"You look beautiful!" Lira called across the terrace.
"She looks the same as always," Twyla said.
"Exactly."
Isla smiled. She was wearing a dress she'd bought at the seasonal market the week before. Simple, deep blue, the kind of thing she'd never have chosen a year ago because a year ago she dressed to be invisible. The silver scar on her neck where themating mark had healed was visible above the neckline. To her, it was better than any wedding band.
Rafe came through the inn's back door at seven. He'd been at the dock all day finishing paperwork with Corwen's office, and he looked like it. Work jacket, boots, his sandy hair loose, the permanent tan of a man who still spent half his time on the water. He found her at the terrace rail and stood beside her, close enough that his arm pressed against hers.
"Dex says hello," he said. "He's on the Ashvane watching the cargo."
"He's avoiding the party."
"He's a fox. Social events make him twitchy when there’s no intel to gather."
She leaned into him feeling the bond pulse between them, warm, steady, his heartbeat in her blood since the night on the rock. It still startled her sometimes, turning a corner in her own body and finding him there.
"Emmett sent word this morning," Rafe said. "Malrick's case went to the regional tribunal. The consortium pulled his trade licenses based on the forged manifests. Moira's authentication of the bracelet tied him to the stormcaller interference charges. He's banned from the north channel, the Ardenmere basin, and every port within two hundred miles of Hollow Oak."
"Prison?"
"The tribunal doesn't do prison. They do exile and economic destruction, which, for a man like Malrick, is worse." He paused. "His three ships were seized. Garren turned witness for a reduced penalty. The courier disappeared, but nobody's looking for him."
"And the bracelet?"
"Moira has it. Locked in the archive, catalogued as a fae artifact of historical significance." He paused for a moment. “She said whenever you're ready, it's yours."
Isla looked at the lake. The water was gold in the last light, flat, peaceful, the kind of evening that made Hollow Oak look like a painting someone had stepped inside. Her mother's bracelet, the last physical piece of her family's stormcaller line, sitting in Moira's archive. She'd think about that tomorrow. Tonight she was here.
"What about you?" she asked. "The contracts?"
"Vanewright renegotiated. I run the route every six weeks instead of monthly, which gives me more time between runs. Dex handles the secondary pickups on the eastern channel with Orick. I've got three standing contracts, two new ones that came in after Malrick's licenses got pulled, and a crew that can manage a two-week stretch without me if they have to."
"Two weeks on, two weeks off?"
"Something like that. Might shift depending on the season." He turned so he could fully face her. "I'm not giving up the river. It's part of who I am. But I'm also not sleeping on a boat when I could be sleeping in your bed."
"Our bed."
"Our bed." He said it like he was tasting the words and he wanted to hold them in his mouth for a while.
"You could dock here between runs. Use Hollow Oak as your home port."
"That's the plan. Corwen's already assigned me a permanent mooring. Rowan offered to maintain the Ashvane when I'm on land." He turned to face her fully. The lantern light caught the gray in his eyes. "I talked to Emmett about it. He said the town could use a regular trade connection with someone they trust. Apparently the last merchant captain to come through here caused some problems."
"Vaguely familiar."
"Terrible guy. Showed up in a storm, yelled at a woman, all the things."
"The worst."
He put his arm around her. She leaned into him, her head against his shoulder, watching the terrace fill with people she'd spent three months learning to call neighbors instead of observers. Silas had arrived with Tessa, the fire witch, her flame-red hair catching every lantern in the garden. Freya was there too, copper-auburn hair braided with small flowers, talking to Diana about something that required hand gestures. A small girl clung to Freya's skirt, dark-haired, maybe four or five, watching the party with enormous green eyes.
"That's Sage," Rafe said. "Freya's daughter."
"I know. She comes into the Mercantile with Freya sometimes. She told me my hair looked like the moon."
"She's not wrong."
