She stopped. Her hands were trembling.
Gareth rose from his chair. He moved slowly, deliberately, giving her time to retreat if she wished. She didn’t. She stood rooted to the floor, watching him approach with the expression of a woman awaiting judgment.
He stopped an arm’s length away. Close enough to see the rapid flutter of her pulse at her throat, the shine of unshed tears in her eyes. Close enough to see she was terrified—and not of him.
You are not from here,he signed.
It wasn’t a question.
Elodie’s breath came out in a shuddering rush. “No.”
Not from England.
“No. Yes. It’s—it’s complicated.”
Then explain.His hands moved with quiet precision.I will listen.
She laughed—a wild, slightly unhinged sound. “You’ll think I’m mad. Completely barking. Utterly mental. I think I’m mental, and I’m the one living it.”
Gareth waited. Patience was a weapon he’d learned to wield in three years of silence. He could outwait armies. He could certainly outwait one woman.
“Right.” She pressed her palms flat against her skirts, visibly gathering herself. “Right. Okay. Here’s the thing.” A deep breath. “I’m not from far away. I’m from—” Another breath. “The future. Eight hundred and thirty-three years in the future, to be exact. I’m from the year 2025, and I fell through time during a storm, and I know how absolutely insane that sounds, believe me, I’ve had weeks to think about how insane it sounds, but it’s the truth.”
The words hung in the air between them.
Gareth blinked.
“See?” Her voice pitched higher, faster. “This is why I didn’t tell you. This is why I’ve been letting everyone think I’m some faerie creature or a madwoman or whatever explanation makes them comfortable, because the truth is so much stranger than any of those things. I’m an archaeologist—that means I study old things, old buildings and artifacts and bones—and I was at a party, a fancy dress party, and there was this priceless ancient opal necklace, and a storm, and I fell and skinned my knee, lightning actually hit me, and then I was here. In 1192. In bleeding medieval England.”
She was properly crying now, tears streaking down her cheeks, her words tumbling over each other in a flood she couldn’t seem to stop.
“And the worst part—the absolutely worst part—is that I don’t know how to get back. The necklace vanished when I arrived, and I don’t know if the magic works both ways, and I might be stuck here forever, and I’ve been trying so hard not to think about that because if I think about it too much I’ll completely lose the plot. My flat. My job—well, my former job, they probably think I’ve gone missing. My mum’s going to be so worried. She always said I’d wander into trouble one day, and now I’ve literally wandered into another time?—”
Gareth reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder.
She stopped. Stared up at him, her face blotched and wet, her carefully maintained composure shattered into a thousand pieces.
He didn’t know what to say. Couldn’t have said it even if he did. But the warmth of his palm seemed to steady her, and after a moment she drew a ragged breath.
“You don’t believe me,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t believe me. It sounds like the ravings of a madwoman. Holy cannoli, itsounds insane even to my own ears, and I’m the one who lived through it.”
Gareth considered her words. More than eight hundred years. A world so far removed from his own that he couldn’t fathom it. She spoke of studying old things, as if his world—his castles and his king and his whole existence—was nothing but dust and bones and curiosities to be examined by scholars.
And yet.
And yet something in her words rang true. The odd phrases she used without thinking. The knowledge she possessed about matters no woman of his time should know. The way she looked at everything—the castle, the servants, the very stones beneath her feet—with a wonder that spoke of seeing miracles where he saw only ordinary life.
That is why you know so much about my world,he signed finally.You have studied it.
“Yes.” Her voice was hoarse. “I’ve spent my whole life studying medieval England. It’s my specialty—was my specialty. I wrote papers about it. Taught classes. And now I’m living in it, and it’s nothing like the books said it would be, because books can’t capture the smell of rushes or the weight of wool or the way firelight looks dancing on stone walls. They can’t capture—” She gestured helplessly at him. “They can’t capture people. Real people who breathe and hurt and hope and fear. You’re not supposed to be real. None of this is supposed to be real.”
Gareth absorbed this. The woman before him had studied his time the way monks studied scripture—from a distance, with reverence and detachment. And then she’d tumbled into the midst of it, all her careful knowledge rendered useless by the simple, chaotic fact of living.
He understood something of that. The difference between knowing and experiencing. The way preparations could shatter against the rock of reality.
When you arrived,he signed.You were afraid.
“Terrified.”
