Ashar stepped into view from the side of the porch, like a shadow that had finally decided to claim the light. Slow, deliberate. The gold wash of morning made him look almost holy, as if holiness wore black jeans and boots and the same ridiculous red leather jacket he refused to part with.
He was smiling. Not the wicked grin he wore when he was being clever. Not the teasing smirk he gave before doing something unholy to her against a wall.
This smile was soft and open.
Molten gold in human form.
He held out a ring.
It looked forged, not crafted. Like someone had pulled it from the center of the earth, obsidian-black with veins of ember-glow, set in a band that shimmered with shifting runes. Not symmetrical. Not smooth.
But unmistakably hers.
“I figured,” Ashar said, voice low and steady, “if you were going to marry a demon, it should be with a magical pumpkin.”
Blair laughed, or possibly sobbed. She wasn’t sure. Her chest ached in the best way. Her eyes burned.
“What if I say no?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.
He stepped closer, took her hand, lifted it gently, reverently, as if she were something sacred andthe world might stop if he dropped it.
“Then I’ll keep haunting you,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her knuckles, “until you change your mind.”
She threw her arms around him like her body had made the decision before her brain could catch up.
“Then it’s a yes,” she whispered into his shoulder, into the universe, into fate.
* * *
They married a year later.
Not in a church, nor in a courthouse.
But in a haunted greenhouse on the edge of town. A place where ivy tangled around broken glass, and the fog rolled in like an honored guest. The air had the scent of moss and rain and something beyond recollection.
Ashar’s world shimmered just beneath the veil, visible in the candlelight, the mirrors, the reflections in the still water. Runes floated in the air like fireflies. The boundary between realms didn’t dissolve that day. It just stepped aside.
Maya officiated.
Unqualified in every conventional sense. But spiritually chaotic, cosmically correct, and absolutely thrilled to be there. She wore a black sequined jumpsuit called Ashar “hot Satan” at least three times and nearly set her cue cards on fire with a stray spell spark.
Blair didn’t flinch.
Ashar only laughed.
The vows were improvised.
The magic wasn’t.
When they kissed, the greenhouse bloomed, flowers bursting from vines that hadn’t bloomed in decades, petals unfolding like secrets. The air pulsed with energy, ancient and wild and deeply personal.
* * *
Blair never went back to her old life.
Not because she couldn’t, but because she didn’t want to.
She wrote instead.
