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How that was the only thing that could heal their rotting kingdom.

“And I will love you with all of it for the rest of my numbered days,” he continued. “And I will love our children, and their children, until I have no days left, but I’ve realized there is no death when one loves, for love is its own sort of immortality.”

Raquel smiled up at him as she wrapped her arms around his neck and played with a clump of his silky black hair. “I am relieved to hear you finally speaking sense.”

Jake smirked and slowly lowered his mouth to her neck, where he planted one soft kiss. Then another. Each touch was a little flame to her skin, and Raquel closed her eyes, reveling in his warmth and the solid weight of his body. Wantingmore. She slid her hand down his back, feeling the muscles shift and flex, and his breath shuddered.

“You also mentioned we had a child on the way…” he murmured against her skin, and his fingertips danced over the ribs of her corset.

Raquel’s heart skipped a beat. “A third. Yes.”

“Then we had better get started, because, as you said, my days are now numbered.”

Raquel laughed, Jake smiled like the sun, and he kissed her deeply.

EPILOGUE

Deep in the woods, there stood a little house. And at this house lived a little family: a father, a mother, and their three children. Two boys and one girl. Most would call them poor, for they did not possess much in the way of material things, and what they did own bore the scars of age and ample use. But they understood—as very few understand—that it is notthingsthat make one rich.

It is love and the relationships rooted within it.

Andthat, they had in abundance.

They could have sold the coat. That gleaming gold anomaly from another place, from another time. It would have earned them a treasure of coin, this artifact from the other side of the veil. But the father knew well what gold did to a man and what greed did to a kingdom, and they held fast to this symbol of what had been, of what they had overcome.

So that they would never be tempted into depravity again.

And so one night, while the children were asleep, after Jake had told them the story of the coat for the hundredth time and he saw how that golden hue gleamed in his eldest’s eyes, he and his beloved bride neatly folded it up, wrapped it in cloth, and buried it deep in the earth. They tried to destroy it first—tried to throw it in fire—but this coat was from another world, and it could not be harmed by this one.

As Jake dumped the last bit of dirt over the buried treasure with his shovel, Raquel slipped her fingers through his and rested her head against his shoulder.

“It won’t stay buried forever,” she said. “The truth never does.”

“Then let it stay buried for now,” he replied as he squeezed her hand gently. “Until the world is ready to receive it.”

THE END…

….for now.