Chapter 172 Epilogue

Chapter 172 Epilogue
Epilogue
Rae
The garden has grown wild around us, and the mint escaped its pot three years ago.
Now it grows in a stubborn patch near the far stones, wild and gleeful and utterly convinced it owns the entire lower garden. I let it stay because some battles are not worth fighting, and because every time I smell it, I think of Nanna standing at the kitchen door of the cabin, pretending she had not also lost control of hers.
Menace likes to sleep in it.
Today, he is sprawled on his back in the middle of the mint patch, three tails spread wide, paws tucked to his chest.
“Rowan,” I call.
A small blonde head pops up from behind the lavender.
My daughter looks at me with Cian’s silver eyes and my exact expression of having been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been.
That combination is dangerous.
I knew it would be.
She is four years old and already certain the world has been placed here for her personal investigation. She collects stones, flowers, feathers, beetle shells, bits of ribbon, and once, very proudly, one of Dorian’s council seals because it was shiny and, according to her, lonely.
Cian said she got that from me.
“What are you doing over there?” I ask.
“Looking.”
“At what?”
She glances down.
I set my basket of cut lavender on the bench and cross the garden toward her. My bare feet press into the warm grass, earth soft beneath my soles.
Rowan watches me come closer, one small hand tucked behind her back, curls falling wild around her face. She has flowers tangled in her hair, dirt on both knees, and a smear of something purple across her cheek. Berry, probably. Paint, possibly. Fae nonsense, never impossible.
When I reach her, I see what caught her attention.
A ring of mushrooms has pushed through the grass near the old rowan sapling.
I frown slightly at it, knowing that the realm is trying to call her somewhere already.
Rowan crouches beside the mushrooms, staring at them with open fascination.
“They grew in a circle,” she says.
“They did.”
“Why?”
“Because some things like circles.”
She looks up at me. “Do they dance?”
I crouch beside her, careful because the basket has made my arms ache and because Cian will appear out of thin air if he senses my discomfort. I am not ready to give away my daughter’s little discovery just yet.
“They might,” I say.
Rowan’s eyes brighten. “At night?”
“Maybe.”
“With little feet?”
“Possibly.”
“With teeth?”
I pause.
That is Cian’s child.
“Sometimes,” I say.
She considers this with great seriousness, then reaches one finger toward the nearest mushroom.
I catch her hand gently before she can touch it, and her little fingers curl against my palm.
“No, love.”
She frowns. “Why?”
I look at the ring.
The mushrooms sit quietly in the grass, innocent as anything, but the air inside the circle feels different. It’s thinner, listening. Not dangerous in the way Bright Thorn was. Only old.
I’ve learned enough now to know when the realm is trying to arrange its pieces. But Rowan isn’t ready for that. Not yet.
I understand Nanna now.
Enough to know she had not tried to keep the world from me.
She had only wanted to give me more time.
I brush my thumb over Rowan’s knuckles.
“Because fairy rings are doors,” I tell her.
Her eyes grow wider. “To where?”
“To places that the world thinks you need to be.”
She looks at the mushrooms again, curiosity tugging hard at her little face.
“Did you go through one?” she asks.
I smile, though it hurts in the softest place.
“I did.”
Rowan’s mouth falls open. “Were you allowed?”
“No.”
“Did Nanna tell you no?”
She knows Nanna only through stories. Through the garden, and the herbs I teach her to crush between her fingers. Through the rowan she is named after, and the old songs I sing to her when we dance. Through a woman who loved me so fiercely that even death did not take her fingerprints off my life.
“Yes,” I say. “She told me no.”
Rowan thinks about this.
“Did you listen?”
Behind us, a low voice answers before I can.
“Your mother has a complicated relationship with listening.”
I turn my head.
Cian stands at the edge of the path, dark hair loose around his face, silver eyes soft in the morning light. He is holding Rowan’s forgotten cup in one hand and a little knitted cardigan in the other.
Rowan beams at him. “Papa, there’s a circle.”
Damn it. Here comes protective Daddy. Never let the world touch his baby.
“I see that.”
“It might have teeth,” Rowan whispers loudly.
“Then we should be polite and stay far, far away from it. Possibly forever. We don’t want you getting bitten.”
She nods solemnly.
Cian comes to stand beside us, his gaze moving from the fairy ring to me. The bond between us warms, gentle and familiar. A question without words.
Are you all right?
I answer by reaching for his hand, and he gives it at once.
Always.
Rowan looks between us, then back at the mushrooms.
“Maybe I can go in when I’m big? I will have my swords with me and can fight everything.”
My fingers tighten around Cian’s.
There it is.
The question every warning knows will come eventually.
I could tell her no.
The word rises easily and instinctively. It gathers in my throat with all the force of every story that ended badly, every road that opened under blood, every moment I nearly did not make it back.
But then I think of Nanna.
I think of salt bowls, iron nails, and rowan thread. I think of a cabin full of love that I mistook for a cage because no one could explain the danger without breaking the secret apart.
I think of choice, and of all the ways I had to fight to keep mine.
So I kneel beside my daughter in the garden I grew by hand, with Cian’s fingers warm around mine, Menace snoring in the mint, and Hollow Hill breathing gently beneath our feet.
“When you’re big,” I say carefully, “we’ll talk about doors, and roads... And bargains. And why wanting to know something does not mean you have to step inside it.”
Rowan listens with the intense focus of a child who understands maybe one-third of what I have said and plans to interrogate the rest later.
“But for now?” she asks.
I look at the ring again, then I look at my daughter.
My bright, wild, curious Rowan, born of two worlds and loved fiercely by both.
For now, I understand exactly what Nanna meant.
I cup Rowan’s face in my free hand and smile.
“For now, sweet girl, don’t enter the fairy ring.”