Sister Agnes herded the children onto the bus with the practiced efficiency of a seasoned general, counting heads and distributing snacks while pointedly avoiding eye contact with either Mikael or me.
The story had already spread, of course.
I'd watched it ripple through the group like wildfire—whispered giggles, knowing glances, Tommy proudly announcing to anyone who would listen that he'd witnessed Father Mikael "kissing Sister Wren like in the movies."
"We could walk back," Mikael said quietly, appearing at my elbow as the bus doors closed. "It's only a few miles, and the snow has stopped. Sister Agnes can manage them perfectly well without us."
The suggestion surprised me. After the storage closet incident, I'd expected him to retreat into mortified distance, not seek out more time alone together.
"Trying to avoid the interrogation on the bus?" I asked, watching the vehicle pull away with its cargo of tiny witnesses, exhaust pluming white in the frigid air.
"Partly." He offered me his arm with old-fashioned courtesy. "But mostly I just want to walk with my wife. Is that so terrible?"
The word 'wife' still caught me off guard sometimes, even after almost two months of hearing it.
I slipped my hand through his arm and let him guide me toward the waterfront path that wound along the harbor.
Gladstone spread out around us in the pale light of a winter afternoon—cobblestone streets dusted with fresh snow, the harbor half-frozen with ice floes drifting lazily between the docks, bare tree branches etched black against the gray sky like cracks in old porcelain.
It was beautiful in that specific way, all weathered charm and stubborn resilience.
Like the man beside me.
Weathered by things he rarely spoke of, but resilient in ways that constantly surprised me.
"You never talk about your childhood," I said as we walked, our boots crunching through the thin layer of snow on the boardwalk. "I realized today, watching you with the children—you're so natural with them, but you never mention growing up. Your family, your parents."
Mikael was quiet for a long moment, his gaze fixed on the horizon where the frozen sea met the heavy winter sky.
"There's not much to tell. My biological parents died when I was four. I don't remember much about them, honestly, just fragments—my mother's perfume, my father's laugh. The way our apartment smelled like coffee in the mornings."
"I'm sorry." The words felt inadequate, but I meant them.
"It was a long time ago."
His voice carried that particular flatness people develop when discussing old wounds that never fully healed.
"I was raised by my adoptive mother after that. Elena Rios. She was a teacher, deeply devout, never married. She'd known my parents through church and offered to take me when there was no other family willing."
"She sounds remarkable."
"She was. Strict, but fair."
A soft smile touched his lips, his breath forming small clouds as he spoke.
"She believed that God had a plan for everyone, and her plan was apparently to raise a lost boy into something useful. She's the reason I became a priest, really. She saw something in me that I couldn't see in myself and helped me find my calling."
I thought of my own mother—cold, calculating high-witch Octavia Powell of old and pure bloodline, who had looked at her youngest daughter and seen nothing but disappointment and eventual sacrifice.
The contrast was so stark it made my chest ache.
"She passed away six years ago," Mikael continued quietly. "Peacefully, in her sleep. I was with her at the end. She told me she was proud of who I'd become, and then she was just... gone."
"You were lucky to have her." My voice came out rougher than intended. "Not everyone gets a parent who sees them clearly. Who loves them for who they are instead of what they can provide."
Mikael glanced at me, something knowing in his warm brown eyes. "You're thinking about your own family."
"I try not to think about them at all."
The lie was automatic, even though Lilith's vision had been haunting my every quiet moment for days. Fire and screaming and bodies burning—all because I was too selfish to leave.
Are you really ready to continue and risk everything just because of your stubbornness?
Lilith's words echoed through my mind as we walked in comfortable silence, the cold biting at our cheeks.
The offer she'd made was impossible to forget—return to the coven, learn to control my awakening powers, prove myself valuable rather than expendable. She'd painted it as salvation, but I knew better than to trust anything wrapped in Powell packaging.
And yet, what if Lilith was right? What if staying here meant eventually destroying everything I'd come to love?
"You're very far away," Mikael observed, squeezing my hand gently through our gloves. "What are you thinking about?"
"The future," I admitted, which was close enough to the truth. "Whether I'm making the right choices."
He stopped walking, turning to face me fully. The weak winter light caught the planes of his face, highlighting the concern in his expression, snowflakes beginning to drift down and catch in his dark hair.
He studied me for a long moment, then he reached into his coat pocket and withdrew something small, pressing it into my gloved palm.
A medallion. Silver, oval-shaped, hanging from a delicate chain. When I turned it over, I found a tiny clasp on the side.
"It opens. You can put something inside—a photograph, a lock of hair, whatever you want to keep close."
Mikael said softly, his breath fogging between us.
"I saw it in a shop window last week and thought of you. I know it's not much, but I wanted you to have something that was just yours. Something to remind you that you belong here, with me, no matter what doubts might creep in."
The gift was so thoughtful, so perfectly attuned to the fears I'd been hiding, that for a moment I couldn't speak. I turned the medallion over in my hands, watching the pale light play across its surface, and felt something crack open in my chest.
He doesn't know what you are.
He doesn't know what you've done.
This kindness is built on lies.
But another voice, smaller and more desperate, whispered back: Does that make it less real?
"I love it," I said finally, and meant it more than he could possibly understand.
An idea struck me—sudden, reckless, born from the same impulse that had driven me to kiss him in the museum storage closet. I looked up at Mikael with what I hoped was a casual expression.
"Do you have your knife? The small one you carry?"
His brow furrowed immediately, wariness replacing warmth. "Why do you need a knife?"
"I want to put something inside the medallion. Something permanent."
"Wren..." He shifted uncomfortably, his hand moving instinctively toward his pocket before stopping. "The last time you handled one of my blades, you ended up bleeding all over the inn."
"That was an accident." I held his gaze steadily. "I promise I won't hurt myself—I just want to carve something small. Please, Mikael."
The war on his face was almost comical—protective instinct battling against his desire to give me what I wanted. Finally, with obvious reluctance, he reached into his coat and withdrew a small folding knife, placing it in my palm with exaggerated care.
"If you cut yourself again, I'm confiscating all sharp objects from your vicinity permanently," he warned. "I mean it, Wren."
"Noted." I pulled off my gloves and opened the medallion carefully, exposing the smooth inner surface.
The knife was sharp—of course it was, Mikael maintained his weapons with obsessive precision—and the silver yielded easily under the blade's edge.
I carved slowly, deliberately, feeling his eyes on me the entire time. My fingers grew numb from the cold, but I didn't stop. First an W, then an M, the letters intertwining in the small space like waves.
Our initials, bound together in silver that would outlast whatever came next.
I wish I could forget about Rowan and stay only his Wren forever.
When I finished, I held it up for his inspection. "There. Now it's ours."
Mikael took the medallion from my hands, studying the crude but legible carving with an expression I couldn't quite read. When he looked up at me, his eyes were bright with something that might have been tears.
"Ours," he repeated softly. "I like the sound of that."
He fastened the chain around my neck himself, his fingers brushing my cold skin as he secured the clasp beneath my scarf. The medallion settled against my chest, cool metal warming quickly against my heartbeat. His hands were cradling my face, thumbs brushing away snowflakes that had landed on my cheeks.
I wanted to freeze this moment, but Lilith's vision lurked behind my eyes. The medallion felt heavier now, weighted with promises I might not be able to keep.
Pros: staying means love, belonging, a life I never thought I could have.
Cons: staying means risking everyone I care about, becoming the weapon that destroys them.
The math was simple. The choice should have been obvious.
But as Mikael took my hand and we continued walking along the frozen waterfront, our carved initials resting against my heart and snow falling softly around us like a blessing, I found I couldn't make myself say the words that would end this.
Not yet. At least not today.