The mattress bowed beneath me, as if it had forgotten how to bear weight. He exhaled hard, the sound of a man emptying himself of resistance. With a grunt, he sank to the floor, using his coat as a pillow and drawing a second threadbare blanket from under the bed. Silence took hold, broken only by the wind’s rattling groan down the cold chimney.
“You’re not here to seduce me, are you?” he asked after a beat, voice dry with humor.
My cheeks warmed instantly. “Of course not. The spell is the only reason I would ever find myself in your?—”
“Bedchamber?” he offered.
If one could call it that. A room worn thin by solitude, made no softer by the company now occupying it.
“I have no interest in seducing you,” I declared, in a tone I hoped passed for resolute. “Being tied in service to someone under magical compulsion is hardly…romantic.”
A smirk tugged at his lips. “I assure you, being tied up can be very romantic under the right circumstances.”
“Your education and mine differ.” I was certain the color in my face rivaled burning coals. “No,” I said firmly and flustered. “There shall be no seduction.”
It was easier to pretend this was simply awkward than toadmit how long it had been since anyone had cared where I slept or with whom I shared a bed.
Mav stretched his arms over his head. “Well...people are going to talk. I'm already enough of an embarrassment. Seeing a woman come up to my room is going to add kindling to the fire of my damaged reputation.”
“Your reputation is no concern of mine,” I murmured. “I hold little regard for the opinions of others. They shall all be gone in another century.”
The truth settled between us with the weight of stone. Yet even as the words left my lips, something within me curled inward. For the lives we had encountered would not remain. Not the drunkard at the bar. Not Wren. Not Mav. All of them would be dust and silence, no more than a name etched in stone, or else forgotten entirely. And I would wake again—unchanged and alone.
I stared at the ceiling and let the ache of it wind around me. What others said was of little consequence, but it mattered that they could speak at all. That they lived and laughed, quarreled and drank terrible ale, and fretted over their reputations. The beautiful smallness of their lives filled me with a sad sort of envy. What must it be like to not only be remembered but truly seen? To have one’s favorite color, one’s quietest longing, held gently in another’s heart—as something worth keeping. The simplicity of being known—even briefly—was a gift to which I had no claim.
Mav shifted on the floor again, the thin blanket rustling. “You’re going to sleep in that thing?”
I exhaled through my nose. “It is all I have.”
A pause.
“I’ve got a few spare tunics. They’re clean. Too large, probably, but better than sleeping in a corset.”
Lowering my gaze to the gown, I surveyed the frayed hems, the thinning silver embroidery, the worn places where memoryclung tighter than the weave. It had once been ceremonial. Now it was merely…familiar.
“Your generosity is noted,” I assured, “but I am content to keep it on.”
He chose not to press the matter further. Instead, he gave a grunt of acknowledgment, neither assent nor disagreement, before settling once more. The bed creaked beneath me, too soft in some places, unyielding in others. Regardless, it was a kindness. I had slept on stone altars, bare earth, and marble floors. By comparison, this neared indulgence.
Aches wracked my body, though not in any manner that could be mended. It was the ache of time mingled with the futility of waking again. My eyes drift shut. Sleep pressed at the corners of my mind, but I resisted. Perhaps the deepest indignity of this spell was that I still required sleep, as though a century of stillness had not sufficed. As though my bones had not already forgotten motion, or my lungs the shape of breath. Each time I surrendered to slumber, I feared I would wake to find another century gone. I feared that this, his voice, the thread between us, the fragile warmth of presence, would fade to memory before I ever truly held it.
Mav had fallen quiet, but I could still make out the gentle cadence of his breath. It struck me then, as it always did, how swiftly the unfamiliar could take root. How easily another soul’s presence could fill the hollows of uncertainty.
At dawn, I would ask him what he wanted most and find a way to make a quest of it. For a fortnight, I would dwell in this narrow space between duty and remembrance—tethered to a man I barely knew, in a world destined to forget me.
3
MAV
Ididn’t know how she fell asleep in that dress. It belonged to someone with a crown and a court, not a woman curled up on a sad excuse for a bed in a room with more splinters than comfort. The whole of it appeared stitched from memory, burdened by a time before war and ruin.
I’d have torn the thing off in five minutes if I’d been required to wear it. It looked designed to strangle someone politely. I imagined all those seams, layers, and laces soaked through with rain must be terribly uncomfortable. And yet, she lay still, breath even, lashes resting soft against her pale cheeks as if unbothered by their gripping touch. As though the years hadn’t touched her either.
Which, apparently, they hadn’t.
Three hundred years.
Saints.
