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Don’t be too angry if I don’t get out of here with my conscience intact.

If I’m not back by spring, send Étienne. Love always.

Spring? Send Étienne whom he hated? But that was still months away! And not a word about whether he had found Romy or not!

The next day when I called, the line went dead and there was no response.

Was he ok?

I prayed to my Gran as hard as I could, that she would send him protection and safety.

For a while, I wrestled with myself, desperate to send a party after him now. But I would do as he had requested. If he wasn’t back by next spring, Étienne must go after him.

Back at home, the summer lingered on, but there were signs the seasons were changing. But what was changing inside me?

One day Étienne persuaded me to go out into the mountains again while Tilly watched Ciel, and we hiked for miles through the woods to make it to a rocky peak where we could see the leaves changing to brilliant red, yellow, and orange colors.

“It doesn’t feel the same,” I said as a soft autumn breeze swirled around my hair. “I don’t think we can go back to what we were.”

“That’s all right,” Étienne said. “It can be different and I will still love you.”

“I might never fully forgive you,” I warned him, my gaze fixed on the distant mountains, the way fog wreathed around their tips. “What if there’s a part of me that always holds resentment and bitterness?”

“That’s all right,” Étienne said again. “I will take any part of you that you can give me, Léonie.”

“You were unforgivably selfish, arrogant, and greedy,” I said, looking right up into his harsh dark face. “You thought you could treat me as cruelly as you wanted and it didn’t matter, because I loved you so much that I would forgive you easily.”

He didn’t argue. “Yes,” my husband said as he stepped closer. “I was too sure of you, and I was a fool and a bastard. No one would ever blame you for hating me.”

“All the Pinoteaux land and resources are mine now to do with as I wish. They are not yours, and I want them to be a place where people who have been harmed by my family will be allowed to live in peace.”

“They are your lands,” Étienne said, drawing a rough finger across my cheek. “You are the head of the Pinoteaux family. You decide which of your ancestors are remembered and which are forgotten and who deserve graves and memories.”

“I'm not the girl you once knew,” I said defiantly. “I won’t go back to being meek, sweet little Léonie Bastide.”

Étienne cupped my face in his hands, looking at me with such desperate, pulsing longing.

“I love you even more this way. I want you in any form you take, my angel. You can transform and re-emerge like a butterfly every single year, with a new way of being and I will love in every way you choose to be.”

Once upon a time, I fell in love with a god. . .

Did he still have my heart when he fell from the heavens?

Ciel and I stayed in the house, back where it had all began. At first, I justified it to myself that it was about his nursery, that beautiful nursery we had dreamed and worked for so many months on.

I could always go right back to the Savatier home, whenever I wanted they’d be there for a visit or a stay, warm hearts ready for us.

And then when I fell into my husband’s open arms at night, gave myself up to his passion, I told myself it was just about our bodies, nothing more.

Not my heart.

“I am sick of blood,” Étienne told me one night, as my head rested on his chest, his heart pounding fiercely in my ear.

Our bodies were sticky, fused together.

“Your Papé is resting well,” I said. “Réjean did kill him, and you avenged his death.”

“You were right. Papé would not have wanted me to spend so many years plotting revenge,” he said, one big hand stroking my hair. “Réjean could have been killed in a simple fashion. I could have avenged his death in that way. But, like you said, I was arrogant. I wanted the destruction of the entire family. I wanted all their lands for myself. I wanted even more than mountain justice demanded.”