Page 52 of Hell and Halos

Because I'm done. Really fuckin' done.

It's over now.

I won.

EPILOGUE

Fall speeds by the way things always do when everything's good. Like a blur. Like the devil wants to rush ya through the good parts.

But I don't allow it.

Not this year, which, despite havin' started with resignation—and, I am embarrassed to say, acceptance that my life wasn't gonna turn out the way I imagined it would—has turned into the defining year of my life.

It's bigger than the year I met Legion. Bigger than the year we consummated. Bigger than all the equestrian success at college, bigger than the millions of followers, bigger than all of it put together.

So no, devil, you may not rush me through the good parts.

Not this year. Not the year when Legion got out of prison, and came back to me, and claimed me, and fought for me.

Not this year.

I will take my good time, thank you.

I slowed it all down startin' in late November when Colt, Destiny, and Marigold returned from Jackson for Thanksgiving. Not for good, not yet, but plans were made.

Sleeping arrangements were discussed.

Legion and I had been sleepin' in Eleanor's old suite since the night I killed Marcus in the vault. But I wanted to entice Destiny, so I promised it to her.

Rightfully, as the heir, it is mine.

But I handed the inheritance over as well. To Marigold, not to Destiny. The estate passes through the Ashby women. And one day, Marigold will be the last in line.

Why hold on to something I never wanted?

It will be hers, it should be hers, it is now hers.

And, because Cash took care of all the debts that have been passed down, generation after generation, ever since a desperate woman allowed herself to be bought and sold to the local Montana ranchers a hundred and fifty years ago, the curse is gone now too.

Marigold will not have to marry anyone other than the man she loves once it is time.

I made the lawyers spell that out specifically.

Even though my bedroom comes with a door to a place where I killed a man, I feel nothing about that. It's justice, not a crime, to deliver a punishment to an evil man when that's the only option you've got left.

So Legion and I returned to our room and went down to the archive together so it wouldn't be lurking there in back of the closet like a threat.

There was nothin' left of the struggle I had with Marcus. Not a single trace. No blood on the old rug that had been sittin' on that floor for as long as I'd been alive. No scuff marks on the concrete where I'd scrambled backward. No splatter on the stone wall beside the safe.

No rug at all, actually.

It was burned in the toaster with the body, and Cash had hardwood floors put in within the week. Wide-plank reclaimed oak, sealed and stained to match the rest of the house, like the room had always looked that way. Like nothing had ever happened thirty feet below my bedroom. Like the archive was just an archive, and the safe was just a safe, and the elevator in the back of my closet was just an old architectural curiosity from a bygone era.

Cash is thorough like that. Methodical. He doesn't clean up messes so much as he redesigns the room around where the mess used to be, and by the time he's done, you'd swear on your mother's grave that the mess never existed in the first place.

I stood on those new floors the day they were finished, barefoot, and I felt the warmth of the wood under my feet and I thought, That's where it happened, Savannah. Right there.

And then I thought, Good.