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DORIAN

D orian’s first clue was how quiet the inn was.

No hum from the kitchen, no distant rustle of paper from the library, no soft shuffling footsteps that had, without him noticing, become the rhythm of his days.

Autumn’s rhythm. Her presence had bled into every inch of Briar Hollow like sunlight catching in old glass, subtle but impossible to miss once you knew what it looked like.

Now?

It was just silence.

He found her in the sitting room, standing by the window with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. She hadn’t heard him come in. Her shoulders were too stiff. Guarded. Like she was holding herself upright by sheer will and a threadbare sense of resolve.

His gut twisted.

“How’d the expedition go yesterday?”

“Fine,” was all she offered.

“You okay?” he asked softly, voice breaking the stillness but not the tension.

She didn’t turn. Just nodded once. “Yeah.”

He stepped closer, pausing a few feet behind her. “You don’t look it.”

A pause. Her breath fogged the glass in front of her.

“I finished the last of the house yesterday,” she said. “Cleansing’s done. Spirits are settled.”

Dorian frowned. “You sure?”

“Sure enough.”

He waited. Gave her space. Let the silence do what it needed to.

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

The words knocked the wind out of his chest.

She turned then, slow and deliberate. Her eyes met his, and it nearly broke him because he could see it.

She didn’t want to leave. But she felt like she had to.

“I told you this was temporary,” she said, voice quiet. “That once the job was done?—”

“That was before,” he cut in, not harsh, just honest. “Before everything.”

“I know.”

“Then why?”

She pressed her lips together, eyes flicking down to her hands. “Because this place has roots. It’s alive. It holds stories and spirits and... pain. And I’m too tied to all of that. I don’t just hear ghosts, Dorian. I carry them.”

He moved a step closer. “You don’t have to carry them alone.”

“You say that now,” she whispered, “but you haven’t seen what happens when I stay too long. The ghosts don’t go away. They linger. They attach. And one day, they’ll look at you and see a threat, and I won’t be able to protect you from that.”

His hands clenched at his sides.

“You’re scared,” he said, voice low. “Not just of the ghosts. Of being loved.”

Her jaw tightened.

“Because you think if someone really sees you—sees the weight you carry—they’ll walk away.”

“Dorian—”

“I’m not walkin’,” he said, stepping closer. “But I’m not gonna chain you here either. If you need to go, go. But don’t lie and say it’s just the spirits driving you out.”

She blinked, a tear slipping down her cheek.

“It’s not in me to stay,” she confessed, brokenly. “Everywhere I’ve been, it’s been about the next haunting. The next call. The next door creaking open. I don’t know what it looks like to belong somewhere.”

He reached out slowly, brushing his thumb under her eye to catch the tear. “Then let me show you.”

She didn’t lean into the touch.

“I need to clear my head,” she said after a long pause. “Just... a little space.”

He nodded. Didn’t argue. Didn’t beg. Didn’t ask her to stay when he knew she wasn’t ready to believe she could.

Instead, he stepped back.

“Alright,” he said softly. “But know this, Autumn Sinclair—there ain’t a day coming where I stop waiting for you to find your way back.”

Her breath caught, and her lips parted like she wanted to say something— anything .

But instead, she turned and walked upstairs.

And Dorian stood there in the silence, in the hollow space she left behind, and told himself it wasn’t the end.

Just the part where the roots had to hold fast while the wind tested the branches.