“On this All Hallow’s Eve, I can’t think of a more fitting reason to gather together than to join two of our own in marriage.”

The words reverberated over my skin and sunk deep into my flesh. Matthias’s eyes held my own, reminding me over and over again of all the reasons why I was standing where I was, swathed in a gorgeous vintage wedding gown of lace and satin.

In the past, when I’d looked through bridal magazines or attended other weddings, it seemed that it was some kind of unattainable fairy tale. I’d known that running off and getting married wasn’t going to be possible. There was a part of my heart that shut off the hope for it, for fear of being brutally disappointed.

I’d never imagined standing at the alter and finding myself looking up into the face of a man and feeling like he’d been standing there waiting for me all this time.

The faces I’d missed the most since that April night when I’d slipped away from Beechwood Manor into the darkness were smiling at us from the front row: Holly, Evangeline, Lucy, Posy and her husband Earl, and even Adam.

Baron and Baroness Vaughn were also seated in the front row. Athena was sniffling into a white handkerchief and—miraculously—dateless, for the occasion. Of course, that was probably because I’d made it a condition of her invitation that she show up alone and not start a fight with my father.

After the events of the tournament, including Melanie’s second betrayal, came to light, my father pulled me into his office and told me that he would honor his end of the bargain. He would not be holding another tournament, pulling a name from a hat, or forcing me to go vampire speed dating. He did, however, expect me to take up my role as Lady Vaughn. After that, he’d pulled an elegant book from the top drawer of his shelf and opened it for me. The inside pages showed a map of all the territories, including the ones under my father’s control as the Baron. He drew a line with his fingertip around a significant chunk of them and then met my gaze.

“These are your territories now, Lacey,” he’d said.

I’d wanted to argue, to refuse the gift, but stopped myself. My father giving those territories to me was more than him gifting me parcels of land. He was recognizing me as a governing power. I would effectively rule over those territories and now had a seat at the Council for the East. My voice would not only be heard, but based on the amount of land, I would have a majority vote.

My father was essentially handing over the reins of the East, without abdicating his official title.

It was a massive responsibility and not one I’d expected. But the unspoken meaning behind the gesture was impossible to ignore.

He trusted me.

There would be changes. It would take work and skill to convince the other nobles to trust me too, but I would find a way, and I wouldn’t stop fighting until the work was done.

But none of that mattered today.

All I cared about was that at the end of the day, I would be in Matthias’s arms, and I would never have to leave them.

The music swelled and crested as Matthias leaned in for the kiss that would seal us to one another from that moment forward. He stopped short, his hand cupping my face as he whispered, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

We kissed and the sliver of time suspended, cataloguing itself in our eternal memories. Cheers from the audience brought our toes back to the ground and we grinned at each other.

“I do have one regret,” I said, smiling up at him.

He lifted a brow. “Oh?”

“I kind of hate that I’m making my parents so happy.”

Matthias flashed a rueful grin and brushed back one of the curls framing my face. “I'm sure it won’t take you long to think up something to rile them up again.”

“Here’s hoping,” I said, my giggle fading as his lips found mine again.

And just like that, on a wintery Hallow’s Eve, my fairy tale began.

* * *

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

Thank you for reading Once Upon a Hallow’s Eve. I truly hope you enjoyed Lacey’s love story. For those of you who’ve followed along through all of my Beechwood Harbor books, I hope her adventure lived up to your expectations. I know you’ve been waiting a while for this one!

When I started writing the Beechwood Harbor Magic Mysteries, I had a feeling there was more to Lacey than met the eye, but it took me several books for it to become clear. It started to come together in Witch Slapped, the third book and then even more so in Lucky Witch, book five.

There were a lot of challenges in the writing process of this one. When I started writing, I originally wrote alternating chapters, one for Lacey then the next from Matthias’s point of view. This was something I’ve never done before in my books and I enjoyed getting to dive deeper into the two main characters, but somewhere around the halfway mark, it was clear who the real star of the story was (why I didn’t see this coming, I’ll never know) and I had to scrap everything and start at the beginning to readjust the storytelling lens.

That being said, I would love to share those early Matthias scenes and plan to polish and release those as exclusive bonuses to my reader’s group. If you already get my bi-weekly newsletters, you don’t have to do anything. You’ll automatically get them as soon as they are ready. If you’d like to join my group, you can easily do that at my website:

Until next time,

Danielle Garrett