The new millennium. Din at a desk surrounded by papers, grading by lamplight. The brooch sitting on the desk like a paperweight, a talisman, a reminder. His fingers brushing over it absently as he worked.
More moments, flowing faster now. The brooch traveling through decades in pockets, drawers, and safes. Always kept, never forgotten.
The visions faded, leaving Fenella gasping as if she'd been holding her breath. Her cheeks were wet.
When had she started crying?
But there was more. Deeper memories. Older.
The silver itself held memories, ancient and fragmentary. Images so faint she could barely grasp them—hands shaping metal with tools she didn't recognize. A woman's face, beautiful and strange, framed by starlight. Love and loss and time beyond measure.
Those visions slipped away like water through her fingers, too old and alien to hold. But Din's memories remained, warm and present and achingly real.
Fenella opened her eyes, still clutching the brooch. Her chest felt too full, like her ribs might crack from the pressure of emotion inside her.
Fifty years. He'd loved her without hope, without reason, without even knowing if she lived.
She thought of all the women who must have passed through his life in those years. Beautiful, available, uncomplicated women,but he couldn't allow himself to love any of them because they were human, their lives fleeting in the span of his endless immortality. So, he'd kept the brooch and kept loving a ghost who by all reason should have been dead.
The stirring in her chest was familiar now, no longer frightening but still overwhelming.
Love.
She loved Din.
But saying it, acknowledging it, and making it real was terrifying.
What was stopping her?
Fear, obviously. Fear that things would sour like they had before. Fear that love was just another trap, another cage, another thing that would eventually be used against her.
Maybe she needed to test him. Poke at him, push his buttons, see how much he was willing to take. See if his patience had limits, if his love came with conditions.
The thought made her uncomfortable. It felt manipulative, childish. But the scared part of her, the part that had kept her alive for fifty years, whispered that tests were necessary.
Better to know now than later.
Better to find the breaking point before she got in too deep.
Except she was already in too deep, wasn't she?
The way her heart lifted when she saw him, the way her body fit against his like coming home, the way even thinking about pushing him away made her chest ache—all of it pointed to atruth she'd been dancing around since he'd told her that he loved her.
Din loved her, and she loved him back, and it should be simple, but simple had never been her style.
