Epilogue
The last caroler’s voice faded into the winter night.
I locked the door behind Mrs. Henderson, who clutched a hand-knitted scarf I’d wrapped for her grandson, and sagged against the frame.
The shop glittered around me—tinsel cascading from every surface, ornaments catching the fairy lights, wreaths hung at perfectly imperfect angles.
Evidence of controlled chaos. My controlled chaos.
Two years running. We actually pulled it off again.
The second annual Good Deeds Extravaganza had been even bigger than the first. More people.
More laughter. More cookies consumed than should be humanly possible.
My feet ached in a way that suggested I’d paced the entire length of Main Street at least seventeen times, and there was frosting in my hair.
Again. Somehow, I always ended up with frosting in my hair.
But the shop was saved. The whole block was thriving. Mr. Grinchly’s proposed development had collapsed spectacularly after his departure. The empty lot where his office had been now housed a community garden that somehow stayed green even in December.
Magic had a funny way of settling into places it liked.
I climbed the stairs to the apartment, each step a small triumph of will over exhausted muscles. The sounds of the celebration had faded hours ago, but warmth lingered in the walls—the kind that came from genuine joy, not just central heating.
The apartment door swung open before I reached it.
Bastian sat on the couch in his human glamour, all sharp cheekbones and dark hair that fell just so across his forehead. Still unfairly handsome. Still made my heart do that stupid flip-flop thing. But it wasn’t his face that stopped me in the doorway.
It was the tiny bundle cradled against his chest.
Our daughter.
Three months old, with downy dark hair that refused to lie flat and eyes that shifted between deep amber and warm brown depending on the light.
She’d inherited my nose, thank goodness, but her father’s intensity.
Even now, fighting sleep, she studied the world with an expression far too serious for someone who couldn’t yet sit up on her own.
Bastian’s large hand spanned her entire back, holding her with the kind of infinite patience that had surprised everyone but me.
I’d known. From the moment he’d caught me that first time, pulled me against his chest with those too-sharp claws so carefully controlled—I’d known he had gentleness in him.
He’d just forgotten how to use it for anything but judgment.
“She watched the whole thing,” he said, his human voice still carrying that faint old-world accent that made ordinary words sound like pronouncements. “Didn’t cry once. Just stared at all those people with those enormous eyes.”
I crossed to them, unable to resist pressing a kiss to the top of her head. She smelled like baby powder and that indefinable sweetness unique to infants. “She’s her father’s daughter. Judging everyone already.”
“I don’t judge.” His mouth twitched. “I observe.”
“Semantics.”
“Accuracy.”
Our daughter yawned, a tiny sound that somehow contained all the exhaustion I felt magnified tenfold. Her eyelids drooped, fluttered, drooped again. The battle against sleep was valiant but ultimately futile.
“Come on, little love.” I reached for her, and Bastian transferred her carefully to my arms. “Let’s get you to bed before you decide 3 AM is party time again.”
The nursery glowed with soft nightlights shaped like stars.
I’d painted them myself—slightly lopsided, cheerfully bright constellations that bore no resemblance to actual astronomy.
Bastian had tried to correct them exactly once before I’d threatened him with the paint roller.
We’d added an extension with more room for stock downstairs and the nursery upstairs—it seemed only fitting that both our family and our shop were expanding.
I laid her in the crib, adjusting the blanket around her. She made a small sound of protest, fist flailing up to catch at nothing. Then she found her thumb, and peace descended. Her breathing evened out almost immediately.
“Watch over her, Jingle.”
From his perch on the nearby shelf, Jingle Bells cracked one eye open, gave me a look that clearly communicated his offense at being asked to do something he was already doing, and settled back into his fluffy white loaf formation.
His tail twitched once. Translation: Obviously, human.
I’ve been watching her all evening while you gallivanted about below.
Judgmental cat. He fit right in with this family.
I stood there a moment longer, watching her sleep. The rise and fall of her tiny chest. The way her lips pursed around her thumb. The absolute trust that radiated from every relaxed line of her body.
This is real. This is mine. This is ours.
Some mornings I still woke up convinced I’d dreamed the whole thing.
That I’d never found that ritual, never summoned a Krampus into my failing shop, never fallen completely and ridiculously in love with a creature of shadow and judgment and terrible, wonderful loyalty.
But then I’d roll over and find him there—sometimes human, sometimes not—and the dream solidified into the best reality I could have imagined.
Strong arms circled my waist from behind. Bastian rested his chin on top of my head, and we stood together watching our daughter sleep.
“She has your stubbornness,” he murmured.
“She has your glare.”
“Impossible. She’s an infant.”
“Tell that to the pediatrician. He’s still traumatized from her three-month checkup.”
His chest rumbled with silent laughter against my back. “She was expressing her displeasure at the indignity of being weighed like a common ham.”
“She’s three months old, Bastian.”
“Your point?”
I turned in his arms, craning my neck to look up at him. Even in human form, he towered over me. “My point is that normal babies don’t express complex emotional nuances through strategic glaring.”
“Then it’s fortunate we didn’t produce a normal baby.” He brushed a strand of hair—complete with mystery frosting—away from my face. “Though she does have your unfortunate tendency towards chaos.”
“That’s rich coming from the being who accidentally turned the entire town square into an ice rink last January.”
“That was a controlled meteorological adjustment.”
“Three people ended up in the fountain.”
“They were fine.”
“Mrs. Allen broke her wrist.”
“I healed it.” His expression turned smug. “She said it felt better than it had in twenty years.”
I wanted to argue. I really did. But he was right—Mrs. Allen had sent us a fruit basket and gushed about her miraculously cured arthritis. Sometimes cosmic justice had unexpected benefits.
“Change,” I said.
He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.” I stepped back, crossing my arms. “Change. I want to see you. The real you.”
Something shifted in his expression. Hunger flickered across his features, turning his human eyes molten. “Noelle—”
“Please.”
One word. But it carried all those nights when he’d stayed carefully glamoured, worried that his true form would frighten our daughter. Worried that the horns and claws and inhuman features that marked him as other would somehow damage the perfect little life we’d created.
I’d tried telling him she didn’t care. That babies loved unconditionally. That she reached for him just as eagerly whether he had two legs or hooves, soft skin or dark fur.
But Bastian had spent centuries being feared. Old habits died hard. Even for immortal beings bound by love and stubbornness to a woman who refused to let him hide.
“You’re certain?” His voice had already dropped, taking on that resonant quality that vibrated through my bones.
“I’m certain I want my husband back.” I tilted my head towards the nursery door. “She’s asleep. And you’ve been wearing that face all day. You must be exhausted.”
Maintaining the glamour took energy. Not much—he’d had centuries of practice—but enough that I could see the tension in his shoulders by evening. The slight tightness around his eyes. Small tells that most people wouldn’t notice.
I noticed everything about him.
He reached for me, cupping my face between his too-warm palms. “You realize what you’re asking for.”
“Mmm. My Christmas present?”
“Your Christmas punishment.”
Heat coiled low in my belly. “Even better.”
His laugh was dark velvet and distant thunder. “You’re incorrigible.”
“You love it.”
“Against all reason and ancient wisdom.” He leaned down, pressing his forehead to mine. “Yes.”
The air shimmered.
Magic poured through the room like invisible water, raising goosebumps along my arms and making the star-lights flicker. It smelled of winter forests and cinnamon, of old power and older promises. The glamour didn’t so much fade as unravel, revealing the truth beneath layer by careful layer.
His hair lengthened, darkening from human brown to something closer to midnight.
Fur sprouted along the backs of his hands, spreading up his arms in patterns I’d traced a hundred times.
His features sharpened, became more angular, more feral.
Dangerous in a way that should have terrified me but only made my pulse quicken.
Horns curved up from his forehead, dark and wickedly elegant.
His body expanded, growing taller and broader until he had to duck slightly to avoid the ceiling. Muscles rippled under fur and leather as he rolled his shoulders, working out the kinks of being compressed into human form for too long.
Chains jangled softly at his belt.
Those damn chains. The sound still did things to me. Made my breath catch. Made me remember the first time I’d heard them in my attic, the terror and inexplicable thrill of encountering something ancient and powerful and completely beyond my understanding.
Now they just meant home.