The whole scene feels beautifully strange and perfectly suited to this impossible town that’s somehow become home.
Blue’s hand finds the small of my back, warm through the silk of my dress. “Want to get out of here for a minute?” Blue’s hand finds mine. “I have something to show you.”
I glance around at the party, but there’s something in the way he speaks that makes me curious.
“Yeah, okay.”
He leads me through the crowd, past Dame Gothel, who raises her champagne with a knowing smile. Instead of heading outside, he guides me toward the main staircase, up to the second floor where the hallway stretches in both directions.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere I should have shown you before now.”
We walk down the hallway past doors I’ve never opened, until we reach the end where a narrow staircase spirals upward. Blue pushes open a heavy wooden door, and suddenly we’re climbing stone steps that wind up and up.
“Where are we going?” I ask, slightly out of breath from the climb.
“You’ll see.”
The stairs are steep and narrow, winding up through stone walls until finally we emerge into a circular room with windows allaround. But Blue doesn’t stop there—he pushes open another door, and we step outside onto a balcony that wraps around the entire tower.
The view takes my breath away. Grimlock spreads out below us like a living map painted in gold and shadow. The lights from windows and streetlamps create constellations across the town, while beyond them, the dark forests stretch toward the ocean like velvet. Ican smell salt on the wind mixed with woodsmoke from chimneys, and underneath it all, the green scent of growing things that never quite goes away in the Pacific Northwest.
The stone railing is cool under my palms, worn smooth by years of weather. Party music drifts up from below—muffled laughter and the faint sound of someone playing piano—but up here the night air carries other sounds too. The distant crash of waves against cliffs, the rustle of leaves in towering evergreens, an owl calling somewhere in the darkness.
From this height, I can see the whole town laid out like a storybook illustration. The gothic mansions perched on their hills, the winding streets that connect them, the clock tower in the town square with its hands forever frozen at midnight. Lights glow warmly in cottage windows tucked between the larger estates, each one holding its own secrets.
“My god,” I say, moving to the stone railing. “You can see everything. It’s like the clock tower but different angles.”
“Yeah.” But when I look at him, he’s not looking at the view. He’s looking at me. “I know I planned for you to move...”
My chest tightens, but not in panic. “Blue...”
“But I want you to stay.” He gestures to the view, to Grimlock spread out below us. “I want to make this place ours together.”
I turn to face him fully, searching his eyes. “You really want that?”
“For so long, I thought I had to change to find redemption.” He swallows hard. “I thought I had to become someone different, someone better. Pretend the violence wasn’t part of me. Hide what I really am.” He pauses, looking out over Grimlock before meeting my eyes again. “But when I look at myself through your eyes... I like what I see reflected there. For the first time in my life, I like who I am.”
“I do too...”
“You don’t see a monster who needs fixing. You see someone worth staying for.” His hands find my face, thumbs brushing across my cheekbones. “You accept all of it—the darkness, the violence, the parts of me I thought made me irredeemable.”
I think about all the times he could have asked me to forgive him for what he’s done, what he is. But he never did. He never asked for forgiveness. Just a witness. And maybe that’s all redemption is—bleeding out beneath the gallows with someone willing to look you in the eye.
“Because those parts aren’t separate from the rest of you,” I whisper. “They’re not flaws to fix. They’re just... you. And I love you.”
His thumb traces my bottom lip, and I see the exact moment he can’t fight whatever is holding him back. When he leans down, I rise up to meet him halfway.
The kiss is soft, tender in a way that surprises me. It’s nothing like the desperate hunger from the greenhouse or the claiming fire from that first night in the jazz club. This is different, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my lips, the way I taste, the small sound I make when his hand caresses my lower back.
I can feel everything in this kiss—years of loneliness, the fear that he’d never be worth loving, the wonder of finding someone who sees his darkness and calls it beautiful. When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together in the tower’s quiet.
I pull back slightly to look at him, something shifting in my chest. “Can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“What if I don’t want to be murder sober like you? Now that Brutus is dead?” I search his eyes in the moonlight. “You said more Crows will come eventually. What if I want to be there waiting when they do?”
