"I know you're there," he said. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the night like a blade.

  My heart seized. He'd known. All along, he'd known.

  "I'm sorry," I managed. The words felt inadequate. Pathetic. "I didn't mean to—"

  "You didn't mean to what?" He turned then, slowly, deliberately. His eyes found mine in the darkness, and I felt the weight of them like a physical force. "Follow me? Stare at me like you're trying to see through my skin? Like you're waiting for me to become someone else?"

  I couldn't speak. He was too close. Too real. The scent of him—clean snow and something wilder, something ancient—washed over me, and I was seven years old again, scrambling up a mountain to find a god.

  "Who are you?" he demanded. He took a step closer, then another. His eyes were dark, intense, searching. "And don't give me any bullshit. You were looking at me like you knew me. Like you've always known me."

  "My name is Giana," I whispered.

  "Giana." He tested the word, rolled it around his mouth like an unfamiliar wine. "That's not an answer."

  "It's the only one I have."

  He laughed—a short, bitter sound. "You expect me to believe that?"

  "I'm not a threat to you," I said. It was true and false in equal measure.

  "Then what are you?"

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The question hung between us, heavy with possibility. I could tell him. I could say the words I'd rehearsed a thousand times across a thousand nights. I'm the woman you've loved for longer than time. I'm the reason you were cursed. I'm the keeper of every memory you've lost, every life you've lived, every time you've died reaching for me.

  But I saw his face—the suspicion, the fear beneath the anger—and I knew he wasn't ready. He would never believe me. Not like this. Not standing by a river in a city that had forgotten magic existed.

  "You remind me of someone," I said softly. "Someone I lost. A long time ago."

  His expression flickered. For one impossible second, I saw something crack behind his eyes. Recognition? Memory? Or just the universal human ache of being seen?

  Then the shutters came down. His jaw tightened. His gaze hardened.

  "I don't know what game you're playing," he said flatly. "But I'm not interested. Stay away from me."

  He turned and walked away. His footsteps echoed on the paved path, each one a hammer blow to my chest.

  I should have let him go. I should have respected his boundaries, his fear, his completely reasonable response to a stranger who'd been stalking him.

  But I'd been letting him go for centuries.

  "Kaelen," I called.

  He stopped. Didn't turn.

  "That someone, you remind me of him," I said, My voice trembled, but I forced the words out with as much confidence as I could muster. "He had your eyes. Your walk. Your way of standing at the edge of things, like he was waiting for something he couldn't name." I paused, gathering every shred of courage I possessed. "He told me that I'd find him in every life. That I'd always find him. You may think it’s just words.. But…"

  He turned then. Slowly. His face was unreadable, but his eyes—his eyes were burning.

  "What are you saying?"

  I shook my head, a broken laugh escaping me. "I don't know how to explain something I don't fully understand myself. All I know is that I've been searching for you across centuries. Waiting for you through every lifetime. And when I saw you in that coffee shop, after all these years of hoping and praying and never giving up—I forgot how to breathe. And when you ran, I forgot how to exist."

  The silence stretched between us, fragile as spun glass. I watched him struggle—watched the war between logic and something deeper play out across his features.