The next afternoon, Minerva, Delia, Lydia, Rita, Barbara, and Amalie were all helping me get ready, when Marlo came bursting into the room. It's a good thing Rita had helped me hoist the bodice of my dress up and zipped the back, otherwise my poor nephew would've gotten a eye-full of my cleavage.

"AUNTIE (Y/N)! I-"

"Marlo!" his mother chided. "You know not to come in without knocking, first!"

"Sorry, Mom, but I really need to talk to Auntie (Y/N)," he blurted, trying to get away from Amalie, who was now fussing over his hair and tux.

"What's up, kiddo?" I asked as Rita puffed out the skirt on my dress.

"Okay, so, based on what you told me about the mage who cursed you, I found a way to break the curse."

Every one of us immediately stopped what we were doing and stared at him. You could hear a pen drop, it got so quiet.

"What?" I said, blinking in disbelief.

My nephew got out his phone and pulled up a website. He turned the screen toward me, and I slowly, with slightly shaking hands, took the phone from him.

"Based on your parents' description and information about the mage that you relayed to me, Fiora and I were able to figure out which mage it was. Once we did that, we researched the myths based around him and found that there was a way to break his immortality curse."

I looked up at him, mouth slightly agape and my mind still slow and sluggish from shock and disbelief.

"The way the curse is broken is if the victim is joined to another cursed individual in holy matrimony.

"Basically, after the wedding, both you and Beej will be curse-free."

I was still staring at him when the overwhelmed, happy tears came. "Are you sure about this, Marlo?" I asked him, hesitant to get my hopes up.

He grinned and nodded.

I stepped down off of the raised platform that Adam had made for me, and hugged the 12-year-old close, squeezing my eyes shut. "What would I do without you twins?"

He hugged me back. "I dunno, have a mental breakdown?"

I chuckled and let him go. "Well, I would certainly have more of them."

"Alright, now go let Riley finish gemming that jacket," Amalie told her son, ushering him out of the room.

Barbara was working on putting my hair into a complicated up-do. She made eye contact with me in the mirror and smiled.

"Excited?"

I smiled and nodded. "Especially now that I know that I won't be cursed anymore!"

Worries also started to crowd in on my mind, but I pushed them away, refusing to dwell on them. I pushed them into the outer recesses of my mind, not giving in to doubt b

"We're all so happy for you," Minerva said, laying a hand on my shoulder.

I placed a hand on top of hers and smiled back at her.

"I can't begin to express how thankful I am for each and every one of you. You've all been so kind and supportive of me. You've given me a home when I didn't have one, and that means the world to me."

"Aw, of course, (Y/N)," Barbara cooed, approaching me and wrapping me up in a motherly hug. The rest quickly joined, and I found the doubt shriveled up and died when exposed to the love from my friends.

No, not my friends.

My family.

~

It was just Amalie and me in the room when they came.

The relatives I had invited were the "best" out of the bunch, but that wasn't saying much. They were all stuck-up, snobby, entitled, and judgy.

The cover story that Amalie, Francesco, and I had come up with was that I was Amalie's younger sister that had moved to America. They bought it, but that by no means meant that they approved of my moving out of Italy.

The two women that let themselves in were Aunt Rosa and Mama Rumalda. Aunt Rosa was Amalie's aunt, and Mama Rumalda was her great-grandmother.

"Well, well. Seems the degenerate has finally decided to settle down," Mama Rumalda said, sneering down her crooked nose at my gown.

I forced myself to simply smile. I was not about to let this rude, old lady ruin the happiest day of my life. "That's right!" was all I said in response.

"Your fiancé is horrendously American," came Aunt Rosa's snide remark.

"Oh, I know. I suppose it could be much worse, though. At least he knows the mother tongue," was Mama Rumalda's reply.

I cocked my head to the side. "Lawrence spoke to you in Italian?"

"Well, more or less," Mama Rumalda said to me. "He and Fabian are downstairs in a shouting match."

"What? Why?"

"Fabian simply commented on your fiancé in our language-"

"More like insulted him, probably," Amalie huffed under her breath. I subtly nodded in agreement with her.

"-and your fiancé replied with a horrible insult in Italian," Aunt Rosa finished, frowning at the idea that a foreigner would be able to hear all their insults.

"That's just Lawrence. He'll calm down in a little bit," I told her indifferently.

"Well, I should hope so," replied Mama Rumalda. "His manners are simply atrocious."

"Look, Mama Rumalda, perhaps you and Aunt Rosa could go wait with the others?" piped up Amalie politely. "I really need to finish up with (Y/N)'s makeup."

Mama Rumalda huffed and Aunt Rosa crossed her arms, but the two left the room, shutting the door behind them and retreating noisily down the stairs.

I let out a relieved breath that I hadn't realized I'd been holding. I then turned to Amalie.

"So, is there something wrong with my makeup?"

"Oh, no," she replied, sitting down again. "I just needed an excuse to get them out of here."

"Well, I'm glad you came up with one. Because I don't think I could have handled any more of Mama Rumalda's incessant squawking," I replied, massaging my forehead.

Amalie laughed quietly. "Oh, I know. They both can go on and on."

We both chuckled before hearing a knock on the door. Amalie stood up to get it.

"Oh, Barbara! Um... who is, um... this?"

I tried to peer around Amalie, but couldn't from where I was sitting.

"Betelgeuse was adamant that she talk to (Y/N) before the ceremony."

I cocked my head to the side, my brow furrowing in confusion.

"Well, alright... Um, come in."

Barbara entered, followed by another person, who I assumed was from the Netherworld.

She had wavy, strawberry-blonde hair that was tucked up into a slightly messy bun. She didn't have a nose, her skin was a light pink color, and she looked like she had ink splotches all over her body. She was wearing an early 1800's style gown and a large, matching hat. I noticed there was a scar around her neck; I presumed she had been hung when she died, because Betelgeuse had a similar, faded scar. Something about her was extremely familiar, for some reason.

The woman smiled at me.

"You don't recognize me, do you?"

I grinned slightly in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I don't."

"It's me, Melody. I was your roommate at Juilliard back in the early years of the 1800's."

I gasped as my brain registered what she was saying. I covered my mouth with my hand for a moment, drawing it swag again to whisper, "Melody?"

She nodded, tears coming to her eyes. My own eyes were quickly spilling over with tears as I jumped up and wrapped her in a tight hug. "I missed you so much," she whispered.

I pulled away to look at her. "I can't believe you're actually here!" I gushed, beaming.

"Well, your fiancé pulled some strings," she replied, grinning back at me.

I nodded. "Yeah, he told me he was going to invite people from the Netherworld, but I never thought I'd be reunited with you!"

She smiled. "Me neither. I work for his mom, you know. I helped her make arrangements for her trip to the capitol, and the moment she left, Betelgeuse popped in.

"We've grown closer over the years, and I try to cover for him whenever his mom's around. But anyway, he popped in and threw an envelope on my desk and was just like, 'Oh, by the way, you should come to my wedding,' and was on his way out, but you better believe I dragged his butt back into that office to demand an explanation." She chuckled, and so did I. "I couldn't believe it once he told me who it was."

I smiled at her. "Well, I'm so glad you came. It means a lot that you would risk getting into hot water with Juno to come to our wedding."

Melody grasped my hands in both of her own. "I wouldn't miss it for the world, or the Netherworld."