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AUTUMN

I t started with the mug.

Not just any mug—the one from The Spellbound Sip, deep green with a faint gold ring around the rim and a handle that always warmed to her touch. The one that, for weeks, had tasted faintly like cinnamon and safety. Like comfort that crept in slowly and made a home between sips.

But that morning, after she’d spent her first full night away from Briar Hollow, it tasted like lavender and smoke.

A warning.

The first real one.

Autumn stared at the swirling steam until it faded, until the tea went cool and sour in the cup. Her hands didn’t shake, but her chest ached with something she hadn’t named yet. Something that whispered under her skin like the ghosts she tried so hard to ignore.

She didn’t drink it.

Didn’t have to.

Because the next message came quietly, the way all the real ones did—with rain tapping against the attic window above Nico’s spare room, and a whisper curled beneath it, softer than her own breath.

“Go home.”

She sat frozen for several minutes, her knees tucked to her chest, the covers still drawn up like armor.

Home.

She didn’t know where that was anymore.

Briar Hollow had felt like it. Dorian had felt like it.

But so had running. So had silence. She’d made homes out of half-emptied tea canisters and train station benches before.

And yet… nothing had ever wrapped around her quite like that porch light flickering to life just before dusk.

Like Dorian’s hand reaching for hers under the table without looking.

She’d stayed away for two nights.

Just two.

But every hour of it had dragged, thick with discomfort. The room Nico gave her above his shop was charming in its way—walls of potion jars, a tiny brass-framed bed, a window that faced the Moonshadow Apothecary roofline—but it never warmed.

The charm bags didn’t settle.

The air didn’t hum the right way.

And the ghosts?

They didn’t stop.

They whispered in her dreams. They tugged at her fingertips when she tried to write. Every time she passed a mirror, she expected to see someone else’s reflection staring back.

And she knew—somewhere deep and certain—that the house hadn’t rejected her.

She’d rejected herself.

And in doing so, she’d turned the Hollow Man’s sorrow inward.

Because if there was one truth Hollis had been trying to tell her, it was this: you cannot exorcise a ghost you’re still carrying in your chest.

By dusk, she was pacing Nico’s kitchen in mismatched socks and a sweater that didn’t smell like Dorian.

She’d picked up her sketchpad three times.

Put it down three times. And when she’d walked past the window that faced the edge of Echo Woods, the wind stirred the branches in a rhythm she hadn’t heard since the day she learned the Hollow Man’s name.

It was like the woods were waiting for her to listen.

So she did.

She pulled on her boots, packed her sketchpad and a charm of black salt and rose quartz, left a scribbled note for Nico that just said “I’m okay. Probably.”

She didn’t take the scarf she’d left behind.

Because the truth was—she didn’t need armor anymore.

Not if she was going home.

The path to Briar Hollow felt longer than it had ever felt before. Not because of the distance, but because every footstep carried a memory.

Dorian brushing her hair back with a hand gentler than any she’d known, holding her steady when her knees wanted to fold under the weight of her own fears, him carving her name into the back of a rocking chair without asking for anything in return.

Every step stirred guilt.

And love.

And the bone-deep understanding that peace didn’t come from the absence of ghosts.

It came from learning how to live with the ones that stayed.

The porch light was off when she arrived. But she didn’t hesitate.

The inn loomed like it always had—tall and still and watching—but the air was different tonight. Still, yes, but not in warning. In welcome.

She stepped up onto the porch and stopped cold.

There he was.

Dorian.

Curled into the rocking chair on the far side, head tilted back, flannel jacket tucked around his chest like the weight of the world had finally made him sit down.

His boots were off and lined up neatly beside him, one slightly askew.

A half-finished mug of tea—hers, she’d bet—sat abandoned on the railing, forgotten.

And carved into the slat of the rocking chair beside him, catching the last glint of moonlight, was her name.

Autumn.

She stared at it, eyes burning, chest tightening.

He hadn’t moved.

Hadn’t given her up.

She stepped closer, her boots soft against the weathered boards. Every inch of her trembled—not with fear, but with something she’d spent her whole life denying: belonging.

As her shadow passed over him, he stirred.

His eyes blinked open, groggy at first. Then they landed on her.

And held.

“Hey,” she said, voice rough and windburned from the walk, throat thick with regret and something dangerously close to hope.

He didn’t speak.

Just blinked once.

She stepped closer, heart fluttering.

“I, um… I think your porch invited me back.”

His lips twitched, not quite a smile. “Stubborn thing. Porch never did listen to me.”

They stood like that—words not enough, silence not too much.

Then she lowered herself into the chair beside him—her chair—and pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them like a shield she no longer had the strength to hold.

“I didn’t mean to stay gone so long,” she whispered.

Dorian tilted his head, watching her. “Wasn’t timing I was worried about.”

She looked down, voice catching. “The woods whispered. Told me to go home. Figured that was either emotional manipulation or a cosmic nudge.”

He nodded. “Could be both.”

She laughed, small and broken.

And then silence. Not cold. Not awkward. Just quiet.

She turned toward him slowly. “I saw what you did. With the chair.”

He shifted, the motion slow and stiff from sleep. “Didn’t do it for thanks.”

“I know.” She looked down again, fingers twisting in her scarf. “I ran because I didn’t think I deserved it. Any of it. You. The house. That garden. A life.”

He stayed quiet.

Autumn reached over and touched his hand, light as a whisper.

“But I want to,” she said. “I want to try.”

Dorian’s fingers closed around hers. Strong. Steady.

“I’m still here,” he said simply.

Her eyes burned.

And somewhere behind them, inside the house, the fireplace crackled to life on its own.