Autumn settled hard over Westbridge in the weeks that followed.
The air sharpened. The trees along Main Street went from suggestion-of-color to full blaze almost overnight, leaves clinging in stubborn patches of red and gold. Pumpkins appeared on stoops. The coffee shop swapped out its menu board for one advertising approximately fifteen variations on “spiced.”
Rowan watched it all with a weird, split focus.
Part of her moved through the motions of her life—waking, working, visiting Gran, texting Harper memes of badly-decorated scarecrows. Another part hovered half an inch to the left of reality, counting days to Halloween, replaying every conversation with Caelan and Aisling like a piece of flawed film.
She kept waiting for the world to…stop. For something big and obvious to mark the significance of what was coming.
It didn’t.
The rent still needed paying. The library still sent her passive-aggressive emails about her overdue books. A pipe burst in the apartment upstairs and dripped through her ceiling, leaving a brown stain that looked suspiciously like a Rorschach test of a screaming face.
Life, annoyingly, went on.
Aisling came back, as promised.
Not every night. Not even regularly. She slipped into the bookstore after hours once or twice a week, glamour neat as a tailored suit. Sometimes she came with questions about human things—*What is ‘Tinder’? Why do people voluntarily sleep in tents? Are reality shows scripted?* Sometimes she brought information.
“You should know,” she said one night, perched on a stepstool, fingers trailing over the spines of romance novels, “that the Mire Queen thinks she can seduce you into her Court with promises of freedom.”
“Mire,” Rowan repeated. “Swamp Court?”
“Yes,” Aisling said. “They like…mud. And secrets. And making things rot slowly.”
“Hard pass,” Rowan said.
“She’ll send emissaries anyway,” Aisling said. “They like to…test edges.”
“Add that to my growing list of things to watch out for,” Rowan muttered. “Right under ‘elderly Winter wolves’ and ‘Prince with boundary issues.’”
Aisling smiled wryly. “He does loom,” she said.
“Understatement,” Rowan said.
Caelan, for his part, kept his word.
He didn’t press her for an answer. He didn’t show up every night. When he did appear, it was almost…mundane.
Once, he stepped out of the shadows in her kitchen as she was trying to wrestle a jar of pasta sauce open, took it from her without comment, popped the lid effortlessly, and handed it back.
“That’s not fair,” she said. “Do you people get extra wrist strength as a side effect of immortality?”
“Yes,” he said gravely.
“I hate you,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
Another time, she found him sitting cross-legged on the floor of the bookstore’s back room, reading one of Mrs. Carrow’s old accounting ledgers.
“You have hobbies,” she said, startled.
“Numbers relax me,” he said. “They…add up.”
“Can you do my taxes,” she’d blurted.
He’d blinked. “Your…what?”
She’d laughed until she cried.
He watched her with that same unsettling focus, but less…hungry now. More…curious. Like someone slowly realizing the painting they’d been staring at for years was, in fact, a window.
They fought, too.
About Aisling. About the Courts. About choice.
“You can’t protect me from her,” Rowan said one night, anger sparking under her exhaustion. “She’s not your wayward cousin. She’s…me. Or she could have been. We have a right to talk. To…compare notes.”
“I’m not trying to keep you apart,” he said. “I’m trying to keep her from using you as leverage.”
“I’m not…leverage,” Rowan said.
“To her, you are,” he said. “She thinks if she convinces you to burn the Court down with her, she’ll be free of their story too.”
“Maybe she will,” Rowan shot back.
“And maybe she’ll be ashes,” he said. “So will you. And the people who never asked to be part of any of this.”
“You say that like your Court is full of innocents,” she said.
“It’s full of…people,” he said. “Messy. Flawed. Stupid. Some of them have done nothing worse than steal extra pastries from the kitchen.”
“Your pastry thief will survive a regime change,” she said.
“Will he survive a forest fire?” he asked.
She hated that he had a point.
She hated even more that Aisling did too, when she said, *Why should we be the ones to carry the weight of their world on our spines?*
Harper and Zia did their own form of preparation.
Rowan came over one night to find their living room transformed into some kind of war room. A whiteboard stood against the wall, covered in scribbles—“IRON (AVOID), SALT LINES?, INVITATION RULES, NO FRUIT.”
“You made a list,” Rowan said, torn between amusement and affection.
“We made several,” Zia said. “This is just the ‘how not to die’ one.”
Harper circled “NO FRUIT” three times for emphasis. “Seriously,” she said. “If anyone offers you apples, pears, pomegranates, or anything else that grew within fifty miles of a fairy circle, you say no.”
“I know,” Rowan said. “Gran drilled that into me before I knew how to spell ‘pomegranate.’”
“Reinforcement,” Harper said. She capped the marker and turned. “Okay. Specifics. You need…rules. For yourself. For them. For any bargain you make.”
Zia nodded. “We can’t control everything,” she said. “But we can build…guardrails.”
They spent hours like that.
Rowan, who’d always used her knack for words to get extra library time and argue ticket fines down, turned it toward survival. They came up with questions to ask Caelan, phrases to avoid, promises she would *not* make under any circumstances.
“No agreeing to anything ‘forever,’” Zia said. “Or ‘always.’ Or ‘never.’ Time is…fuzzy to them. They’ll stretch it.”
“No ‘as long as I live,’” Harper added. “You live longer there. Or weirdly. Or sideways. I don’t trust it.”
“Specify locations,” Zia said. “If you promise not to do something ‘in the Court,’ define the Court. Borders. Physical spaces. They’ll use any ambiguity.”
“Don’t promise them your *heart,*” Harper said. “Or your *name,* or your *firstborn,* or your *loyalty.* Those things are not metaphors to them. They’re…currencies.”
“I know,” Rowan said. “I’m not…stupid.”
“No,” Zia said. “You’re overwhelmed. There’s a difference. We’re here to…help you hold pieces.”
Harper drew a big circle around “CALL US IF POSSIBLE.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Rowan said quietly. “Once I’m there. If I go.”
“You better,” Harper said. “Or I’ll find some wizard on the internet and make them open a portal with spite alone.”
“You’d break the universe,” Zia said.
“I’d break *something,*” Harper said.
Rowan laughed, a little choked.
She wished she could freeze them like this.
Blueprints on the wall. Hot chocolate in their mugs. Arguments about semantics that were, for once, about survival instead of whether a fictional couple should have kissed earlier.
Everything pointed toward Samhain.
The closer it came, the more she felt it in her body.
Her iron sensitivity, always a low hum, spiked. Brushing a coin with her knuckles sent a jolt up her arm. The subway railing might as well have been a live wire. She took to wearing gloves all the time, thin cotton useless against the cold but a barrier between her and the metal world.
Her dreams frayed at the edges. Sometimes she found herself in the wildwood, sometimes in Ever After Books, sometimes in liminal spaces that were both and neither—trees growing up between shelves, roots pushing through hardwood floors.
More and more, Aisling was there.
Sometimes she and Caelan argued in the same dream, voices overlapping, pulling Rowan in two directions. Sometimes Aisling just watched her, expression unreadable.
“Have you decided?” she asked one night, walking beside Rowan down a path that looked suspiciously like the trail behind Gran’s old farm, except the trees were taller and the shadows deeper.
“About which part of my impending doom?” Rowan asked.
“Whether to go with him on Halloween,” Aisling said. “Or…run.”
“I’m not sure running is an option,” Rowan said. “He keeps saying the Hunt will find me no matter where I go.”
“They’re good at that,” Aisling said. “Like bloodhounds with better cheekbones.”
“You’ve got jokes,” Rowan said.
“I learned from you,” Aisling said.
Rowan huffed.
“Part of me wants to…say fuck it,” she admitted. “Stay. Refuse. Force them to drag me. Make it as ugly as possible. They don’t get the satisfaction of my voluntary compliance.”
Aisling smiled, fierce. “I like that part,” she said.
“Part of me…” Rowan swallowed. “…thinks maybe…if I go on my terms, I can…shape things. A little. Bargain. Learn. Not walk in completely blind.”
Aisling nodded slowly. “Also good,” she said. “Control is…precious.”
“And part of me wants to…burn everything,” Rowan said. “My life here. Theirs there. Light the match and laugh.”
“There’s my girl,” Aisling murmured.
“I’m not your anything,” Rowan said.
“Not yet,” Aisling said.
“Stop being ominous,” Rowan muttered.
“I was raised by fae,” Aisling said. “It’s in the syllabus.”
Rowan kicked a pebble. It bounced off a root and vanished into the underbrush.
“What are you going to do,” she asked. “When…Halloween comes. If I go. If I don’t.”
“If you go,” Aisling said, “I’ll make sure the door doesn’t close behind you.”
Rowan frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means…” Aisling’s lips quirked. “…I have plans. For the Hallows. For the border. For certain…ceremonies my dear King has forgotten can be…adapted.”
“And if I don’t go?” Rowan pressed.
Aisling’s eyes cooled. “Then I’ll go to you,” she said simply. “And we’ll…improvise.”
“Improvising with you sounds like a good way to get stabbed,” Rowan said.
“Only if you stand in the wrong place,” Aisling said. “Stand beside me, you’ll be fine.”
“People standing beside you tend to be in blast radius,” Rowan said.
“True,” Aisling acknowledged. “Worth it, though.”
Rowan woke up with dirt under her fingernails and the taste of apples in her mouth.
She didn’t remember eating any.
***
Gran faded.
There was no dramatic crash, no single moment when everything tipped. Just a slow unwinding. Some days she was sharp, eyes bright, insults precise as ever. Others, she drifted in and out, mistaking Rowan for her mother, or a nurse, or some girl from the farm decades ago.
The nurses told Rowan this was normal. Part of the process.
Knowing that didn’t make it hurt less.
One particularly bad day, Gran didn’t open her eyes at all. She lay small and still, breaths shallow. Rowan sat by the bed, hand wrapped around Gran’s, tears sliding silently down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
For not being able to fix this. For the anger she still carried. For the fact that she might be gone before Halloween and never see whether Rowan burned the world or walked into it.
The air in the corner of the room shifted.
Rowan didn’t look up.
“If you make a joke,” she said hoarsely, “I will stab you.”
Silence. Then Caelan said, very softly, “She’s stubborn.”
“No shit,” Rowan said.
“That is not a human profanity I understand,” he said.
“Context clues,” she muttered.
He moved closer, footsteps soft.
“She can’t…hear you,” he said. “Not properly. But she can…feel. Emotion. Intent.”
“So I should…what,” Rowan snapped. “Vibe at her?”
He didn’t answer.
She glared at her lap. “I don’t know what to say,” she whispered. “I’ve said everything. I love you. I hate what you did. I forgive you. I don’t. None of it feels…true all the way through.”
“That’s…honest,” he said.
“She deserves…better,” Rowan said. “Than this.”
“She deserves…truth,” he said. “Which you’re giving her. Messy as it is.”
She scrubbed at her eyes. “You’re awfully talkative for someone who wasn’t invited,” she said.
“Old habits,” he said.
She looked up then.
He stood at the foot of the bed, hands loosely at his sides. He’d dressed down, if such a phrase applied to a fae prince—plain dark shirt, sleeves rolled, no visible weapons. His eyes were softer than she’d seen them in weeks.
“Does your world have…hospice?” she asked abruptly. “Places like this. People like…her.”
“Not exactly,” he said. “We don’t die the way you do. Not…with time. We…fade if we’re careless. We burn if we’re stupid. We shatter if we’re unlucky. But we don’t…slip away by inches like this.”
“You’re missing out,” she said bitterly.
He didn’t argue.
“Once,” he said after a moment, “there was a woman in our Court. Not fae. Not quite human. Caught in between. She…chose to die.”
Rowan’s head snapped up. “Chose,” she echoed.
“She made a bargain with the wildwood,” he said. “Gave up her long days for one last gasp of being…fully herself. Burned bright, burned out. It was…terrible. And beautiful. We didn’t know what to do with it.”
“What does that have to do with anything,” Rowan said roughly.
“You have more in common with her than you think,” he said. “Both in-between. Both…refusing to be defined by other people’s bargains. Your grandmother, too.”
Gran’s fingers twitched weakly in Rowan’s hand.
Rowan squeezed. “She made the bargain that put me here,” she said. “She doesn’t get to be…heroic now.”
“No,” Caelan said. “She doesn’t. But she gets to…fight. In her way. You gave her that chance in the hospital that night. With your blood. With that vow.” He nodded toward Gran’s chest. “She tied herself to you. She’s…pulling still.”
Rowan’s throat closed.
“I don’t know what to do when she…goes,” she said. “If she goes before…Samhain. Do I still…go? Leave? Is that…betrayal? Or…honoring what she pushed for?”
He was quiet for a long moment.
“I can’t answer that,” he said. “It’s not…my grief.”
She wanted to be angry at that. That he refused to give her even that kind of direction.
Some small, stubborn part of her respected it.
“She’d say…go,” Rowan whispered. “She’d say ‘don’t you dare waste my stupid sacrifice by hiding under your bed.’” She laughed, then sobbed. “She’d probably throw something.”
“Likely,” Caelan agreed.
“Do you think she’ll…watch,” Rowan asked. “After. If I go.”
“Yes,” he said, without hesitation. “She’ll haunt you something fierce.”
Rowan smiled wetly. “Good,” she said. “I’ll…need that.”
He stepped closer, carefully, as if approaching a wild animal.
“You don’t have to decide yet,” he said. “About Halloween. About anything. Grief…changes people. It may change what you want. Wait until it’s…settled. A little.”
“I don’t have time,” she said.
“You have…enough,” he said. “For this.”
She looked at him. Really looked.
At the man who’d tied his life to hers in front of his Court. Who’d come to her grandmother’s bedside uninvited and held his tongue when every instinct in his fae body probably screamed *bargain.*
He wasn’t hers.
He wasn’t safe.
But he was…there.
That counted for something.
“Sit,” she said. “If you’re going to lurk, you might as well get comfortable.”
He hesitated, then lowered himself into the chair on the other side of the bed.
Gran’s breaths went on, slow and shallow.
Rowan closed her eyes.
When sleep came, it was deep and dreamless.
For the first time in weeks.
***
Gran died two days before Halloween.
She slipped away in the early hours of the morning, sometime between the nurse’s rounds and the soft beep of a machine at her bedside. Rowan woke to a phone call and a grief that felt less like an explosion and more like a sudden, devastating absence.
The funeral was small.
Mrs. Carrow came. So did the nurses. Harper and Zia flanked Rowan like bookends. The pastor mispronounced Gran’s name twice and made some bland comment about “a life well lived,” and Rowan bit her tongue hard enough to taste blood.
Afterward, at the tiny wake in the nursing home’s multi-purpose room, Rowan found herself standing in front of the coffee urn, staring at the styrofoam cups.
“Cream?” someone asked.
She looked up, ready to snap, and found Aisling there, glamour impeccable—dark blazer, black jeans, hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. She held a cup in each hand.
“She would haunt you,” Aisling said conversationally. “If you put powdered creamer in this. Honor her memory. Use real milk.”
Rowan made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. “You came,” she said.
“Of course,” Aisling said. She slid a cup toward her. Real milk. Two sugars. Somehow she’d gotten it right.
“She would have liked you,” Rowan said, tears burning. “If she weren’t…her.”
“She would have tried to hit me with a broom,” Aisling said. “Then liked me.”
“Probably,” Rowan said.
They stood there, shoulder to shoulder, drinking bad coffee in a room that smelled like boiled vegetables and loss.
“Do you know what you’re going to do?” Aisling asked softly.
“About…Halloween?” Rowan said.
“Yes,” Aisling said.
Rowan stared into her cup. The coffee’s surface shivered.
“Yes,” she said.
She’d made the decision at the graveside, when the pastor droned and Harper wept and Zia stared flint-eyed at the coffin. She’d looked down at the box holding the woman who’d made the worst and best mistake of her life and thought, *I won’t let you be the last person who chose me.*
“I’m going,” she said. “With him. On Halloween.”
Aisling’s jaw tightened, then relaxed. “I thought you might,” she said.
“I’m not doing it for him,” Rowan said quickly. “Or for his Court. Or for your King. I’m doing it because…if I hide, they still come. If I go, I get to walk in on my feet.”
“And you get to…see them,” Aisling said. “On your terms. A little.”
“On our terms,” Rowan said. “You said you had…plans. For the door.”
Aisling’s eyes sparked. “Yes,” she said. “I do.”
“Then we need to…coordinate,” Rowan said. “If you’re cracking the border for me, I want to know when and where. I don’t want to walk through one door and fall out of another into someone else’s trap.”
Aisling smiled slowly. “Welcome to the game,” she said.
Rowan downed the rest of her coffee. It was bitter and too hot.
“It was always the game,” she said. “We’re just…finally playing back.”
Outside, the maple tree by the parking lot shed its last few leaves. The sky hung low and heavy, clouds bruised and full.
Two days.
Forty-eight hours until Samhain.
Until she stepped out of one life and into another.
Until prophecy, bargains, apples, and ashes collided.
She squared her shoulders.
“Let’s make it messy,” she said.
Aisling’s answering grin was pure Autumn.
“Oh,” she said. “We will.”