Autumn was grasping that year.
It invaded all things—into the sharp sting of the wind, into the yellow trees beyond their windowpane, into the gentle manner sunlight fell across Elias's face when he slept by the fire with his sword across his knees, as if the past still whispered in his ear.
Charlotte had been observing him more recently. Not on purpose, she assured herself. But frequently. His presence had ever been gravity in her life. In this one, it was. weightless. Comfortable. Perilous in a new, quieter manner.
She torched the apples.
"They're ruined," she said dully, gazing at the charred tart on the windowsill. "This is what you get when you let your mind drift to stoic men with unnecessarily broad shoulders."
"I'm not stoic," came Elias's voice behind her.
She jumped. "You walk like a ghost."
"I am a ghost," he said, leaning on the doorway. "You've dragged me through enough lifetimes for it."
His shirt sleeves were rolled up. There was flour on his thumb. Her breath caught.
She turned back to the tart. "Still. It's ruined."
Elias stepped forward. "I'll eat it."
"You'll die."
"I already did. Twice."
She shouldn't have laughed, but she couldn't help it. And then he leaned over her, brushing her fingers with his as he snatched off a piece of crust. Biting into it without looking away.
She followed his mouth. Then his throat. Then flinched and looked at the ceiling.
"Well?" she grumbled.
He bent over her, speaking low in her ear. "Tastes like you."
Charlotte let out a squeak-dignified choke noise.
"Burnt?" she snapped.
"Sweet," Elias said, his face as serious as stone. But his eyes—those storm-gray eyes—were joking. And warm. Wickedly warm.
She took a step back, but there was nowhere to go.
The kitchen was tiny. And Elias was tall. And now he wasn't merely warm—he was heat. Steady. Near. Safe. Frustrating.
She caught herself blurting, "What are we doing?"
His face clouded over, the joking dissipating. "I don't know," he confessed. "I just know I don't want to lose it."
"Us?"
He nodded.
Charlotte stood at the counter, her hands shaking slightly, and she didn't even know why.
She had once been a princess. A tactician. A plotter. But Elias had always been her sole blind spot—her knight, even when she told herself he wasn't. And now he stood before her, in a hut that was filled with the scent of apples and pine, and he was gazing at her as if she were the one thing in this world he hadn't been brave enough to try for.
"I keep thinking," she breathed, "if I allow myself to want this—want you—the world will take it away again."
He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and turned her palm up. His thumb followed the soft scar there—the one she earned when she saved Finn from a dropped pot the week they first moved in.
"You keep living," he said. "Even when you're taken. Even when the world forgets. So let me be the one thing that remains."
She gazed up.
And there it was—the heat. The ache. The stillness before the kiss.
But neither of them budged.
Not yet.
Instead, Elias leaned forward just far enough that their foreheads touched. "I'm patient, Lottie," he whispered. "Even across lifetimes."
Charlotte, gasping, whispered, "I hate it when you call me that."
"You love it."
She shut her eyes.
And perhaps—perhaps she did.