7. The Matchmaker’s Burden
Chapter seven
The Matchmaker’s Burden
Fate
For several seconds after Dorian leaves, I stand in the sunroom staring out the window at the rain and pretend I am not hurt.
It goes badly.
The cottage door has barely clicked shut, but the sound keeps echoing through the house.
Rain taps the glass ceiling above the sunroom.
The wards Dorian made me lock behind him hum faintly in the window frames.
The cemetery photos lie spread across the table like evidence, like accusation, like proof that love in Everwilde has been dying in pairs for generations while everyone politely called it history.
And Dorian is gone.
Not because of work.
That’s what he said it was of course, but it was something else. Something he uncovered. Something with teeth. Something he decided I should not see yet.
I should be angry.
I am angry.
Anger is neat. Anger wears boots. Anger has posture and eyeliner and a devastating one-liner prepared for the exact moment a man decides caution is a suitable substitute for honesty.
But under the anger is something worse.
Hurt.
Plain, embarrassing, inconvenient hurt.
I press my palms flat against the table and stare down at the photograph of Amelia D’Amour’s grave. My ancestor’s name blurs for a second before I blink hard enough to make my eyes sting.
“No,” I tell the empty room. “Absolutely not.”
The fern in the corner rustles. “Do not start with me, Beatrice.”
The fern droops one frond. Excellent. Even the plants are disappointed.
I straighten, because if I stand here too long, I will do something humiliating, like call Dorian and ask why he lied. Or worse, call Dorian and ask why it felt like he was leaving me before he actually left the room.
His withdrawal should make sense.
It does make sense.
We spent the morning in a cemetery filled with fated lovers who died on identical dates. We brought their names back to my cottage, laid them out like bones, and found proof that whatever killed Mara and Caleb is not new to Everwilde.
Then Dorian found something.
I know he did.
He has a very specific expression when he hides evidence: jaw locked, shoulders still, eyes too flat. Detective face. Wolfe face. Man-trying-not-to-bleed-on-the-carpet face.
He said he needed to verify it.
He said nothing.
Both statements are now sitting at my kitchen table making rude gestures at each other.
My magic flickers under my skin. The curse wording rises in my mind.
Speak it, and the curse shall feed. Hide it, and the silence shall bind.
A cold understanding curls through me.
Maybe this is how it begins.
Not with blood. Not with some villain cackling under a full moon while wearing an aggressively impractical cloak.
Maybe it begins smaller. With hesitation. With one person deciding not to say the dangerous thing. With another person pretending she is not wounded by the silence. With walls building themselves out of caution until no one can tell the difference between protection and abandonment.
If the curse feeds on love witnessed, maybe it also feeds on love hidden. On the places where fear makes cowards of people who would otherwise reach for each other.
Dorian sensed danger and left. Maybe he was right. Maybe distance is safer.
For him. For me. For every couple whose smiling photo hangs on the wall at Mated by Fate.
I walk to the window and look out at the rain-soaked driveway. Dorian’s car is gone.
Good.
That is good.
If he pulls away, I can let him. I can create distance without raising suspicion, without speaking the curse aloud, without letting whatever listens through walls measure the shape of what is growing between us.
I am excellent at emotional misdirection. It is practically a vocational requirement.
I can be breezy. Professional. Mildly annoying. I can turn every tender moment into a joke sharp enough to make him step back. I can protect Dorian from the curse by making him believe there is nothing worth protecting.
My chest aches so sharply I have to grip the window ledge.
Apparently, lying to myself is easier when other people need me useful. When it is only me, I am a terrible audience.
Sleep is impossible. Calling him is dangerous. Sitting here feeling abandoned is unproductive and deeply off-brand.
So I do what every emotionally stable woman does after discovering a murder curse may be tied to her bloodline and the man she wants is hiding something from her. I go looking for my mother’s Book of Shadows.
It is somewhere in this cottage. I know it is. My mother never gave it to me, not officially, not with ceremony or blessing. But after she died, boxes appeared. Practical things. Tax records. Recipe cards. Three sweaters that still smelled faintly like lavender.
And one locked cedar chest she never mentioned.
At the time, I told myself I was respecting her privacy by leaving it alone.
This was a lie.
I was afraid. Afraid of what I might find. Afraid of what I might touch of her.
Tonight, fear has overstayed its welcome.
The attic smells like dust, cedar, old paper, and the particular kind of family secret that has been left to ripen in darkness.
I pull the chain for the overhead bulb, and weak yellow light spills across slanted rafters, stacked boxes, holiday decorations, framed photographs wrapped in cloth, and one rocking chair no one in this family has ever admitted to owning.
The cedar chest sits beneath the round window, exactly where I left it years ago.
It is not hidden. That makes it more protected. Too obvious for a stranger to value. Too personal for family to touch casually. My mother was good at hiding things by making them look like chores.
A small brass lock hangs from the clasp. No key.
Of course.
I touch it with one finger. It warms. Not enough to burn. Enough to recognize me.
My throat tightens.
“Mom,” I whisper.
The lock clicks open.
Well.
That was easy. And emotionally manipulative.
Inside are bundles of letters tied with faded ribbon, pressed flowers, three journals, and beneath all of it, wrapped in indigo cloth, a thick leather book.
The Book of Shadows smells like lavender, dust, and old warnings.
The cover is dark green leather, worn soft at the corners, stamped with a symbol I have seen all my life but never fully understood: a red thread looped through a fox’s tail, a crescent moon, and an open eye. I think.
No.
Not an eye. An ear.
My stomach drops.
“Wonderful,” I whisper. “Even the family crest is eavesdropping.”
I open the book.
The first page is my mother’s handwriting.
For Fate, if silence fails.
The words punch through my ribs.
If silence fails. Not if you are ready. Not if I am gone or if you need me.
If silence fails.
My mother knew silence was part of this. Knew enough to write around the shape of it. Knew enough to leave me a book I would only find when not knowing became more dangerous than knowing.
She knew me perhaps better than I knew myself.
I turn the page.
The genealogy is not neat. D’Amour women sprawl across the paper in looping ink, names connected by red lines, black lines, broken lines, and symbols in the margins.
Matchmakers marked with tiny thread knots.
Women who left Everwilde circled in blue.
Women who stopped practicing crossed once, not in anger but in warning.
Amelia D’Amour appears near the top.
Amelia D’Amour. Weaver. Died 1874. Mate: Gideon Vale. Same date.
I run my finger over the line until the ink chills beneath my touch.
Weaver. Not matchmaker. Weaver.
The same word from the archive.
I turn pages faster.
Juliette D’Amour. Left Everwilde, 1898. Practice abandoned after public bonding rite.
Selene D’Amour. Mate lost, 1911. No further matches recorded.
Marguerite D’Amour. Thread-sight suppressed by vow, 1938.
Eloise D’Amour. Disappeared from town records, 1949.
The list goes on.
Women with notes beside their names: stopped, left, widowed, silenced, bound. Too many abandoned practices. Too many lost mates. Too many lives shaped like people trying to outrun a thing no one dared name directly.
The curse is not folklore. It is inheritance.
My inheritance.
I find my mother’s name near the end.
Audra D’Amour. Thread-sight partial. Practice refused. Chose ordinary life. Protected daughter through distance from craft.
Below that, in smaller handwriting: Fate shows full Weaver signs. Dangerous if bonded. Guide away if possible. If impossible, teach her silence first.
The room tilts.
Guide away. Teach her silence.
Not because she doubted me. I always thought that was it.
But she was afraid of what I could become. Or perhaps what loving me could unleash.
Three pages later, my grandmother’s name appears.
Evelyn D’Amour Rowe. Full Weaver signs. Left Everwilde, 1973. Practice suspended. Mate unnamed in official records.
A folded letter slips from between the pages and lands in my lap.
The paper is thin, yellowed at the edges, sealed with a smear of red wax cracked down the center. My grandmother’s handwriting crosses the front.
For Audra, when Fate asks why I left.
My breath catches hard enough to hurt.
I break the wax.
My darling Audra,
If you are reading this, then your daughter has either found the thread despite your best efforts, or love has found her. I am sorry. We D’Amour women have always been better at delaying destiny than defeating it.
My throat tightens.
You will be told I left Everwilde because of grief. That is true, but not complete. I left because grief had teeth, and because a man who once loved me turned into something I did not recognize when I chose another.
I grip the letter harder.
Two warlocks.
The next paragraph confirms it.
Marcus was the safer choice on paper. Old blood.
Strong wards. A warlock line tied to the town’s first protections.
He believed love was duty, and duty was possession.
I mistook steadiness for kindness until Elias made me laugh in the apothecary aisle while holding three bottles of cough syrup and a dying basil plant.
Elias.
My grandfather.