Epilogue
“For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams.” Edgar Allan Poe
Deirdre
Cornelia is in uproar when we return. Not in flames like Avalon, but close enough—the kind of wildfire that spreads in whispers, devours reputations, and leaves nothing untouched.
Students cluster in the quad, their voices sharp, frantic. Professors hurry past in tight groups, coats pulled close, words clipped and low. The air itself feels charged, buzzing with scandal.
President Sheridan is gone.
Claire grabs my arm as soon as we step onto the green grass, her curls bouncing wildly.
“D, you missed everything! They escorted Sheridan out last night. Security walked him straight through the courtyard in the middle of the evening. People said he didn’t even fight. He just kept his head down. And now? He’s done. Fired. Blacklisted. No one will touch him.”
I blink at her, the weight of her words pressing down like stone. “Just like that?”
“Not just like that,” Gabe cuts in, falling into step behind us. He grins, smug and satisfied. “The board had proof. Emails, transcripts, receipts. The works. Enough to make sure he never gets near a university again.”
We pass the administration building, its steps crowded with reporters, cameras flashing, microphones waving like weapons. Students hover nearby, eavesdropping, desperate for scraps. Sheridan’s name lingers in the air like smoke, thick, choking, and impossible to escape.
Claire slows, her voice softening. “It’s over, babe. He can’t touch you. Not you, not anyone else.”
I glance at Kieran, who is standing beside me, his expression amused, but he remains silent.
Proof.
I know exactly where that proof came from.
We continue to walk toward the dorms to drop my bags off, but I drop back a step, falling into stride with Kieran. His hand brushes mine, subtle, as though he knows what’s running through my head.
“You did this,” I whisper, low enough that Claire and Gabe won’t hear.
His gaze flicks to me, “I did what had to be done.”
My throat tightens. “The proof…all of it. How?”
“I’ve had it for years,” he admits, his voice rough but quiet.
“Buried copies of everything he thought he’d hidden.
Student complaints he silenced. Money trails he covered.
I wasn’t going to sit on it forever. And after what happened…
” His jaw flexes, the shadows under his eyes deep.
“I couldn’t let him breathe the same air as you for another day. ”
I stop short, the chaos of the quad blurring around us. “You sent it before we left?”
He nods once. “The timing wasn’t an accident. By the time we got back, it would already be over.”
My chest rises sharply, my breath catching. “Kieran…if they find out it was you—”
“Let them.” His tone hardens, a steel edge beneath it. “Sheridan’s rot was deeper than anyone wanted to admit. I didn’t ruin him. He did that himself. I just handed the board the match.”
The image sparks in my chest—Avalon, flames devouring wood and memory, cleansing the past until nothing but ash remained.
“And what about us?” I whisper, my voice trembling despite myself.
Kieran turns fully, his eyes locking onto mine with a force that makes everything else fade—the students, the whispers, even the reporters flashing cameras in the distance.
“They’ll talk,” he says simply. “They’ll speculate. They’ll try to drag your name into it.” His hand finds mine properly this time. “But Sheridan’s gone, and I’d burn this entire campus to the ground before I let anyone hurt you the way he tried to.”
Heat floods through me, sharp and certain. Fear and relief twine in my chest until I can barely breathe.
And as the quad buzzes with chaos around us, Sheridan’s downfall ripples through Cornelia like a tidal wave. I know he might be gone, but the storm he stirred isn’t finished, and this isn’t the end of the fight.
It’s the beginning.
Three years later…
Cornelia no longer feels haunted. The campus still buzzes with gossip, exams, and the endless cycle of students trying to prove themselves, but the shadow Sheridan left has long since burned away. In his place, Kieran stands at the helm.
President McKnight.
The title still makes me smile, not because of the power it carries, but because of what it means. He didn’t walk away. He stayed. He rebuilt. And he proved to every person who doubted him that he was more than their whispers.
As for me, I’ve built something too. I graduated, degree in hand, and when everyone expected me to pursue my master’s here, I didn’t.
I chose my own path—writing, creating, building a voice that was mine alone.
Some days it still feels unreal to hold my words bound between covers, to hear readers breathe life into characters I dreamed up. But it’s mine. My choice. My future.
And today, mine and Kieran’s journey brings us here.
The museum at Scholar’s Landing glows with candlelight, the wind whispering against the stone walls. Guests murmur softly in their seats as flowers spill down the aisle in pale cascades of white and green. At the far end, the altar waits, and above it hangs The Meeting on the Turret Stairs.
Kieran had it moved here, into the main hall, so it would witness us. Once, we studied it together, calling it inevitable and tragic. A knight and a maiden caught in their last embrace, doomed by the world that wouldn’t allow them.
But not us.
Not tonight.
Claire brushes a last curl from my shoulder before taking her place with my bouquet, her grin wide and uncontainable. Gabe straightens his tie, muttering under his breath about hating suits, but even he smiles when the music swells and I step forward.
Every eye in the room fades away the moment I see him.
Kieran stands beneath the painting, tall and sharp in black, his mask long gone, his gaze fixed on me as though I am the only person who has ever existed. My breath stutters, my chest aching with the sheer force of it.
When I reach him, he takes my hands, his touch reverent, grounding. And when it’s his turn to speak, his voice carries through the hall, but the words are only for me.
“Deirdre… I never believed in fate until you. You were the question I didn’t know I was answering, the rebellion I didn’t know I craved.
You made me want to be more—not because you demanded it, but because you deserved it.
I’ve spent years buried in every story of forbidden love that ended in ruin.
But with you, I’ve learned something no text could ever teach me—perhaps not all forbidden love ends in tragedy.
Some of it survives. Some of it refuses to bow.
And I vow to you here, in front of all who may have once doubted us, that I will love you fiercely, protect you endlessly, and choose you without hesitation, until my last breath. ”
The words cut through me, deep and irrevocable. I remember when he first said them, long ago, in the shadows of the museum where no one could hear. Now they are spoken in the open, unashamed, eternal.
I draw in a breath, focusing on the man standing in front of me. That’s when everything else dissolves. There is no one else.
Just us.
“Kieran, my whole life, I thought survival meant silence. Keeping my head down, hiding my scars, pretending I was smaller so the world wouldn’t notice me. But then you…you saw me. You saw all the pain, every broken piece, and didn’t turn away.
You taught me that my voice has weight. That I can fight, that I can burn, that I can live without apology. And somehow, even when I couldn’t believe in myself, you did.
So today, I want to promise you this. I will never be silent again. Not about who I am, not about what we are. I vow to stand at your side in every storm, to choose you every day, to love you with all the ferocity you gave back to me.
You said not all forbidden love ends in tragedy, ours almost did. You showed me how to fight. But ours doesn’t end here. Ours begins here.”
My voice breaks on the last word, tears slipping hot down my cheeks. I don’t even try to stop them.
For a moment, silence stretches through the hall. Then I hear Claire’s muffled sniffles; she swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand, her mascara smudging. Gabe leans down to murmur something in her ear, his own love showing through his eyes, despite the mischievous smirk tugging at his mouth.
I found myself in him. He gave me back what had been stolen, and I will walk beside him in all the light and all the darkness still to come.
And when he kisses me beneath the vaulted ceilings, beneath the painting that once promised nothing but loss, I know we’ve rewritten it.
We are not a tragedy.
We are forever.