Rude,Maeve huffed. Oberon grumbled something low and unintelligible, but it seemed to settle the matter.
Maeve, her point made, leapt gracefully onto the bed. After circling three times, she folded herself into a perfect, judgmental loaf at Goldie’s feet. Oberon gave Splice one last, long, assessing stare, and then, with a low, rumbling purr that sounded suspiciously like approval, curled up against his side, planting one heavy paw over Splice’s hip like a territorial claim.
Splice shifted just enough to pull the sheet up over them, then settled back into the curve of Goldie’s body, his chin resting lightly atop her head.
"Is this normal?" he murmured. “Cats demanding tribute after sex?”
Goldie yawned, her fingers lazily tracing the lines of his ribs. “Honestly? Pretty much.”
He hummed, the sound low and content. “I will try to adjust. It will be a learning experience.”
Yes,chimed in Oberon.
Goldie tilted her face up just enough to kiss the underside of his jaw. “You’re part of the family now,” she whispered. “They approve.”
At their feet, Maeve twitched an ear.We’ll see,she projected, but it was without venom.
The room settled into a deep, peaceful hush. The four of them—the witch, the cryptid, the queen, and the Puck—breathed in unison, a strange and perfect little family. Outside, Bellwether buzzed on, warm with midday light. But inside, wrapped in tangled sheets and the quiet pulse of magic, they let the hours slip by: drifting, content and still, safe in the soft gravity of each other. Together.
Epilogue
Nearly three months had passed since the night the Grove Core had purged its poison.
Ashenvale Ventures, predictably, had backed out within forty-eight hours of the incident.“Force majeure,”their statement read, which was corporate forwe don’t mess with gods.Their stock plummeted, their public relations team melted down, and Bellwether collectively threw a parade in the comments section of the online news site.
The Solstice celebration, though pared down, turned out to be one of the most beloved in recent memory. With the bonfire moved out of the Grove Core’s heart and into one of the gentler meadow clearings on the Green Holdings’ edge, the whole event held a smaller, cozier footprint. People gathered close instead of scattering across half a dozen vendor paths. Goldie, as Herald, lit the bonfire with a quiet, resonant invocation that rippled through the crowd like the susurrus of spring leaves.
Attendance doubled, sales tripled, and, for the first time in years, there wasn’t a single metaphysical mishap. No spontaneous combustions. No ley line hiccups. Not even a mischievous pop from the wards. Everyone left agreeing itwas a success. Even Nadia Fromme admitted the scaled-back celebration had been “surprisingly tasteful.”
Splice, meanwhile, was officially recognized as a “magical person of independent agency” after three exhausting hearings and one spectacularly awkward interview with the Department of Metaphysical Affairs. Goldie had sat beside him the entire time, smiling through gritted teeth while he answered bureaucrats’ questions about “employment history” and “preferred pronouns.”
When they asked for a legal surname, he calmly offered “Assistant.” Goldie nearly sprained an eye rolling at the literalness of it, but the clerk typed it in without blinking, and that was that.
Karen Vesuvius’s injunctions all dissolved as soon as Splice gained “personhood” (a bureaucratic label Goldie still wasn’t convinced wasn’t an insult), which meant every seal the woman had slapped on Marlow Truckenham’s records and the Grove Core investigation peeled back in a single, brutal afternoon. The police, abruptly free of red tape, invited her in for a “conversation” about why, exactly, she’d worked so hard to keep anyone from looking into the councilman’s affairs too closely.
Faced with her own motions blown up on a projector, Karen sputtered, backpedaled, and finally requested counsel. By the end of it, she was on “indefinite leave,” her calendar cleared by a flurry of politely worded cancellations, and the smug tilt of her mouth at City hearings was notably absent.
Splice’s first official act as the Thornfather’s representative had been to dissolve the Green Holdings Land Trust. He called it “returning stewardship to the people,” though the legal paperwork made Goldie’s head spin. What mattered was that it worked.
Smaller, local groups were already stepping in: the Parks Department’s Witchcraft and Conservation Division; theGardeners’ Guild; and half a dozen civic covens who had spent years rallying outside City Hall. The Holdings were no longer an asset to be managed, but a responsibility to be tended. For the first time in decades, the Green Holdings, under Splice’s careful watch, would belong to Bellwether again.
A week after the paperwork was filed, a quiet ceremony was held at the edge of the Grove Core. No press, no speeches. Just a single stone, marked with Elijah Pell’s name, placed beneath the roots of a newly planted hawthorn tree.
Goldie had taken Splice’s hand, laced their fingers together, and pressed a kiss to his temple. They stood there for a long moment in the dappled light, heads bowed, paying homage to the boy whose death had been buried for thirty years, and who had, inadvertently, brought them together.
Shortly after the ceremony, the newest Land Trust members, the ones who’d inherited their shares through money, not blood, had recovered enough to reenter the picture. Confused, cranky, and dressed in their most expensive couture, they arrived at Greymarket Towers to “discuss next steps.”
That discussion ended the moment Splice met them in the lobby and said plainly, “There will be no next steps.”
The floor had groaned beneath his words. The marble beneath their imported shoes had cracked like sugar glass.
None of them had stayed long after that.
Swale, Mischra, and Idris remained in comas. The doctors had no answers, the police had no charges, and no one honestly had much sympathy left to give.
And the protestors, once furious and waving handmade signs, had found a new pastime. Writing fan mail. Literal fan mail. To Splice.
The first batch had arrived with handwritten letters, wildflower bouquets, and an alarming number of paintingsfeaturing shirtless, idealized versions of him with strategically placed vines.
