Page 27

AUTUMN

E cho Woods wasn’t a place people wandered into lightly.

Even locals—the shifters, witches, half-beings, and all the in-betweens of Celestial Pines—knew better than to stroll under its canopy without reason.

The trees weren’t just old here. They were aware .

The kind of ancient that bent time if you blinked too long and whispered things into your bones if you let them.

Autumn Sinclair had been avoiding the woods since she arrived.

She knew how they worked. Felt the pull in her chest every time she got too close to the tree line, like the forest could smell her uncertainty and was just waiting for her to step wrong.

But now she had a reason.

The Hollow Man wasn’t going to reveal anything else from the attic. She’d felt it in the tightening in the air, the unease in the bones of Briar Hollow. He’d said all he was willing to say there .

She needed to go to him .

To where he died.

To where the blood hit the earth and stayed.

So she walked.

Dorian didn’t ask questions when she left that morning, only offered her a packed thermos of Nerissa’s focus tea and a kiss on her cheek that lingered. She hadn’t told him where she was going. Not yet.

The path into the woods curved like a question mark—uncertain, shifting. Roots tangled beneath her boots, and branches overhead creaked like old warnings. The deeper she went, the colder the air grew, even with the sun hanging stubbornly overhead.

She paused at the old break in the trees where the path split.

Left to the old Warden watch post. Right to the place Rowan once called “the memory hollow.”

She went right.

It took her an hour to find it. And when she did, she knew without a doubt it was the place.

A clearing, half-eaten by moss and time. The remains of an altar, stones now crumbling, twisted with vines. A circle faintly burned into the earth, the outline blackened but still breathing with a kind of quiet ache.

She stepped into the center of the clearing, heart thrumming against her ribs like a warning she didn’t want to heed.

The circle on the ground was faint but still pulsing, an echo of a ritual unfinished. She could feel it in the dirt beneath her boots. Hollowed out. Waiting.

“I know what you lost,” she said softly, voice barely more than a breath.

Nothing answered.

She closed her eyes, grounded her breath.

“I read the journal,” she continued, stronger now. “I know what he did. What he took from you.”

The wind stirred.

Then came a whisper.

“He promised forever.”

It was a voice full of soil and sorrow, carrying centuries on its breath. Not cruel.

Just tired.

Autumn’s chest ached. She bowed her head slightly. “Yes,” she said. “And he betrayed it.”

The air thickened around her. Not like a threat, but like grief crowding in too close.

“He said I would be safe here. That no one would know. That love could survive a lie.”

Images tumbled into her mind unbidden—two men building a life in secret.

Stone by stone, this very house. One full of charm and charmers, laughter tucked into the corners, hope laid into the foundation.

Hollis Blackthorne and Theodore Hawthorne.

Soul-bound. Hidden. Lovers before the world was ready.

Until it wasn’t enough.

Until Evelyn .

Autumn had read it between the lines—Theodore’s decision to marry the governor’s daughter, Evelyn Vane, the one with the dowry and the family name. A union meant to protect the Hawthorne bloodline. To cement his position. But also, maybe, to bury a truth he couldn’t live with out loud.

He tried to keep both.

And lost everything.

Hollis hadn’t just died. He’d been sacrificed. Not in body, but in bond.

The spell that burned in the soil around her had been meant to untether fate. To sever what had been divinely stitched. Theodore had stood in this clearing with another man’s heart in his hands and whispered a lie into the roots of the inn.

He'd sworn he could love two people.

But only one had been condemned to silence.

Autumn trembled.

“What do you want?” she asked, her voice cracking open like the pages of a too-old book.

“Truth.”

Just one word. But it echoed through her like judgment.

She lowered herself to the earth, knees brushing the cold moss at the circle’s center.

The ground felt oddly warm beneath her palms. Her fingers curled around the flask of tea Dorian had packed her that morning—still full, untouched.

The steam had long since faded, but the weight of it reminded her of comfort. Of something waiting.

“What kind of truth?” she whispered.

The wind curled close, brushing her jaw.

“The kind that cannot hide. The kind that must be spoken aloud.”

She stiffened.

“You mean…” Her throat closed. “You want me to say it.”

“You love him. But you have not told him. You are trying to rewrite my story.”

Her stomach turned. Tears pricked at the edges of her vision.

“I’m not you,” she said, fiercer than before. “And Dorian is not Theodore.”

The trees around her swayed, branches shivering with something colder than wind.

“Then prove it.”

Autumn stared at the earth, at the forgotten bones of someone else’s heartbreak trying to bury itself in her future.

“Severing the tie,” she whispered, the words heavy, “means surrendering mine.”

It meant risking it.

Everything.

It meant not hiding.

It meant choosing Dorian—not quietly, not tentatively—but with her whole heart.

The Hollow Man didn’t answer. He didn’t have to because in her chest, Autumn already knew the magic wasn’t about ghosts. It was about grief.

Theirs.

And hers.

She sat there for what felt like hours. Long enough for the light to shift gold. Long enough for the birds to fall silent again.

Then she pulled the journal from her satchel and opened to the last page. There was still space left.

A line waiting.

She pulled the piece of anchoring chalk from her coat pocket. Salt-charged. Scry-bound. Her hand shook.

She bent low and wrote:

This love will not be hidden. This love will not be silenced. I choose to speak it, so it will not be stolen.

The chalk flared faintly against the paper. Not bright, but warm. Like coals that hadn’t gone out after all.

A low hum vibrated through the circle beneath her knees. The vines at the edge lifted, then lay still. From somewhere unseen, a breath moved through the woods. A sigh.

Let go.

She didn’t speak. She just listened. And when it was done, she closed the book, stood slowly, and looked toward the path that would lead her back to the inn.

Not freed. Not finished.

But no longer afraid to begin.