50. Epilogue
C assie and Elspeth arrive at Ebonrose a fortnight after the wedding, accompanied by Mistress Stripe and all of Selene’s trunks. Dorian watches in stunned silence as carriage after carriage is unloaded, footmen staggering beneath the sheer weight of embroidered silks and velvet gowns.
“Selene,” he says at last, voice faint. “How… how many dresses do you own?”
Selene, standing beside him with an arm looped through his, considers the question. “Enough,” she decides.
“Enough for what?”
“Enough to dress me for a lifetime, and still have options for the afterlife.” She pats his arm. “Don’t look so stricken, darling husband. I plan to renovate—my old room will be my dressing room and study. It will all be put to good use.”
Dorian sighs but smiles nonetheless. He likes the fact that Selene hasn’t left their bed since their arrival. There is no his room and hers. There is only theirs.
Ebonrose flourishes again under Selene’s touch.
The worn halls are restored to their former grandeur, gardens bloom in riotous colour, and every thread of her old life is woven into this new one.
There is no grand return to society for them—just one event, the Fairmont ball, where Selene once again ensures that Everton has his moment before retreating from the season entirely.
By then, she is in a delicate condition, and society is left to whisper without her.
The gossip fades in time, just as all things do. The scandal of the Duskbriars diminishes, replaced by fresher scandals, newer names. Lady Duskbriar is spared the noose—a kindness from the King. She is sent to a distant prison on the edge of the land, where she will live out her days.
Selene knows that she will never visit. Her mother writes, but she does not read. She can never forgive her mother for her actions. She may, eventually, be able to forgive her father, but she’s in no rush. She has her own family to think about now.
Sylvana Ashwyn dies towards the end of the year as she always does, and Nocturne Hall falls to Selene again. She gives it away to become a school for young ladies, offering a thoroughly-rounded education that many women of society would blush at.
On the day that once marked the Ashvold invasion, Florian Nightbloom is born beneath a sky painted gold with sunrise. He is followed in time by his sisters, Iris-Rose and Aurora, and his cousins, Gideon and Elion.
“There you go, Soren,” Selene declares, when the youngest, Aurora, is placed in his arms. “One for each of us, and I didn’t even have to make them all myself.”
Soren doesn’t reply. He’s entirely too busy staring at the baby in his arms, brushing back a lock of strawberry-gold hair.
Marta and Jon marry too, and Marta does not die in childbirth. Dorian ensures it, rewriting fate once more. He saves who he has always saved, and he saves Selene—day in, day out. She saves him, too, in ways that cannot be counted, in love that never wavers.
Ashvold keeps its distance, and King Alden keeps his word. Things change for the women of the country, and the lower classes too, in the frustratingly slow way that progress often happens. Things will never be truly equal in Selene’s lifetime, but she has hopes that it might be in her daughters’.
She comes to understand her mother’s words to her that day, and why Lady Duskbriar risked everything to return to a timeline where her daughter was still living.
Selene takes some comfort in what that means, but it doesn’t erase a childhood of coldness.
It just makes her more determined to fill her children’s with sunshine.
And one evening, beneath a sky silvered with moonlight, Selene steps into the garden and finds the midnight irises blooming at last.
She touches one gently, its petals dark as the hour for which it is named. Dorian finds her there, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Beautiful,” he murmurs, though he is not looking at the flowers.
She smiles, leaning into him, knowing—knowing—that this, at last, is everything.
They step back inside, arm in arm, and pause beneath the restored family crest. The shield bears irises and roses, twinned and a new motto that will see their family through the centuries that follow:
We weave our own fate.
And they do.