23. An Ending Rewritten
Chapter twenty-three
An Ending Rewritten
Fate
By early evening, Mated by Fate smells like lavender polish, old paper, Mina’s cardamom tea, and the faint electric anxiety of a business that has recently been used as both matchmaking office and informal curse war room.
So, normal.
Mostly.
I shut the front door and flip the sign to CLOSED, even though Mina added a smaller sign beneath it that reads UNLESS YOU ARE VERY ATTRACTIVE AND EMOTIONALLY AVAILABLE.
I stare at it.
Dorian stands behind me, arms folded, expression unreadable in the way that means he is absolutely reading it.
“Do not comment,” I say.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were inhaling judgment.”
“I was admiring the specificity.”
“Mina believes in targeted marketing.”
He reaches around me and turns the deadbolt with a click. The movement brings his chest close to my back, his warmth settling around me in a way that still feels dangerously new.
Not dangerous because of the curse.
Dangerous because of his closeness.
Because my body has started accepting him as a place where I belong, and that kind of trust still makes my heart look for exits out of old habit.
But the purple thread between us hums once, steady and unashamed.
No knot. No recoil. No warning.
Just us.
He kisses me once. Deeply.
My knees go a little weak.
And everything inside of me wants to stand here, with him, and never move.
I turn, and Dorian offers his hand like it is the simplest thing in the world.
It is not.
Nothing about us has ever been simple.
I take it anyway.
I unbolt the door, and together we walk out into the evening haze, locking the door behind us.
We walk in silence for a full ten minutes, staring at the world with a brand new perspective.
“How did Niall take the news?” I finally ask.
“As one might expect. He will miss his brother,” Dorian states. “But the good news is…he will make a full recovery and be able to enjoy the life his brother wanted for him.”
I look up at him. “You are becoming quite the optimist.”
“Why not? It’s a beautiful night.”
“Any chance for him and Kelly?”
Dorian shakes his head. “I think that thread was cut the moment she saw the sketch.”
“She’ll find her one. I have a good feeling.”
And, truthfully, I do.
The town is washed clean from last night’s rain, all silver sidewalks, salt air, damp cedar, and storefront windows glowing warm against the early evening fog.
The Siren’s Cup is lit up two doors down, its windows steamed with coffee heat.
Across the street, a werewolf florist argues cheerfully with a delivery man about bouquet symmetry.
A human tourist takes a picture of a seagull standing on a parking meter like it owns municipal authority.
It might.
This is Everwilde.
The threads appear before I ask for them.
They do not explode this time. They unfurl.
Gently.
A red thread arcs from an elderly woman locking a pharmacy to the man waiting beside a dented blue truck, flowers hidden badly behind his back.
Green threads wind around St. Brigid’s Veil in the distance, soft with healing and exhaustion.
Blue threads stretch between coworkers, siblings, patrol partners, old friends.
Pink sparks flicker near two college-age fae flirting outside the bakery with the intensity of people about to make terrible decisions involving pastry.
The purple thread between us glows brighter, braiding through my fingers, through his, through the space where our hands meet.
I used to think my gift was a matchmaker’s trick. Red threads. Fated pairs. A little emotional resonance, a little chaos, a questionable amount of meddling.
Then I thought the curse would ruin it.
Now I understand.
My gift has evolved.
Red for fate. Green for healing. Blue for loyalty. Pink for desire. Gold for courage. Black for grief, corruption, old wounds. Red for fated love. And purple for chosen love that refuses to become tragedy.
Everwilde is not a town of simple bonds.
It is a living map. Messy. Dangerous. Hopeful. Wounded.
Beautiful.
Dorian looks down at me. “What?”
I realize I am smiling.
“Nothing.”
His eyebrow lifts.
I sigh. “Fine. Something. But it’s annoyingly emotional, and I’m trying not to become a person who says things like my gift has blossomed, and I can see all around me the wonder and beauty of the world.”
“That kind of emotion you can share anytime.”
I let out a blissful sigh and give him my best smile. We walk hand in hand through the fog-bright evening, past the shop windows and gossiping neighbors and hidden magic humming under every cobblestone.
For the first time, the threads do not feel like a burden. They feel like an expanding vocabulary I am learning to translate.
And Dorian walks beside me as if he intends to write the dictionary.
His phone buzzes before we reach my cottage.
He checks his messages.
“Kelly.”
He holds it up. The media has blasted “Couples Killer Found in Wall” everywhere. The media madness will now subside, and we were able to protect the mayor with a quick resolution of a murder spree that never had a chance to claim more corpses.
The phone buzzes again.
He glances down, and I feel the shift in him before his face changes. His hand remains wrapped around mine. His shoulders stay relaxed. But the detective in him wakes like a wolf hearing a twig snap in the dark.
“What?” I ask.
“Coroner.”
“That is rarely a romantic word.”
“No.”
He stops beneath a streetlamp near Mrs. Abernathy’s hydrangeas, which are blooming with the aggressive smugness of flowers that have never been fake-dead on a stage. Fog curls around our ankles. The purple thread between us hums, warm and steady, while Dorian reads.
His expression gives away almost nothing.
Which is rude.
I lean closer. “You know, in some couples, people share information freely.”
“In some couples, one person does not attempt ritual death without briefing the other.”
I wince. “Fair.”
His thumb strokes once over my knuckles, taking some of the sting out of it.
Then he says, “Preliminary report on the plumber.”
I go still.
The dead man in the wall. The one folded behind the plumbing. The one the curse—or the person using it—discarded the moment he became more useful as silence than as a witness.
“Belladonna poisoning,” Dorian says.
I close my eyes.
Of course.
Belladonna again. Beautiful name. Ugly plant. A poison wearing old-world glamour like a widow’s veil.
He continues reading, jaw tightening by degrees. “No foreign DNA under the nails. No defensive wounds. No signs of restraint. Trace residue on his fingers and mouth. All evidence points toward it being ingested willingly or knowingly.”
“That man did not look willing.”
“No, he did not, but it gives the press a tidy bow to wrap the case in.”
“True, but people who hide themselves in walls after poisoning themselves are not usually known for tidy life choices.”
Dorian’s mouth almost curves. “That is not admissible analysis.”
“It should be. I have instincts.”
“You have many things.”
He slides his eyes down my body.
I bump his shoulder with mine, because if I do not add humor, the grief will take up all the available air.
Dorian scrolls farther.
Then stops.
The stillness returns.
Sharper this time.
“What?” I ask.
He does not answer immediately.
Which means something important.
Something bad.
Something he is deciding whether to give me.
I turn fully toward him. “Dorian.”
His eyes lift to mine, and for one second, I see the calculation. Not distrust. Not secrecy in the old way. This is different. A man holding one hard thing in his hand and deciding whether peace is allowed to exist for five more minutes.
“What did they find?” I ask.
He looks back at the phone.
“Nothing conclusive.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I would have liked something more definitive.”
My eyebrows rise.
He sighs, slides the phone into his pocket, and draws me closer by our joined hands. “The full report can wait.”
“Can it?”
“Yes.”
The old me would have pushed.
The new me almost does.
But his face is tired beneath the control. He has spent days chasing bodies, poison, pawns, curses, and my terrible decisions. He held me without a pulse. He almost traded his life for mine. He deserves one walk home without the next blade in his hand.
So I let him have the lie of omission.
For now.
He tucks me against his side and starts walking again.
Behind us, the streetlamp flickers once.
I glance back. Nothing there. Just fog, flowers, and the peaceful splendor of Everwilde at night.
My cottage waits at the end of the lane, warm-lit and crooked and deeply unimpressed by the number of life-altering events its owner has dragged through the front door this week.
The hydrangeas drip rainwater along the path. The porch light glows gold. One of my wind chimes clicks softly in the damp breeze, sounding less like a warning tonight and more like the cottage clearing its throat before gossiping.
Everything feels good. Peaceful. Another catastrophe averted.
Dorian pauses at the gate.
I look up at him. “What?”
His gaze moves over the windows, the door, the roofline, the shadowed garden. Detective eyes. Wolf eyes. Man-who-almost-lost-me eyes.
“Checking.”
“For?”
“Threats.”
“The azaleas have been suspicious since spring.”
“I am aware.”
“The garden gnome is technically cursed, but only socially.”
His mouth curves, but the tension in his shoulders does not quite leave. “Humor will not make me stop checking.”
“No.” I squeeze his hand. “But it gives you something to smile about while you check.”
That gets me the look. The one that says he knows exactly what I am doing and he is grateful.
We reach the porch, the damp wood groaning slightly under our weight.
The air smells of wet earth and my night-blooming jasmine.
I slide the old brass key into the lock, the mechanism turning with a familiar, satisfying click.
Before I can push the door open, Dorian’s arm brushes past me, his fingers tracing the intricate ward I carved into the frame years ago.
A soft, ethereal blue spark answers his touch, flaring and then dying down.