Page 206 of Evermore

“Funny, I found it open the other day.”

She faked a gasp. “Tuck!”

I opened it with a chuckle, revealing a collection of small items, mementos from different lives, different times. A river stone from the first place I’d found her. A ribbon she’d worn in her hair in a life she couldn’t remember. A pressed flower from a garden long turned to dust.

And the teacup, nestled among them like the treasure it was.

I lifted it carefully, this small, chipped piece of porcelain that had somehow become a symbol of everything between us. But when I handed it to her, she frowned in confusion.

“It’s… different,” she said, turning it in her hands.

The chip in the rim was still there, I wouldn’t have dreamed of repairing the imperfection that had drawn her to it in the first place. But the interior, once plain white, now bore an inscription in gold. Words written in my precise handwriting, curving around the inside of the cup where she would only see them when it was empty:

For my Paesha, in this life and every one before. Ever yours, T

Her fingers traced the words, her expression softening in a way that still, after all this time, made my heart ache with love.

“Why are you giving it to me now?”

“Ten years of peace. Ten years of waking up beside you without fear of prophecies or fates or vengeful gods. Ten years of building something I never dared hope for. It seemed appropriate.”

She cradled the cup in her hands like it was made of starlight rather than porcelain. “You know I’m going to display this prominently on my chaotic vanity now.”

“I would expect nothing less.” I closed the safe, returning the painting to its place. “Consider it a formal surrender in at least one battle of our ongoing war.”

“The great Reverius Hawthorne Noctus, surrendering?” She pressed a hand to her heart in mock astonishment. “I should document this historic moment.”

“Only this one battle. I still intend to organize your shoes by height and color tomorrow.”

“Touch my shoes and you’ll find thorns in your pillowcase,” she threatened without heat.

“How terribly juvenile.”

“You love it.”

“I love you,” I corrected, pulling her into my arms. “Chaos and all.”

She rose on her tiptoes, pressing a kiss to the corner of my mouth. “Even when I steal your quills?”

“Even then.”

“And move your books?”

“Testing my limits, but yes.”

“And hide your favorite cufflinks just to watch you search for them?”

I sighed dramatically. “You are, without question, the most infuriating woman I have ever known. Across galaxies, across centuries, across every realm in existence.”

Her smile was pure sunshine. “That wasn’t a no.”

“It wasn’t,” I conceded, capturing her lips in a kiss that said everything words could not, about love, about peace finally found, about the joy of building a life together after so many torn apart.

“You know, for an immortal with diminished powers, you’re not terrible to have around.”

I laughed. “Calm down with your compliments. I can’t take the praise.”

“We should probably go downstairs. Tuck was threatening to read aloud from his latest historical research.”

“A fate worse than death.” As we made our way back to the others, Paesha’s hand in mine and the teacup held carefully in her other hand, I found myself marveling yet again at the path that had led us here. From a god and a dancer to simply Thorne and Paesha, building a life together day by day, argument by argument, kiss by kiss.

Vesalia held all the cards now. A torrent of power she likely didn’t know how to handle. But that was her problem. Not ours. After all, we still held the key to Noctus Gate. Our one fail-safe. Though, it had mysteriously gone missing. Paesha, no doubt. It wasn’t the eternity I’d once envisioned, filled with power and purpose and the endless dance of finding and losing her. It was better. Messier. More beautiful in its imperfection.

Like a teacup with a chipped rim, made more precious by the flaws that should have diminished it.

Like us.

THE END