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S he liked the navy sweater best. Pulling it out of the closet, I paired the thick wool with gray trousers and my usual russet leather boots.

Would she remember?

Would she stay?

My thoughts had been plagued by nothing else but my emerald-eyed beauty.

Reaper groaned, stretching out further on Astoria’s side of the bed. I wrung my hands nervously. It’s time.

It was a Sunday. The skies bleak, filled with clouds gray and heavy. Soon, even they would weep their a final goodbye to Astoria. I couldn’t deny that it was fitting. She had spent every Sunday here, in the cemetery down the hill from Scythe Manor.

She felt closest here, curled beneath the yew tree.

Some weeks, she furiously scribbled into her notebooks, pages bleeding her memories and dreams. Other times, she brought the girls—twin daughters with her smile and her mischief—letting them run wild through the fields while she sat at the graves of her children, her parents, telling them about life… the twins… even love.

Yes, she married Gentry.

Gentry was good to her; far better than James.

And although I’d never admit it aloud, I was thankful Fate stepped in that day.

He needed her as much as she needed him.

Their companionship was quiet and constant, a tether she could lean on when grief came calling.

He never shamed her past, nor flinched at her scars.

They had built a beautiful life.

Twin girls.

Grandchildren with bright eyes and loud laughter.

And later, great-grandchildren who toddled behind her through the garden paths, sticky fingers full of stolen fruit and wildflowers.

She grew into the woman I once sat beside on a plane—weathered and wise, her face mapped with decades of emotion, but still radiant.

Her eyes never lost their glint of silver and she continued to enrapture me.

Once she'd feared that she'd wasted the time she was given, but in the end, there was much to show for her years of mortality.

Gentry would drive her to the cemetery these days. He would help her out of the car, walk her to the bench that I had built for her, then quietly slip away so she could sit in peace.

She’d tip her face to the sky, open her palms, hum softly to the breeze. And then she would tell stories. Long ones. Short ones. Some that made no sense at all. Poems, ballads, silly songs made up on the spot.

Her mind had begun to slip in her old age, much to everyone’s quiet heartbreak. The clock had started when she broke the curse, and today was her birthday.

To everyone else, she was ninety-two. A wife. Mother. Grandmother. A great-grandmother. A life, full and well-lived.

To me, she was all of that, and somehow still more.

Two hundred and eighteen years old, yet always new to me.

The girl with thirteen names, thirteen lives, all of which I knew like scripture.

She was a riddle I never wanted solved. My ruin and my redemption.

My plague and my savior, braided into one.

Hidden beneath shadows, I watched as their dark car pulled into the lot. Gentry hobbled out, body as worn as hers now, and walked around to open her door. Astoria stared blankly ahead, but a shudder ran down her spine and I knew she felt me.

She always did.

They spoke softly to one another, and to my surprise, Gentry took her hand and led her down the worn path toward me…

Away from her usual bench.

She smelled as she always did—iris and asphodel, a scent I had clung to over the years.

“Something feels familiar about this place, Gentry,” she whispered, a flicker of panic crossing her expression as she gripped his arm.

He patted her hand, lips pursed, an unshed tear in his eye. “It’s Sunday, love. You visit every Sunday… to see the kids, your parents… and Grim.”

“Hm.”

They walked slowly, heads dipped together, through the swaying grasses. I lifted the shadows, slowly, staying hidden from view. But Gentry spotted me then, his breath hitching, a cough rattling his chest.

“Do you remember the stories, love?” he asked, guiding her beneath the yew.

“The ones on our shelves?”

“The very same.”

My heart hung in the balance. My knees weakened. I stepped forward—one, then another, until I stood before her and lifted the veil.

The silence cut deeper than any blade. I said nothing. Just watched. Waited.

She did not remember.

Until—

“It was real,” she mumbled. A flicker of awe in her voice. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes glassy.

“Every bit,” Gentry answered, nodding solemnly to me.

“Is it time?” she asked—not to Gentry, but to me .

“It is,” I said, my voice barely a rasp. I moved closer, aching to touch her, to brush a curl from her face, to hold her like I never could.

“But the girls… the babies…” Her gaze flicked toward the man who had loved her well, when I could not.

“You’ve spent your life in mourning, Astoria,” Gentry whispered, kissing her temple. “It’s time someone mourned you.”

A single tear traced his cheek as he folded her into his trembling arms. I couldn’t stop my own from falling, not as I watched them say the goodbye neither of them truly wanted to give. But as they released each other, I stepped forward and reached for her hand.

Her touch was lightning even after all this time.

The shadows stirred and bent low, not in fear, but recognition.

They remembered her. Not as divine, but as someone who had walked their edge and dared to push back the dark.

She had once parted them with nothing more than desperate love; pulled souls through by sheer will.

Not because she was meant to, but because she could.

She’d broken the curse since then, but the shadows still knew her name. She stepped into them with quiet grace. Not as someone ending, but as someone they had always been waiting to welcome home.

“Now what?” she whispered, her thumb tracing restless circles over the back of my hand as the ink-stained dark folded in around us.

I looked down at her. Her hand in mine, her eyes searching my face.

And I felt it then. That old, impossible feeling…

“Now,” I said softly, “we go home, Tempest.”

“I think I’d like that,” she admitted, leaning into me.

She had already built so many homes—inside others, inside laughter, inside the children she bore and raised and loved. A life fully lived.

My breath caught. She was here. Beside me. Where she had belonged from the very beginning.

“I think it’s only fair,” I murmured, “that you give me the ending, and let me rest—beside you, in shadow or light.” I kissed her temple, tucked her into my chest. “With my darling curse. My sweet night. My heart’s creator, Death’s demise.”