7. The Matchmaker’s Burden #3
I pull my hand back and push to my feet because sitting still makes the guilt heavier. “Every couple I matched could be vulnerable. Mara and Caleb died because of a bond I helped bless.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough.”
“You know pieces.”
“Pieces make patterns.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes they make panic mosaics.”
I turn on her. “If I stop matching people, I stop creating new targets.”
“And the people you already matched? What happens to them?”
The question lands hard.
Mina stands too, gentle but unmovable. “Closing the shop might soothe your guilt, but it will not protect them. Those couples already exist. Those bonds already exist. You can’t unlove them into safety.”
My throat closes.
“I marked them,” I whisper.
“No. You helped them find each other.”
“What if that is the same thing?”
Mina’s eyes soften, and I hate her for it a little because softness makes me want to collapse.
“Fate.”
“No.” The word tears out of me. “I thought my gift saved people. I thought I was helping lonely hearts, broken bonds, impossible matches. What if I was putting a lantern over every one of them? What if I made them easier to find?”
Mina reaches for me.
This time, I let her.
The first sob hits ugly. No dignity. No warning.
Just grief breaking through the last useful wall inside me.
Mina wraps both arms around me and holds tight.
For once, I do not joke. I just stand there in my attic, surrounded by the women who came before me, and ask the question I am most afraid to answer.
“Has my gift saved people,” I whisper, “or marked them?”
Mina holds me until the worst of the sobbing passes. Eventually I can breathe again. That seems like an achievement.
Mina eases back enough to look at me, her hands still on my shoulders. Her eyes are shiny, but her chin is stubborn. I love her chin. It has carried us through many crises. “We make a list,” she says.
My laugh sounds scraped raw. “That is your solution?”
“It is my first solution. Lists are where panic goes to become useful.”
I wipe my face with the heel of my hand. “You’ve been spending too much time around Dorian.”
Her expression sharpens at his name.
Regrettable. I should have said tax accountants or emotionally repressed furniture.
“What happened with him?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
Mina’s eyebrows rise.
I groan. “Not you too.”
“Fate.”
“He found something. When we were researching deceased fated mates.” My throat tightens before I can stop it. “He hid it.”
Mina’s mouth flattens. “That man has many skills. Emotional transparency is not one of them.”
“He thinks he’s protecting me.”
“Is he?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe he found something that proves he’s dangerous to me. Maybe he found proof I’m dangerous to him. Maybe the curse is already doing what it does best.”
“Which is?”
“Turning fear into silence and silence into fear.”
The attic seems to lean closer. The words are too close to the truth, and the truth has a voice.
Mina looks at the Book of Shadows, the letter, the genealogy, the old warnings spread around us. “Then don’t be silent.”
My pulse kicks.
Speak it, and the curse shall feed.
I step back from her before I mean to. “You should go.”
Her face changes. “Absolutely not.”
“Mina.”
“No. Do not Mina me in that tone. That is the tone you use before doing something noble, stupid, and badly hydrated.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“I can’t risk you.” The words come out too fast, too sharp. “You’re already connected to this. I have told you too—”
“If you keep me in the dark, I’m safer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then let’s not make loneliness our official strategy because as far as I can see, that hasn't been working so well.”
I look away because that lands too deep.
Loneliness has always looked practical from a distance. Clean. Contained. No one else gets hurt when you close the door. No one else bleeds when you carry the knife alone.
Except that is exactly how curses survive, isn’t it?
Inside shut mouths. Behind locked doors. In family books no one opens until the damage has already learned everyone’s name.
Mina softens. “Let me stay.”
I want to.
God, I want to.
But every shadow in the attic feels alert now. Every box. Every framed photograph. Every slant of rain on the window. I cannot tell if the walls are listening or if panic has simply learned my mother tongue.
Either way, I am not feeding the room anything else tonight.
“Please,” I say.
Mina closes her eyes for one second.
When she opens them, she looks furious and sad, which is one of her less convenient combinations. “Fine. I’ll go downstairs. I’ll make tea. I’ll pretend that counts as leaving.”
“Mina.”
“Do not push your luck. I am compromising under protest.”
It is the best I will get.
She gathers the used tissues, because, apparently, she is the kind of person who tidies up after emotional collapse.
At the attic stairs, she turns back. “You’re not alone, you know,” she says. “None of us are ever completely alone.”
I know I tell myself. The walls have ears.
I smile because she needs me to. But inside, her words of comfort have aggressively tripped the circuit breaker.
Then she goes.
Her footsteps fade down the stairs. A kettle clanks below. A cabinet opens, then closes harder than necessary.
Not gone. But far enough.
I sit back on the floor and pull the Book of Shadows onto my lap.
The attic feels colder without Mina beside me.
I turn to the empty pages near the back and write the first names.
Mara Ellis. Caleb Ellis.
My hand shakes.
Then another.
Talia and Ren. Josephine and Mark. Liora and Ben. Nessa and Cole.
Every couple I have matched.
Every bond I helped coax into courage.
The list grows until the page blurs. First dates. Second chances. Humans who did not know magic touched them. Wolves who did. Witches, vampires, shy accountants, lonely bakers, a widowed selkie who cried when her new mate brought her sea glass.
I see black knots forming around every red thread.
I see bodies in pairs.
I see Dorian’s hand pulling away.
“No,” I whisper.
The word is small, but it is mine.
I cannot close the shop and pretend the past will stop breathing.
I cannot tell Dorian everything. Not yet.
I cannot undo what I have made.
But I can watch. I can ward. I can warn without revealing if I have to. I can protect every name on this list quietly, carefully, one impossible bond at a time.
Even if I have to carry the curse alone.
Downstairs, I hear the kettle screaming. Outside, rain slides over the cottage roof like fingers over glass.
I press my palm flat against the page of names and make a vow no wall can hear because I do not speak it aloud.
I will not let my love become their death.