Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
A week vanished. Not in the way time usually dragged—barbed and heavy—but in a blur of warmth, limbs, and far too much bread.
For the first time in her life, Maude closed her shop without guilt, flipped the sign with a kind of feral delight. She let Wesley tug her across the street to his apartment above the bakery—a space warmed by ovens, layered with clutter and comfort, his presence in every corner. And she stayed.
They made love in the mornings, sunlight crawling across the low rafters.
They ate until they were stuffed, Wesley pulling dish after dish from his oven like a sorcerer showing off—flatbreads dripping with honey and herbs, spiced stews that stained their mouths red, little cream-stuffed cakes that made Maude groan indecently enough to make him smirk and start kissing the sugar from her lips.
Afternoons vanished under quilts, pressed together as they read The Verdant Trials aloud.
He took the heroic voices, overdramatic and booming, while she deadpanned through the rest until they were both laughing so hard they had to stop.
When the plot turned devastating—as the series always did—they read quieter, their shoulders pressed tight together, her chest aching in a way that had nothing to do with fiction.
Then, inevitably, he’d set the book aside and touch her like she was a page he couldn’t stop rereading.
Halfway through the week, Grim found them, yowling at the window as if to remind Maude she had responsibilities beyond being scandalously adored.
Wesley muttered about “privacy contracts” with cats but opened the window anyway.
The beast sauntered in, curled on Maude’s chest like a stone idol, and refused to leave.
When Wesley tried to evict him—twice—he retaliated by ripping his claws into a pillow. They reached an uneasy truce.
Oli and Selene checked in once, peering through the bakery like nosy parents.
Selene left a basket of fruit on the step.
Oli winked so hard Maude considered cursing him with permanent eyelid spasms. Then, mercifully, they vanished again.
By the seventh day, even Maude had to admit civilization probably required their reentry before their shops crumbled.
They lay tangled, the room hot with candlelight and breath, bodies slick with sweat from the latest round of trying to undo each other in increasingly inventive ways.
That was when Wesley whispered it.
“I—fuck, Maude—I love you.”
It slipped out between one breathless motion and another, his cheek pressed to her shoulder, voice cracked with effort and heat.
She froze.
He froze.
His face went scarlet, red climbing his neck so fast that Maude half-wondered if she’d accidentally cursed him.
“It’s okay,” she said quickly, swiping a hand over his burning cheek. “That happens sometimes during sex. I know you didn’t mean it.”
He dropped his forehead to hers, eyes squeezed shut. Then, with a gentleness that made her throat close, he said, “No. I meant it. I’m in love with you, Maude.”
The world narrowed.
He kissed her nose, her temple, her jaw—punctuation marks to every memory.
“Since the moment you called me a bakery bastard. Since you scowled at me across that cursed counter and refused to let me charm you. Since you stood in the square with everyone against you and didn’t bend.
Every minute I’ve spent with you, it’s only gotten worse—or better.
Both. I don’t care how short it’s been. I don’t care if it’s mad. I’m crazy about you.”
Her eyes burned. Tears slid hot and unstoppable, cutting down her cheeks.
“I love you,” he whispered again, forehead pressed to hers. “And don’t you dare try to convince me otherwise.”
Her heart felt too big for her ribs. Words scattered like leaves in a storm. All Maude managed was “Okay.”
Not a declaration. Not a promise. But maybe the bravest word she’d ever said.
He laughed, breath shaking. “Okay.”
By the time they stepped back into town, the world had adjusted the way Mistwood Hills always did: with gossip, exaggeration, and, eventually, begrudging acceptance.
Maude reopened the Emporium after her week of exile and found the line curling out the door. Not for healing tonics. Not for poultices. For pastries.
“Not mine,” she snapped at the first woman who asked. “Do I look like I bake?”
But Wesley—traitor—had already thought ahead.
He pitched the idea like it was simple: spell-touched sweets, pre-made batches they could churn out in bulk so people wouldn’t bother her during the day.
His dough, her herbs. Pastries that eased headaches.
Tarts that sharpened focus. Breads that let the overworked sleep like the dead.
He insisted their creations needed a name. After days of pestering, bribes of frosted cakes, and kisses that left her dizzy, she finally caved. On the little parchment labels, in her grim scrawl, it read: Sugar Spells.
Each box bore her warning: One per day. Don’t be greedy. Side effects may include feeling less insufferable.
Naturally, they sold out within hours.
The oddity shop became legend—a bakery-apothecary hybrid no one had asked for, and which everyone bragged about visiting.
Oli, meanwhile, made good on his schemes. Promises turned into votes, the votes into a magistrate’s seat. He celebrated by throwing a party so lavish half the city came just to gawk.
“Now I can actually keep you from getting executed,” Oli told Maude proudly, crown of ivy slipping sideways on his head.
“Touching,” she said. “Remind me to embroider Not Dead Because of Oli on a pillow when I get home.”
But she was proud of him. And then—she didn’t know what possessed her—she admitted it out loud.
Oli looked beside himself, like he’d been handed a medal, a kingdom, and permission to never shut up about it again.
Selene thrived at the Lantern Ward, carrying Maude’s tinctures with her and pretending she’d brewed them herself.
And Maude…she walked lighter. She still scowled, still snapped, still hexed Veyne’s ledger once for daring to lean too close to her shelves.
But she wasn’t walking alone anymore. Wesley was always a few steps across the street—or right beside her—brushing ash from her sleeve like it was his right.
One evening, when the shop was shuttered and the lanterns swayed low, she climbed the hill to Bailey’s grave. She carried no herbs, no offerings. Just herself—and the battered wooden box she’d kept hidden under her bed.
The runes carved into the headstone glowed a faint amber, as if waiting.
Maude sat in the grass, knees drawn up, and rested the box between them.
Her hand lingered on the scarred lid. “You didn’t get to finish it,” she said softly.
“So I did. The interlock. Just a fragment, that’s all you left me—half a thought scribbled down before the ink dried.
But I carried it forward. Line by line, rune by rune, I finished it for you.
” Her throat tightened, but she pressed on.
“It felt like sitting beside you again. Like hearing you mutter through the ink. Every mark, every stitch of it…it was you. And now it’s whole.
” She let out a shaky laugh. “It’s clumsy in places, probably not how you would’ve done it. But it’s done, Bailey. And it’s ours.”
She pressed the box to the base of the stone, leaving it there like an offering.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted.
Her voice felt too loud out here, even though it was only a murmur swallowed by the grass.
The graveyard held sound differently. Words clung to leaning stones and ivy-choked fences, caught in the damp air.
“Letting go. Not blaming you. Not…carrying you around like proof I didn’t dream the good parts. ”
Her hand scraped across her face, rough, furious at the wet there.
“You were brilliant,” she said, the word dragged out like a splinter.
“And impossible. And sometimes I hated you—hated you for leaving me with nothing but a half-finished spell and a shop drowning in bills. But saints, Bailey…you gave me everything too.”
Her words drifted into the wind, and it answered softly, brushing her hair across her face.
“I’m still angry,” she confessed, fingers clawing at the dirt until it lodged under her nails. “But I’m alive. I’m fighting. And I think—I think I might even be happy. Which is disgusting—and, if I’m right, entirely your fault.”
The grass bent under her grip. Her tears fell hot, streaking the earth.
“I’ll never stop missing you,” she whispered. “But I can’t carry you like a chain anymore.”
The wind stirred, soft as breath, lifting the hair at her temple. She pressed her palm flat to the stone, the cool runes humming faintly against her skin. “I love you,” she said. Then, with more weight, more marrow: “And—thank you. For all of it.”
She let him go that night. Not forgotten. Never forgotten. But the chain was no longer locked around her ribs.
When she turned, Wesley was waiting at the edge of the graveyard path.
He hadn’t followed her in, hadn’t intruded.
He simply stood among the leaning stones, steady as the old oaks that ringed the place, moonlight catching on his ashy blond hair.
Shadows draped his shoulders, but his face was lit clean by the pale wash of the night sky, eyes fixed only on her.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t push. Just lifted his hand when she reached him, palm open, waiting.
This time, she didn’t hesitate before taking it.