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Grim

A storia Devlin Tempest. Clara Whitmore. Dorothy "Dot" Ellison. Sylvia Hart. Vivian Price. Colleen Mercer. Wendy Holloway. Allison "Allie" Shaw. Rachel DeWitt. Natalie Keene. Julia Wren. Elizabeth Rhodes. Britta Armstrong

Astoria Devlin Reeves…

None are as considerably fortunate as I, to have known every name she ever wore. Every life she lived. No one else has held the quiet privilege of knowing her in every form, but me.

And today…

On her one hundred and forty-eighth birthday, Astoria Devlin Tempest began to age.

The curse hadn’t broken like a storm. It had ended like a prayer.

No fire. No fury. Just truth laid bare in the dark.

Names were powerful things. I knew that more than most. And she had carried many—each one forged from survival, necessity, grief.

Each one a chapter in a long, painful history she never asked to write.

But today… today, Astoria Devlin Reeves became a woman unshackled.

She would age.

She would grow old.

She would live.

The thought nearly dropped me to my knees.

I trudged through the grass, bending down to pet Reaper as we neared the house.

There’d been another storm this morning, one that woke me from a restless slumber.

As Reaper and I walked the hills, letting the rain soak through my shirt, I felt it.

I stumbled on the path, clutching my chest as if the organ that shouldn’t have been there had been pierced by a flaming arrow, searing through phantom flesh and lighting my veins on fire.

I knew it as well as I knew her, inside and out. She’d done it. Broken her curse.

And for so many reasons, I had been wrong. Wrong to love her. Wrong to punish her. Wrong to let her go. Wrong to leave. Wrong…

Day stood on the porch, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his dark jeans. “What the fuck, dude?” he shouted.

With a grimace, I motioned Reaper on ahead, letting him greet our guest first. The last thing I wanted to do was argue with Time.

Day crouched, rubbing Reaper’s belly as I approached and opened the door for them.

Both followed me in—one bounding down the hall, to muck up my sheets, no doubt.

The other, silently brooding, chest puffed, arms crossed.

Day had an impressive form and size, but he was not intimidating, no matter how hard he tried to be.

“Astoria broke her curse,” he said, rocking back on his heels.

I hung my coat, my expression unreadable. “Mhm.”

“You knew. Of course you knew.” He raised his arms above his head, stretching them back as he spun in a slow, frustrated circle. “Well? Aren’t you going to go get her?”

I said nothing, taking a seat on the bench to remove my boots. My fingers trembled as I jerked the laces loose. I didn’t owe an explanation to anyone but Astoria. And I’d already given it to her.

“You aren’t… are you?”

“No.” I stood, wiping my hands down the front of my pants before heading into the kitchen.

“I don’t understand, Grim.”

I paused, my slumped shoulders straightening as I craned my neck back toward him. “Do not—”

“Explain it to me. None of us have ever been given a thread of fate, and here you are with two. You fall in love with the most incredible girl—someone you have history with, someone who finally sees you. Sees us. And you cut the thread that ends happily ever after for both of you.”

“That depends entirely on what you’d consider a happily ever after. This is mine.”

“Astoria doesn’t deserve that. She’s suffered enough.” Day’s power bloomed in the space around us, loud and insistent, pressing against the walls in protest.

“ Do you not think I know that? ” I shoved a finger into his chest, every fiber of me straining to hold the rest back. “Fate’s funny that way. It was never really a choice. One path, she suffers. The other, she gets what she always wanted. Neither changes what I did.”

Day rubbed at the spot on his chest, his expression shifting from shock to something almost grieved. “You could have gone about it differently.”

I winced. Fuck, I could have.

I could have taken Beatrice again right then, stolen her from her mother’s arms. And what happened after… that wasn’t planned. Although I still didn’t regret it, James deserved worse.

I didn’t expect Astoria to shoulder the blame, to chalk it up to her curse like some kind of cosmic tax. But that’s exactly what she did. And I—

I was furious. Not just at her, but at the sheer audacity of a human daring to challenge me.

Still, a soul was marked. And a soul, I took.

I warned her. More times than I can count.

“She loves you,” Day murmured, like that was supposed to fix anything.

“I’ll have her... in time.” I sighed, pulling the cork from the whiskey and pouring a generous glass. “I’ve waited a century. What’s another few decades?”

Day dropped into the chair across from me, his elbows on the table, knuckles resting against his cheek as he stared out at the gray skies. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“Yeah,” I muttered, taking a long swallow. “Me too.”

“So that’s it then? You’re just going to let her go?”

Another swig, just enough to ease the tension winding through my jaw. “Indeed.”

“Let her marry some other loser?”

I choked on the drink, a dry laugh catching in my throat. “Gentry’s not a loser.”

“Sure,” Day said, with all the conviction of a man lying through his teeth. “He’s a nice guy. But he’s not you.”

I shot him a look over the rim of my glass, a smirk tugging at my mouth. Since when did Time develop a sense of humor? And worse, when did I start falling for it?

“He’s what she needs,” I said finally. “What can I offer her that is more desirable than a life with an expiration date? What’s more desirable than her own second chance?” She was better off…

Without me. For now.

I was still Death. While I liked to think I wasn’t selfish, my dreams were plagued by my own greed. My treasure, a certain star.

Eventually, Astoria would hit the dirt the same way all humans did, and I would be there to take her home.

Besides, a few decades to cool down might be best. I’d broken her heart.

It was easy to pretend it did not affect me. Millenia of schooling my emotions and guarding my thoughts had given me the upper hand, but my chest ached and burned all at once. A gaping hole grew every day, a fissure between what I wanted and who I had to be.

There would be no reconciliation.

I made the choice when I stumbled upon Astoria and Beatrice in the street—James climbing out of the car to berate his wife for all that she’d done.

There were laws the universe must honor. I was required to take a life due; Astoria only created a loophole. I could not bear to steal Beatrice from her arms after she just got her back, and James was far too easy a decision.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that Astoria would be such a formidable foe. When life turned against her, she didn’t shatter, she advanced. Quietly. Fiercely. The world was good because she believed it could be.

I cursed the trail of second chances she left behind, but the truth is that they began to fracture something in me. A code. A law. An order I once believed absolute.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be her adversary. I wanted to be her ally. Her shield. Her witness.

Her war was relentless, but like all great uprisings, it too had to end. And for ninety-three years, I fought beside her—bled the same as her—just to grant her victory.

It turns out that her curse was as much a curse on love as it was a curse on her tormented ancestry. Alice may have thought she’d gotten the best of her sister by cursing her family line to reconcile with Death, but the laws of the universe was stronger.

Curses often persist because no one dares to look them in the eye, but Astoria had done just that.

I promised that I would help her break her curse, and I’d proven true to my word. Whether Gentry cared to eventually share that we’d worked together to discover the missing pieces, I didn’t care. Because as it turns out, Astoria never needed them. She was perfect the way she was.

Stubborn, defiant, determined, fierce…

The curse wasn’t just punishment. It was grief incarnate .

Alice and Maggie practiced witchcraft together , likely saw each other as soulmates in a world that feared them and then Maggie chose status and power, chose the man who mastered much of their pain, over their bond.

That betrayal broke something in Alice, but fear is what pushed Maggie toward violence.

The same way grief had broken Astoria, and she dared to defy everything expected of her.

One day she would see the cause behind my actions, and while she now had free will, I did not fear what she would do with the blessing of time.

Aging was a privilege, one she yearned for. It gave me great pleasure to make sure she would finally see the history written in her features—of all who came before her, and the fight they waged against the same curse that plagued her.

Death was absolute, but she knew better than most that life is measured not by time, but by love.

Day broke the silence, nodding toward Reaper who had sauntered in and was now sniffing the floor like it might cough up a treat.

“You better figure out how to keep the dog. For her, you know.”

I exhaled through my nose, the corner of my mouth twitching. “Working on it. There’s… options .”

Day gave me a look. “Just don’t get sentimental and raise a hellhound.”

I shrugged. I briefly considered leaving Reaper on her doorstep, but disgustingly enough, I’d grown attached. “ Sentiment is already the problem.”