened, and the fierce control in him broke open just enough for me to see the man underneath it.
I picked up the key and closed my fingers around it. "Yes to the house. Yes to the locks. Yes to you. The kitchen drawer is still under review."
Declan laughed, low and rough, then kissed me.
There was nothing careful about this one except the way his hands protected my healing arm.
He kissed me in the sitting room of the house we had chosen, with my father's ring on the table, my sister safe across town, my mother holding the son stolen from her, and the city outside washed clean by winter rain.
His mouth was warm. His body curved around mine without crowding.
I rose into him because I could, because no door was closing behind me, because wanting him no longer felt like danger disguised as a mistake.
When we broke apart, I kept my forehead against his chest and listened to his heart. Alive. Steady. Mine by choice, not by route, debt, command, or fear.
A phone buzzed in his coat.
Declan ignored it.
"That may be Gabriel," I said.
"He knows where I am."
"Cormac's envelope?"
"Cormac can read without supervision."
The phone buzzed again. Then mine joined it from my purse.
I sighed. "Our family has terrible timing."
"Our family has survived worse than waiting five minutes."
Our family. The words settled through the room, over the key, over Thomas's ring, over the photograph of Liam's blurred smile. They did not erase the blood behind us. They gave us somewhere to stand beyond it.
Declan picked up Thomas's chain and fastened it around my neck. His fingers brushed the back of my skin, and I closed my eyes.
"Ready?" he asked.
I looked at the locked door, the messy chair, the waiting phone, the man in front of me, and the small brass key pressed in my palm.
"Yes," I said. "I'm home."