Chapter 26
STEPHANIE
Two weeks passed, and Steph watched Criss Holt become someone she didn't think he knew how to be.
Not all at once, though. It was in pieces.
She had glimpsed it from the distance she'd put between them.
She saw him crossing the square one morning with a set to his jaw that had nothing to do with charm.
Saw him leaving Emmett's office twice in three days, serious-faced, no grin for the clerk on his way out.
Saw him at the Griddle & Grind once, sitting alone with coffee he wasn't drinking, staring at his phone like the screen held instructions for something difficult.
The town noticed too. Twyla mentioned it first, sliding Steph her usual coffee with a look that had agenda written all over it.
"He's not sleeping," Twyla said, wiping the counter in slow circles that were clearly just an excuse to stay close. "Comes in here at six every morning looking like he's been up since three. Orders black coffee. Doesn't flirt with anyone."
"That's a public health concern."
"It is, actually. Half my regulars are in mourning." Twyla set the rag down. "He asked about you."
"What did you tell him?"
"That you're working. That you look tired too. That even stubborn people deserve each other and life's too short for two people who smell like that together to be sitting in separate rooms."
"We don't smell like anything together."
Twyla gave her a look that could have powered the café's ovens.
"Honey, I'm fae. I can smell a bond forming from across the square.
You two have been lighting up my senses since the night you left my friend's tavern together, and it's only gotten stronger.
" She held up a hand before Steph could respond.
"I'm not meddling. I'm observing. There's a difference. "
"There really isn't."
"Fine. Then I'm meddling with love." Twyla leaned on the counter. "He's doing something, Steph. I don't know what. But he's got purpose in his step now that wasn't there a month ago. Whatever happened between you two, it woke something up in him."
Steph drank her coffee and said nothing, which Twyla interpreted as permission to continue.
"He comes in, sits by the window, watches the square.
Writes things down in a little notebook.
Meets with Kieran late at night, because, yes, I snoop.
And drove out past the northern ridge three times this week.
" Twyla's light brown eyes softened. "He's fighting for something. I just thought you should know."
The information settled into Steph's mind alongside everything else she'd been carrying: the treaty stone, the altered records, the Veil that wouldn't let her leave, the bond research she'd done at the Book Nook that she hadn't told anyone about.
She shoved it down, reminding herself why she needed to forget that and focus on this.
The site. So she went where the work waited and the dead kept their patience.
But it stayed with her. All of it. Him.
She saw him again a day later, outside the Mercantile.
She was coming out with replacement batteries for her headlamp.
He was going in. They nearly collided in the doorway, close enough that his scent hit her before his face did, cedar and spice, and her body responded with the immediate, full-system recognition she'd read about in the Ashworth text.
Every nerve ending oriented toward him like iron filings to a magnet.
He looked tired. Twyla hadn't been exaggerating. The shadows under his eyes were deeper, and the angles of his face appeared sharper than they'd been. But his amber eyes, when they found hers, held something steady that hadn't been there before.
"Steph." His voice was careful but still sounded like the voice of a man respecting a boundary he didn't want to respect.
"Criss."
They stood in the Mercantile doorway with people moving past on both sides, and neither of them stepped away.
"I need to say something," he said. "And I need you to hear it without arguing, which I know is asking a lot."
"You've got thirty seconds."
"I understand why you're angry. You had every right to be.
I made a call about what to tell you and when, and it was the wrong call.
" He held her gaze without flinching. "There are things happening right now that I can't explain yet.
Not because I don't trust you, but because telling you before I have proof would put you in a position that's worse than the one I already put you in. "
"That sounds like the same justification in different clothes."
"I know how it sounds. And when this is done, if you still think that, I'll take it. But I'm asking you to give me a little more time. And when you know the full truth, I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me for the way I've handled this."
His hand came up, almost reached for her face, and stopped. He let it drop back to his side. The restraint in the gesture was so visible, so deliberate, that it ached to watch.
"That's my thirty seconds," he said. "I'll leave you alone."
He went into the Mercantile. She stood on the cobblestones holding her batteries and breathing in the last trace of cedar from the air where he'd been.
She took the long way back, past the damaged fountain that was still being repaired, past the Book Nook where the orange cat watched her from the window, past the trailhead that led to the eastern ridge.
The afternoon was clear, the air carrying the green sweetness of spring, and Hollow Oak vibrated around her with its usual quiet magic.
She thought about the night at the Silver Fang. How he'd sat beside her without pushing and offered to tell her something about himself that wasn't designed to impress her. The man who had no plans, no direction, no roots, sitting by a fire and being more honest than anyone she'd dated in a decade.
Then there was the dig site. His tiger bursting through the tree line, placing his body between her and a collapsing ridge without a second's hesitation. The shift back, naked and shaking, crouched over her in the dust, his first word was her name. Her skin crawled with goosebumps at the thought.
On top of all that was the pride meeting.
She'd heard about it from Twyla, secondhand, the details incomplete.
But the shape of it was clear: Criss had stood in front of his own family and challenged an elder who'd spent decades building a lie, and he'd done it knowing it would cost him.
Not for glory. Not for her. Because the truth mattered more than comfort, and he'd finally decided to stop pretending he didn’t care about anything.
That was the thing Grant had never understood.
That was the thing she'd been looking for without knowing it.
Not a man who agreed with her about everything, or one who stepped aside when she needed space, or one who showed up only when invited.
She wanted someone who cared about something enough to fight for it even when the fight was ugly.
Someone whose convictions weren't borrowed or performative but earned through the specific pain of discovering that the thing you'd been told your whole life was a lie.
Criss hadn't just defied his pride for her. He'd defied them for himself. Because the man he'd been, the charming, rootless, commitment-allergic version, couldn't survive what he'd learned. And the man replacing him was harder to dismiss and harder to resist.
She missed him. She was still angry, still hurt, still carrying the sting of being managed instead of trusted. But underneath all of it, stubborn and persistent, was the simple, inconvenient truth that she missed his voice and his hands and the way he looked at her.
When she finally got to the site, she forced her mind off. Or tried. Focus.
The chamber entrance was still partially blocked from the second collapse, but she'd cleared enough rubble over the past week to access the interior.
The treaty stone was waiting, its dual inscriptions patient in the dark.
She set up her lights, opened her journal, and began the slow, painstaking work of translating every symbol in both layers.
She worked for ten hours. When she finally emerged, the sun was low and her wrist ached and her journal was full of new translations that confirmed everything she'd suspected and revealed things she hadn't expected.
The original inscription named names. Families who'd been stripped of their territorial magic. Elders who'd authorized the consolidation. And at the center of it, referenced repeatedly was the name she had assumed to find.
Ashkar.
She closed her journal and sat on the ridge in the fading light, looking down at Hollow Oak spread below her, golden and quiet in the evening sun.
She was going to finish this. Every translation, every symbol, every name. She was going to build a record so complete and so undeniable that no amount of curation could erase it again. Because that was all that mattered. It had to be.