Page 25

AUTUMN

T he morning sunlight crept through the old curtains in soft, sleepy lines.

It painted golden stripes across the wooden floor of Dorian’s room, gently coaxing the shadows away.

Autumn lay awake, still tucked against his side, his heartbeat a slow, steady rhythm beneath her cheek. She hadn’t moved. Didn’t want to.

He smelled like cedar and warmth. Her fingers were curled lightly into the blanket, one bare leg tangled with his beneath it, and his arm still rested around her waist like he would never let go.

She hadn’t meant for it to go that far.

She hadn’t meant to fall asleep in his bed, to wake up with her heart aching in that tender, terrifying way. Like a door had opened inside her chest she couldn’t close again.

It wasn’t the intimacy that undid her.

It was the safety.

He had held her like she was something precious. Kissed her like he was afraid he might wake up and find her gone. Not with desperation, but with devotion. Quiet, sturdy, unshakable.

And that was the problem.

Autumn slid carefully out of the bed, pulling one of his long-sleeved shirts over her shoulders and padding toward the window, barefoot and quiet. Her breath fogged the glass as she stared down at the yard below. The path from the porch still held her footprints from the night before.

Everything felt too still. Too perfect. That’s when it hit her.

She loved him.

It wasn't a flutter. It wasn’t a giddy realization tied up with ribbon and sweet words. It was a gut punch. A truth so whole, it pressed against her ribs like it had always been there, just waiting for her to look down and see it.

She loved Dorian Hawthorne.

Loved the way his laugh softened when it was just for her. Loved that he remembered how she took her tea and didn’t flinch when she talked about death like it was an old friend. Loved the way he always stepped back just enough to let her choose. Never forced. Never rushed.

And she couldn’t tell him. Because loving someone like her—someone who talked to the dead and dreamed in memories that weren’t her own—was dangerous. Unfair. And telling him felt like giving him a weapon she wasn’t sure he’d know how to carry.

Even if she trusted him more than anyone she ever had.

The door creaked softly behind her, and she turned just in time to see him stirring, his messy hair sticking out in odd directions, face half-lit by sunlight, half-shadowed with sleep.

“Hey,” he rasped, voice thick.

“Hey,” she whispered back.

“You okay?”

She nodded too quickly. “Yeah. Just… needed air.”

He didn’t press. Just gave her a smile that made her knees soft.

“I’ll start coffee,” he said, already sliding out of bed, bare feet meeting the floor with a comforting thump.

Autumn watched him go, heart doing somersaults behind her ribs.

But before she could let herself get caught up in her feelings, she heard it. A whisper.

Soft, low, and cold.

She froze.

It came from behind her, close as breath.

" Don’t trust the living. "

She spun, but no one was there. Just the echo of the voice clinging to the windowpane and the fine hairs rising on the back of her neck.

The room seemed darker suddenly. Not in shadow, but in presence. A weight that hadn’t been there a second ago.

“Not now,” she murmured to the empty air. “You’ve had your warnings.”

But the whisper had pierced deeper than she wanted to admit.

She grabbed the journal from her satchel in the corner and ran her fingers over the cover. Hollis’s story, the betrayal, the blood spilled to sever fate… it was still swirling in her head. Still settling.

The ghosts didn’t lie.

Not often.

But they didn’t always speak the truth, either.

The living could betray. That much was true.

And fate? Fate had teeth.

But so did love.

Autumn closed the journal, her fingers trembling, and pressed it to her chest like it could shield her from whatever storm was brewing next.

She wasn’t going to run. But she wasn’t ready to leap either.

She just hoped Dorian would still be there when she was.