If I were a stranger on the subway, doling out advice, I’d have told her to keep the key in her back pocket until the idiot had enough sense to make it official.
Brilliant move, Delaney. You’ve been married a year and didn’t even give her a ring.
The printer finally spat out the last few pages, the paper still warm as I stacked the sheets into a binder. Numbers, new plans, projections—statistical proof that I could at least get something right, even if it wasn’t the thing that mattered.
The trip to the executive floor felt shorter than usual. Probably because there were no distractions. No agents lifting their Snowbelt mugs in greeting. No box of donuts in the breakroompulling me off course. Just an empty elevator that dinged way too fast, the doors sliding open to a lobby that looked like it had been professionally decorated for people who never stayed long enough to enjoy it.
My grandfather’s door was already cracked open, his secretary’s desk empty. I knocked once out of habit and stepped inside.
He stood by the window, staring out at the city, arms folded over a pressed suit. A hunter green tie cut a sharp line down his chest, and silver snowflake cufflinks winked at his wrists.
“Morning,” I said, setting the report on his desk.
“You’re early, for once.”
He didn’t look at me. I watched him instead, wondering—why did it always have to be this way? What would it take to earn his respect? I wore the same suit. Followed the same rules. And still, I never measured up.
Then I saw it.
The cream-colored envelope, half-tucked beneath his blotter, had theSacred Spell Resortlogo stamped across the corner.
I almost laughed. Magical spam—after everything, that’s what got me in the end.
“I don’t regret it,” I said, picking up the envelope and walking toward the window. I matched his stance, both of us staring at some distant building instead of each other.
He didn’t answer right away, the silence stretching until finally, he said, “I read the letter. Do you even care what this looks like? The embarrassment?”
“It’s not a scandal,” I said.
“Not yet,” he countered. “You’ve put this family, and this agency, in a very uncomfortableposition.”
I turned toward him, my pulse pounding in my throat. “Valerie is part of this family. She’s my wife. I choose her.”
He didn’t flinch. “You always confuse emotion with judgment. You’re too sentimental.”
My voice cut through the air before I could stop it. “For an agency that grants miracles? Do you hear yourself? I’ve done everything you asked. I put this place first.”
“As you should. Matt—”
“Matt wasn’t happy!” The words tore out of me. “The Delaneys save everything for their clients, but nothing for each other. He was burned out and too afraid to say anything.”
My grandfather didn’t respond. He just studied me like a man who couldn’t see past the forest of rules he’d built. As if those rules, and the conviction that kept him standing, could shield him from feeling anything at all. Even the pain he’d inflicted.
Maybe that was the truth. I was the crack in the mirror he’d spend a lifetime polishing. He couldn’t fix me in his own image, so he just kept trying to seal the cracks.
Valerie had thought losing her magic had made her a fraud. Butwewere. Our magic—not the kind we were born with, but the kind that made us a family—had been lost for a long time.
I tightened my grip on the envelope until the paper bent, that shining logo warping under my thumb. “I’m not letting her go.”
“That’s not up to you,” my grandfather replied, pacing back toward his desk.
His tone was steady, but I caught the undercurrent. The flicker… of fear, maybe. That he might be wrong.
“I have to admit, I’m impressed that the two of you solved the Silverpine case. I got word last night. Which makes my jobeasier, since she can just use the key to clean up this mess. It’ll be like it never happened.”
My jaw ached from how tightly I was holding it. “You spoke to her?”
“Yes,” he said, straightening his tie. “She’s on her way.”
