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forty

J ust as the curse appeared, it disappeared. Silently. A trick of magic. The kind that settles when a war finally ends, when a soldier walks away from a battlefield and drops their sword in the dirt—not because they lost nor won, but because they didn’t have to fight anymore.

In a way Gentry was right. It was never about magic.

Not really. The curse lived because Alice had died forgotten—and every woman after her lived afraid.

Until me. She’d been betrayed by her own flesh and blood, who had chosen power under the guise of love.

In some ways, I saw a lot of myself in Maggie.

Justifying what couldn’t be undone. Clutching guilt like a talisman and calling it devotion.

But I also saw myself in Alice. Silenced. Sacrificed. The cost of someone else’s salvation.

I had carried both women inside me. Their grief, their fury, their fear. And I had let it define me, convinced myself I was cursed because I couldn’t control what I’d been given.

But not anymore.

For the first time in my life, I saw age. A line, faint but present, near the corner of my mouth. A softness to my jaw. A shadow of time on my face and I didn’t flinch. I didn’t reach for cream or correction. I touched the line and smiled, because I knew: I was finally alive.

Not cursed.

Not bartered for.

Not bound by someone else’s design.

Just me.

I had paid my dues. I had given my blood, my voice, my love. I had outlasted Fate’s snare and Time’s grip. And Death… he no longer followed me. He stood beside me. Not as captor. Not as foe. But as something else entirely.

He never said I told you so . He just watched me from the shadows with that gaze, ancient and sad and full of things he didn’t have words for.

I thought the curse would go out with some dramatic finality, but curses like mine don’t die in spectacle. They die in surrender. Not the kind where you give up. The kind where you give in —to life. To love. To time.

The evidence was gathered quietly. First came the gray hair. Then the second. And the third. My cheeks were wet with joy the day I noticed the soft curve of a smile line. Then the crease in my brow. My bones ached. My joints stiffened. And still I rejoiced.

Deep down, I knew the exact moment the curse broke apart. It was the same shuddered breath where I chose my life. To live it. Loudly, happily, fully. No longer afraid of what could be lost.

Sundays were the hardest.

I’d start with coffee, then pluck whatever blooms caught my eye in the garden—zinnias, lavender, poppies. With my notebooks and flowers tucked safely away in the basket of my bicycle, I’d ride down the hill to the cemetery where my family was buried.

It was the only place I seemed to be able to find him, as he dissolved from my life.

At first, I’d done it to prove something to him, and myself.

Except bitterness had a way of disappearing in the presence of joy, and my life continued to flourish in the way of friends and happiness.

I’d talk and journal, speaking to whatever cared to listen, whether the bees or the wind.

The yew tree stood sentinel above me, fostering an environment that even Death could not evade. His presence was murky but familiar. The snap of a twig. Wind brushing my skin. A blooming flower.

He was there.

Reminding me of what I gained because he mustered the strength to lose it all.

That Sunday routine lasted me years.

I’d sit in the cemetery, waiting for the scent of salt, oleander, and decay to sneak its way under my nose—as if I could bring Death’s presence into my life by sitting still and waiting.

Perhaps I conjured it, or perhaps he too couldn’t bear to completely stay away.

But other times, I swore I heard the rough edges of his voice calling to me.

Whispers on the wind. Like being drenched to the bone after a rainstorm.

I often wondered if time moved differently for him. If he’d wished away the memories he’d given me. From our first meeting, he thought I was a mistake. A problem to solve. Did he still feel that way?

But then…

Overzealous floral arrangements would randomly appear at the dining table.

A passage in a book I’d been reading would suddenly have highlighted passages.

When I was late, stressed and holding my breath, the traffic lights would turn green and I’d arrive on time.

The sleepless nights seemed to stretch on, just long enough that I could catch a few extra hours of rest before the sunrise.

My favorite songs would linger in the room, lasting a chorus or two longer than they were written.

He was not only under the yew, haunting the graves.

He was everywhere.

And then there was the basket. The one I'd labored over, that he'd left beside the graves filled with his side of our story.

He'd enchanted it, it seemed, for I'd walk through the sitting room to find it filled with small tokens of his affection.

A new letter. A bauble for my necklace. A smooth river stone.

A pressed flower. Tokens of a presence that never truly left.

And if you’ve made it this far, dear reader, you may have realized that this was all real. That this is my story—of the girl who stopped aging, and fell in love with Death.

When my curse broke, I was as surprised as anyone. I found less and less to write, fewer moments I felt needed saving from the clutches of time. You may have noticed my entries grew shorter. Not because I had less to say, but because I had finally learned to live without fear of forgetting .

That’s what Death gave me. Not just life, but a reason to stay in it. A reason to plant my feet on the ground and stop waiting for the sky to fall.

I do not blame him, anymore. Not for any of it.

Death is the bitter wind, crawling over forgotten tombstones.

He is the epilogue of a story you simply could not put down.

He is the tide that crashes against the shoreline, shifting sands and stirring up the bones of old dreams.

He is the last breath pulled from your loved one as they drift to sleep for the final time. But most of all, he is the keeper of meaning. The very real, unrelenting truth that, in the end, our lives are precious because he made them so.

I think we forgave each other in the quiet. And that would have been enough, but the story didn’t end there, because endings are just the breath before a new sentence.

So I wrote it down.

Everything. Every unbearable year. Every second chance. Every choice that shouldn’t have been mine to make, but was anyway. I didn’t dress it up. I didn’t soften the parts where I was messy or wrong or hurt beyond recognition. I wrote it raw. I wrote it real.

And I signed my name.

Astoria Tempest. Survivor. Cursebreaker. Author of her own damn ending.

I didn’t publish it for revenge. Or for legacy. I published it because I’d spent ninety-three years being written by other people—by gods in shadows and toiling sisters born of ruin—and it was time they learned how the story really went.

I wrote my truth, for the woman who stood in the middle of the street with a bloodied child in her arms and dared to demand something of Death.

She won.

And every scar I carry is a sentence she wrote.