Celeste’s gaze traced the walls of the room to find the Obsidian Widow Maker propped in the corner. “Oh, Sid, I’m sorry I threw you,” she groaned over Reeve’s shoulder. “And also for uncleansing you.”
If the sword could have shrugged, it would have. “I don’t have the urge to draw anyone to a tortuous death, so I think I’m okay. Turns out you weren’t evil after all.”
“I told you,” grumbled Reeve, but when he leaned back, he was smiling.
Reeve fussed over Celeste as morning light filled up the room, brushing hair away from her face, fixing pillows behind her back, collecting a cup of stale tea from the side table and urging her to drink it, and asking in about a hundred different ways if she was all right. She gladly answered every question until she had one of her own.
“Is that an imp?”
In the doorway stood a small, red creature, and though she hadn’t seen one in some time, with its leathery wings, its pointed tail, and bulbous black eyes, it could be nothing else.
“Oh, that’d be Zak.” Reeve grit his teeth. “I sort of tried to kill him when he transformed—instinct, ya know? Luckily he’s fast.”
And then the imp proved it by vanishing from the doorway.
“Geezer’s bird, Zak?”
Reeve nodded then shook his head as he shifted to sit on the edge of the bed, scooting nearer to her. “Well, no, he’s not really a bird, but he was stuck as one when Geezer illusioned away all his arcana and memories up in Ashrein Ridge twenty years ago.” He fluffed her pillow a little more, brows drawn down in deep thought. “And Geezer isn’t Geezer either. I mean, he’s the same for the most part, he just looks different. And talks a little different. And has a different name too.”
“Soren Darkmore,” a familiar voice said from the hall, but the man it was attached to was changed though he wore Geezer’s robe. “Turns out I was my own villain all along.”
Celeste pushed herself back into the pillows, eyes wide. “You’re the blood mage?”
“Guilty.” He held up aged hands. “Thought it would be easier to fix my mistakes if I didn’t know they were mine. It wasn’t too bright, using illusions to hide my face and my arcana, not to mention my memories, but I really did think it would take much less time than it did.”
From his side, there was a little grunt, and there stood the older woman from the festival who had kept the vines at bay. She glared up at him, and he gave her a sheepish grin until she returned it.
Celeste remembered the salacious journal entry that had been amongst the recipe and list from the special box kept in the mage’s library. “You’re Maribel? How did you get here?”
“Zak brought Soren’s letters to the Wildwood and showed me where a translocation portal had been hidden away. He’s been writing me and then apparently forgetting to send anything!” She laughed and rapped her blossom-covered staff on the floor. “Call me Em—it’s easier to remember.”
“What about the others?” Celeste asked, breathless as she looked back to Reeve.
“Everyone’s fine, they’re just recovering.” He frowned. “Even Fitz survived.”
She pressed a weary hand to her chest in relief. “That’s good, but please tell me I don’t have to force myself to laugh at any more of his bad jokes.”
Reeve’s grin swiftly returned, dimple and all, and there was a swelling in her chest. She reached out hesitant fingers to touch his jaw, and his hand came around hers, clasping tight. “Celeste,” he said suddenly, face going grave. “I love you.”
Celeste’s heart hitched. “Oh?” she squeaked out.
“You said it and then just,”—he sliced his free hand through the air—“right into the well, and I didn’t get the chance to say, but I love you. So much.”
“Reeve,” she whispered as he leaned in closer, “I love you too.”
“What are you two doing out of bed?” Halfrida’s voice jolted through both of them as she bustled in from the hall, pushing between Soren and Em. “We’ve all been told to rest, and—oh, oh! By all that’s good and bright, Charlie go get Ima’riel! She’s awake!”
The rooms of the Dew Drop Inn were not meant to hold so many people, but Celeste couldn’t bring herself to deny visitors. Reeve did well though, endlessly polite yet firm and imposing as he made everyone take their turn. The moment she began to feel overwhelmed, he ushered everyone out until she insisted it was fine again, happy to see not a single villager had been lost.
The visits persisted through the next few days, and with many cups of peppery tea and bowl after bowl of Halfrida’s potato mash, Celeste regained her strength. Reeve’s attentive care, however, was what she truly needed to take to the stairs and have meals in the tavern, and then she finally asked to return to the temple.
“Actually, that is something we should…discuss,” said Reeve, offering her his elbow.
Celeste took it tentatively, but he led her outside beneath a brilliantly blue and clear sky. The demolished circle had grown over with sweetbriars, pink and white blooms spreading like a blanket over the chasm she had carved with Sid. More vines, lushly green and providing shade and sweet smells, wound their way over the buildings, and the town’s resident hens roosted around them. As it turned out, spring in Briarwyke was beautiful, but Celeste’s heart beat a little too hard for her to truly enjoy it.
Reeve explained as they walked up North Road that he had sent a request for help to Father Theodore in Bendcrest. That she understood, and it made her grin to hear him go on about how much Father Theodore would love her, but not to be put off by him because he just had one of those grumpy-all-the-time faces, but then Reeve went on to say that when members of his temple eventually showed up, they would want to reclaim Valcord’s house in Briarwyke. “Especially since the evil has been vanquished,” Reeve said, “which, by the way, everyone in the village knows was all your doing, so you’ll have to take the praise for it regardless.”
Celeste chuckled warily, hoping that vanquishing one evil was enough to assure clergy that she was not a second requiring destruction.
