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The dream comes, as it often does. The buzz of the dragonfly’s wings and the red star and the antlered man. I had thought knowing the truth would change it, but it was never a lie to be altered. Only a truth I didn’t understand.

Soft pressure against my arm wakes me. The blunt nose of a black-furred dog, her ears pricked with worry. She can always tell. She knows, somehow, to wake me.

“Hey, girl,” I say, digging my fingers into Duchess’s fur. “It’s okay.” She huffs, unconvinced, and noses my hand again. Beside me, Connor stirs in his sleep. I slide out from under the covers, quiet as to not wake him, and pad into the living room with Duchess on my heels. The sun is just starting to come up, a seam of light at the horizon. One of those moments where the world seems to pause.

We got married in the spring, Connor and I. Fools rushing in, maybe, but neither of us wanted to wait. It was a tiny ceremony—Harper and Rose as our witnesses at the courthouse, and dinner afterward at our apartment. It’s a nice apartment, not far from the bookstore. Smaller than Connor is used to, but then, he’s not as rich as he used to be. He salvaged what he could after Magnus cut him off. He thought for a while of giving away most of it to charitable causes, but I convinced him not to. Call it blood money if you want—I figure I earned it, after everything that happened on the mountain.

Everything that happened after.

Magnus kept his word. When the police arrived, it was to arrest me. For ten days, despite Connor’s protestations of my innocence, it looked like Magnus’s story—that I had killed Olena and Nick as well—would be believed. But Magnus’s control over his family was not as thorough as he anticipated.

It was Alexis who broke ranks. It had to be. Rose and Paloma wouldn’t do it, not when doing so would condemn Alexis even as it exonerated me. And Trevor—well. He might not be a monster, but he’s always been a coward. But they all gave statements, in the end. Told the police exactly what happened, and whose fault it really was.

We don’t talk about the trial. Charges have been filed, but it’s unlikely to ever actually take place; Magnus is on hospice care, and as he predicted, no one is going to drag a dying man into a courtroom for a twenty-year-old crime—at least not an unfathomably rich dying man with an army of lawyers. And as for Louise, she insists that she knew nothing of what was happening. An old, confused woman, her lawyers say. She walks with a cane now, speaks tremulously.

Paloma sent flowers, after the wedding. She and Sebastian are staying with her family for a while. She and Alexis still speak, but it’s hard to say what might happen. What can be forgiven. It’s a question I’m still asking myself. Connor visits his sister often. It seems likely that she will escape a prison sentence—she was a minor, and she didn’t actually kill anyone.

There will be no justice. Magnus was right about that much. Even Mr. Vance is gone, and though the police are looking for him, I doubt they’ll find him. The only thing he left behind was a note, asking someone to look after Duchess, which we have.

“Theo?” Connor calls. He stands in the bedroom doorway, eyes bleary with sleep.

I kept the name. Rowan doesn’t really feel like mine. It belongs to a little girl who died in the cold. Theo—that’s a name I broke free for myself, and it’s the one Connor called me when we found each other again. And so I am Theo Rowan Cahill. As for Connor, he took my name. He wasn’t too fond of his own by then.

“Just restless,” I tell him. It’s the one thing we’re allowed to lie about: we pretend it doesn’t haunt us, what happened on the mountain.

He walks over to stand behind me, his arms encircling me. I reach up to put my hand on his shoulder, my thumb brushing the knot of scar tissue on one side where the bullet pierced his arm. It has a twin on the other side.

He has scars on his skin now, thanks to me. I’m not the only one with nightmares.

“Come back to bed,” he murmurs in my ear.

“I think I’d like to stay up. Watch the sunrise,” I say.

“Should I stay?”

I shake my head. “Get some more rest.”

He takes me at my word, slipping away again. I walk to the couch and curl up against the arm of it. Duchess doesn’t ask for permission before leaping up beside me, settling with a huge exhale. Her head flops onto my lap expectantly.

The sun casts pale orange and yellow against the undersides of clouds. It will already be in the sky over Idlewood, shining down on green slopes, all the snow long melted.

As he promised, Magnus has refused to reveal where Mallory Cahill is buried. A search of the woods has turned up nothing. There’s simply too much area, and it’s been too long. They wanted to be sure she wouldn’t be found. They would have buried her deep.

I will never be able to put her to rest. To say goodbye. But it’s summer now.

Wherever she is, the wildflowers are blooming.