Page 57 of Moth to a Flame

“Sever each vine with tongue laid bare, what becomes unbound was always there.” His pronunciation was perfect. “I was always yours, bond or no bond, Lucia.”

“Stay with me, Hawk?”

“Until the moon no longer shines, and even after.” The silver vines around us began to dissolve. It wasn’t the violent undoing of my curse but a gentle exhale as their silver ash drifted up and out of the shattered greenhouse toward the moon.

As the air cleared, I heard a laugh that sounded suspiciously like that of an old lady I knew who lived thirty minutes down the road.

Magic has a will of its own indeed.

But none of that mattered. The bond was broken, and so was my curse. I was sobbing like a baby, and I was the happiest I had ever been. He was still here, smiling at me, and I knew everything else would follow. No plan this time. I didn’t need one. I had everything I’d ever needed right here with me.

Epilogue

ONE MOTH LATER

“Ok mom, yeah, I’ll see you next Tuesday.” Lucia hung up the call on her shiny new cell phone as she walked into the destroyed greenhouse I was attempting to repair—again.

“How’d it go?” I stood up, wiping my dirty hands on my pants, before placing them on her hips.

She bit her lip. “It was fine.”

“Lucia, we talked about this,” I scolded her mildly. I couldn’t read her emotions anymore, so she had to communicate with me. She was getting better at it. Baby steps.

She let out a long sigh and buried her face in my chest. “It was disappointing. Looks like my brother has officially stepped down as CEO, but I did some digging and, of course, now he’s just an independent consultant for the company. Mom offered me my old role back, but…”

“But?”

She finally met my gaze. “She’s not budging on the patents. That was the whole point! I can’t go back if we are still using those stolen recipes.”

My brave, stubborn witch. I held her close and rubbed my hands gently up and down her back.

“What’s the saying? Salem wasn’t built in a day. Keep trying, keep communicating with her. That’s the only way she will change.”

She relaxed into me. “I know but…it’s hard. It hurts that she can’t see how wrong it is. Why do I have to explain it to her?”

“You don’t. But then who will?”

She sighed again. “You’re right.”

“It can happen occasionally.” She chuckled at that and glowed a little brighter.

“If I went back, I could buy your mom a new house.”

“Tired of our new roommates already, huh?”

“What? No! I…I love the noise,” she said with a shy grin. “But we might need to start a fund for all the honey we are going through.”

Mom was still back in West Virginia, set in her ways. But three of my brothers had taken up Lucia on her offer to move into the manor—Motholemew, Timothy, and Motthew. To say it had been ‘noisy’ was a bit of an understatement. The bachelorette pad had transformed into a frat house overnight, sticky floors and all. I had worried Lucia would regret the decision, but she was thriving.

She stroked my cheek, grinning. “I love having them here. Even if I need to get used to this new definition of privacy.”

Wasn’t that the truth. I think I was getting annoyed having them around so much. Luckily, I had years of experience.

“Both Motholemew and Timothy are going to lurk on the covered bridge tonight.” At my suggestion. “I was thinking we could run an experiment about the bond tonight?”

“Hawk, we’ve run that experiment pretty much every night for the last month. We can still feel each other’s⁠—”

She trailed off into a much less combative sound as I sucked on her pulse point.