Page 54 of Bear Naked Truth
It meant risking it.
Everything.
It meant not hiding.
It meantchoosingDorian—not quietly, not tentatively—but with her whole heart.
The Hollow Man didn’t answer. He didn’t have to because in her chest, Autumn already knew the magic wasn’t about ghosts. It was about grief.
Theirs.
And hers.
She sat there for what felt like hours. Long enough for the light to shift gold. Long enough for the birds to fall silent again.
Then she pulled the journal from her satchel and opened to the last page. There was still space left.
A line waiting.
She pulled the piece of anchoring chalk from her coat pocket. Salt-charged. Scry-bound. Her hand shook.
She bent low and wrote:
This love will not be hidden. This love will not be silenced. I choose to speak it, so it will not be stolen.
The chalk flared faintly against the paper. Not bright, but warm. Like coals that hadn’t gone out after all.
A low hum vibrated through the circle beneath her knees. The vines at the edge lifted, then lay still. From somewhere unseen, a breath moved through the woods. A sigh.
Let go.
She didn’t speak. She just listened. And when it was done, she closed the book, stood slowly, and looked toward the path that would lead her back to the inn.
Not freed. Not finished.
But no longer afraid to begin.
28
DORIAN
Dorian’s first clue was how quiet the inn was.
No hum from the kitchen, no distant rustle of paper from the library, no soft shuffling footsteps that had, without him noticing, become the rhythm of his days. Autumn’s rhythm. Her presence had bled into every inch of Briar Hollow like sunlight catching in old glass, subtle but impossible to miss once you knew what it looked like.
Now?
It was just silence.
He found her in the sitting room, standing by the window with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. She hadn’t heard him come in. Her shoulders were too stiff. Guarded. Like she was holding herself upright by sheer will and a threadbare sense of resolve.
His gut twisted.
“How’d the expedition go yesterday?”
“Fine,” was all she offered.
“You okay?” he asked softly, voice breaking the stillness but not the tension.
