Chapter 25 Noelle
Noelle
The path to Flora’s place was barely a path at all—more like a suggestion, like wild deer had carved it out and she’d followed in their footsteps.
We walked single file, flashlights mostly off now, the glow of Flora’s lantern casting long shadows over the underbrush.
Beau kept his arm around my shoulders, holding me tight.
Milo, to his credit, stuck to my side like he’d sworn an oath to protect me.
I made sure to tell him he was a very good boy for leading us to the forest witch.
It felt like hours, but we probably only walked twenty minutes before we broke through the trees and into a small clearing.
A cottage sat at the center of it—squat, lopsided, with a tin roof and thick vines crawling up the sides like the forest had tried to eat it and Flora had just told it to fuck off.
A stack of chopped wood was piled against one wall, mason jars hanging from the eaves.
Some were filled with herbs, others with… stuff.
I could have sworn I saw one filled with teeth.
At this point, I wasn’t going to question it.
The windows glowed warm from the inside, fogged up around the edges.
There was a porch—half screened-in, half not—with a rocking chair, a shotgun propped up next to it, and a pile of dog-eared field guides stacked beside it.
Wind chimes whispered somewhere in the dark, catching on every gentle breeze.
And a dog was sitting in the window.
A fucking yorkie, entirely out of place, yapping like crazy.
“Welcome to the edge of the map,” Flora said, stepping up and unlatching the door.
The second she pushed the door open, the yorkie launched into a full-blown tantrum. Tiny paws scrabbled against the ancient wood floors as it raced toward us, eyes rolling, teeth bared.
“Jesus Christ,” Holden muttered. “What the hell is that?”
“That’s Pickles,” Flora said. “She’s very emotionally intelligent.”
Pickles snarled at Holden as he raised his hands in surrender, Milo flinging himself onto the floor and rolling onto his back as if to keep the peace. Pickles ignored Milo entirely and made a beeline for Whit instead, ready to run another threat assessment.
“Uh…hey, pretty girl,” Whit said, crouching slightly, palms out like he was trying to reason with her. Pickles barked a few more times…then she moved forward to sniff him.
Then she just…stopped.
Only to growl at Holden the moment he moved.
“What the fuck is her problem with me?” Holden muttered.
“I told you,” Flora said. “She’s emotionally intelligent.”
Flora barely paused to take off her boots before padding across the crooked floorboards and heading straight for the cast iron stove. She moved mechanically—opening a drawer, fishing out kindling, tossing it into the belly of the stove
“She’s emotionally intelligent,” Holden grumbled again, glancing at Pickles, who’d posted up like a gargoyle on the arm of the couch, eyes locked on him, daring him to breathe wrong.
“You say that like it’s an insult,” Whit said, picking a spot on the floor beside Delilah and giving Pickles a respectful nod.
Flora set the kettle on top of the stove and grabbed a bundle of dried herbs from a hanging hook overhead. She started breaking off sprigs and dropping them into a metal teaball, muttering something under her breath—not quite a prayer, not quite a recipe.
Once the water was heating, she turned to face us, hands on her hips.
“Anyone hurt?”
We all kind of blinked at her.
“Like—physically,” she clarified. “Scratches, bites, burns, psychic feedback loops, unexplained marks, lost time, sudden nosebleeds…”
“You forgot possession,” Shane offered weakly.
“I didn’t,” Flora said. “It doesn’t possess people.”
No one answered at first. We all just looked at each other, like maybe the injuries wouldn’t count until someone else admitted theirs first.
“I uh…tweaked my ankle while we were running,” Delilah said. “Could use a wrap or something—”
“You hurt yourself?” Whit asked, eyes snapping toward her.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Calm down, Ward.”
I sat on the floor, back against the far wall, legs stretched out in front of me while Milo curled up beside me like a warm, anxious furnace.
My hands were still trembling. I kept telling myself it was the adrenaline—normal, temporary, fine—but my breath kept catching in the back of my throat like I hadn’t fully come back to myself yet.
Like a part of me was still out there in the dark with whatever the hell that thing had been.
The Gloamstrider.
God. Just thinking the name made my skin crawl.
Beau crouched in front of me, eyes scanning my face with that quiet intensity he got when he was worried. I didn’t like being looked at like I might break. But I didn’t want him to stop, either.
“You good?” he asked, voice low.
I nodded automatically, even though I wasn’t sure it was true.
He didn’t move; just kept watching me. Then—gentle as anything—he reached out and took my hand.
“You don’t have to say yes if you’re not good,” he murmured. “I saw your face out there.”
I gave the question a moment to breathe.
The fire in Flora’s stove was starting to crackle, the smell of herbs lifting into the air like some kind of spell, soft and sharp all at once.
I stared at the place where our hands touched—his big calloused fingers wrapped around mine, thumb moving over my knuckles.
“I thought we were gonna die,” I said finally.
His jaw tightened. “Me too.”
“And I think I knew it was coming,” I whispered. “Not tonight. But…that something was going to happen. I felt it. Like…I don’t know, like a tide pulling in.”
Beau didn’t speak, just nodded once.
“But the Shadow Painter—it saved us, I think,” I said. “I mean…right? That was…it was crazy.”
Beau sat beside me, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me into his warm, broad chest. “I saw it too, Noelle,” he said. “You aren’t crazy. In fact…I don’t think you ever were.”
Shane had been pacing in a slow, erratic loop near Flora’s bookshelves—half trying to calm himself down, half trying to get a signal on his phone. He kept holding it up to the ceiling like a lightning rod, muttering curses under his breath.
“God, what is this place, a Faraday cage?” he grumbled, turning in a tight circle. “How the hell do you live like this?”
“I don’t like being watched,” Flora said, not even looking up as she poured hot water into a row of mismatched mugs. “And if you think that little glowing rectangle can help you right now, you haven’t been paying attention.”
Shane flopped into a threadbare armchair with a dramatic sigh. He leaned his head back, legs spread wide, phone clutched in one hand. “This is literally my nightmare.”
Then he blinked.
Sat up a little straighter.
Squinted across the room—right at me.
“Uh…hey, Noelle?” he said slowly, eyebrows creeping up.
I turned just enough to look at him. “What?”
He pointed.
“Your hand.”
I looked down, convinced I’d hurt myself or—god forbid—lost my ring. Beau’s hand was still wrapped around mine, but his thumb had shifted, just enough to uncover the band of silver nestled against my skin.
Shit.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, shoving my hand into my hoodie pocket.
“Ma’am, I’m not blind,” he shot back, moving toward me. He sat down on my other side and yanked my hand out, staring down at the ring. “This is—holy fuck, did you two get engaged? It’s been like two weeks!”
“It was just a gift,” I said weakly. “Just…a pretty thing.”
“Yes, it’s pretty, but it is on your left ring finger,” Shane said. “Noelle, what the fuck?”
Beau cleared his throat. His thumb started rubbing slow again over the inside of my wrist, like he was trying to calm both of us down at once.
“It’s not what you think,” he said finally.
Shane raised an eyebrow. “Not an engagement?”
“No,” I said. “Not officially.”
Beau didn’t say a word to that.
Shane looked between us like he’d just walked into the middle of a conversation he hadn’t been invited to. Which, to be fair, he had.
“Wait,” he said. “So it’s like...a secret engagement?”
“No,” I said again, sharper this time. “It’s not.”
Shane kept staring. “You’re wearing a ring. On your ring finger. Given to you by a man who literally said nothing just now to deny that it meant something.”
Beau shifted, pulling in a breath, but I beat him to it.
“It means something,” I said. “It just doesn’t mean that yet.”
Shane’s mouth opened, then closed again. “Okay,” he said slowly. “But like...should we be celebrating or concerned? Because I’m gonna be real, this feels like the kind of thing that would be setting off alarm bells in the real world.”
Flora cleared her throat from over by the stove, not looking up. “This isn’t the real world.”
We all had to take a beat at that. I might have wanted to ask what she meant…but it made perfect sense.
So I let it lie.
Whit let out a low whistle from his spot on the floor, glancing down at the ring. “Town wants you here,” he said. “Welcome to the family.”
Delilah nodded like it was obvious. “It’s fate. You don’t fight that shit. You just lie back and let it steamroll you.”
“Steamroll,” I repeated. “Wow. Thanks.”
“I meant it lovingly,” she said, sipping her tea. “Willow Grove picked you. Done deal. And I’m sure Beau’s happy about it…but for what it’s worth, I don’t mind having you stick around either.”
Shane looked between all of us, a little wild-eyed. “Okay…what the fuck? We’re all just accepting this? Was there some kind of magical small town mating ritual I missed?”
“You were there,” Delilah said. “It was the part where we almost died. Very romantic.”
“Jesus Christ,” Shane muttered. “Do y’all hear yourselves?”
Holden let out a half-hysterical laugh from across the room. Pickles responded with a warning growl that he ignored. “Finally. Thank you. I was starting to think I’d lost my mind.”
“You’re just new again,” Whit said. “It’s like a re-initiation. You forget how weird it all is until something bites you in the ass.”
Holden leaned back against the wall. “So what, I’m supposed to just get used to this? Engagements decided by the town, glowing creatures saving us from shadow monsters, and people talking like it’s all normal?”
No one answered him right away. Flora handed him a mug instead. He took it without looking at her.
“It’s not about getting used to it,” Beau said. “It’s about being here long enough that it stops feeling strange.”
“That doesn’t sound better,” Holden muttered.
“I don’t think it’s supposed to,” Whit said.
The room settled. The warmth from the stove spread slow and even, the soft hiss of the kettle now the only sound. Milo had dozed off, head on my thigh. Pickles was finally quiet, watching us all with her tiny, bugged-out eyes, still tracking every movement Holden made.
I shifted closer to Beau. He pulled me in like it was instinct.
“Are you okay?” I asked, barely above a whisper.
His eyes dropped to the ring on my hand. “Yeah.”
I didn’t ask if he meant it. I just held on tighter.
Flora dimmed the single lamp by the window and moved to a small cot tucked into the corner, dropping a heavy blanket over it. “Get what sleep you can,” she said. “The woods will get bored by morning…and you’re safe here.”
Nobody laughed that time.
Delilah stretched out on the floor beside Whit, their shoulders brushing. Shane stayed curled in his chair, staring at the ceiling. Holden hadn’t moved from his post by the wall. And Beau…he stayed beside me, solid and warm and forever.
I felt him doze off in the cozy light of Flora’s cottage…felt Milo on my other side, snoring in his sleep. My hand rested on Beau’s chest, the ring glinting, and I moved my fingers to look a little closer.
I didn’t know where he’d gotten it, but it suited me. Amethyst was my favorite gemstone; silver my favorite metal. If I’d had to make a ring myself, I would have made one that looked a lot like this.
But the thing that got me the most was the moonstones.
Twin gemstones on either side of the amethyst…glowing like eyes in the dark.
I didn’t know what the Shadow Painter was. I didn’t know what it wanted, or where it had come from, or how long it had been here. But I was starting to think it hadn’t come to hurt us. Not me. Maybe not any of us.
Maybe it had always been a guardian.
Or maybe it had chosen to be.
I didn’t realize how tightly I was holding Beau until his breath hitched under my arm. I eased up, smoothing my hand over his chest in slow strokes. His heartbeat was steady. His warmth kept the rest of the world at bay.
I looked one last time at the ring before tucking my hand back against him, fitting myself around him.
Outside, the wind picked up. The wind chimes on the porch sang their slow, eerie song…the same song I’d heard a thousand times as a child, hiding under the blankets during those violent thunderstorms in the Ouachita Mountains.
Something rustled in the trees—too big for a bird, too quiet for a deer—but I didn’t sit up. I didn’t move.
I wasn’t afraid.
Not anymore.
My eyes drifted shut, the scent of herbs and firelight pulling me down into sleep.
And somewhere just past the edge of sleep, I could almost feel it again. Watching…waiting.
Protecting.