The square empties as the sun sinks behind the western ridge. Vendors pack their stalls. Musicians carry instruments toward the tavern where pre-festival celebrations have already started, voices and laughter spilling into the cooling air. Vi appears briefly at the forge entrance, eyebrows raised when she sees Khaivor still beside me at the workbench.
"You're not coming to the tavern?" she asks.
"I have work to finish."
Her gaze slides between us with the particular knowing quality I've learned to ignore. "Right. Work." She grins. "Don't work too hard, Rose."
The door closes behind her.
Silence settles over the forge like snowfall. Just the distant sound of celebration carrying across the water, the low crackle of banked coals, the faint chime of silver rings in Khaivor's hair when he moves.
We're alone.
The realization lands differently than it should. My pulse does something unhelpful.
"You don't have to stay," I say, arranging tools that don't need arranging. "The tavern sounds like?—"
"I would rather be here."
The words are quiet. Certain. They settle into my chest with surprising weight.
I look up. He's watching me with that focused attention that makes the rest of the world feel secondary. Black-violet eyes catching forge light, reflecting it back in shades I don't have names for.
"Why?" I ask.
"You know why."
"I want to hear you say it."
Something shifts in his expression. Not quite a smile. Something more vulnerable than that.
"I tried not to return this year," he says. "I told myself I would stay in Kantor through autumn. That collecting your bells had become a compulsion rather than necessity. That I was feeding an attachment that served no purpose except prolonging my own isolation."
"What changed your mind?"
"Nothing. I simply couldn't stay away." He moves closer, stopping just beyond arm's reach. "I tried for years, Roseth. Every autumn I would convince myself not to come. Then festival season would arrive and I would find myself on the northern road regardless. Walking toward Bellmere. Toward your stall. Toward you."
My breath catches. "Toward me?"
"It stopped being about the bells years ago." His voice drops lower. "I kept returning because leaving meant not seeing you for another year. Not hearing your voice. Not watching you work with that particular focus you have when you're listening to metal. I told myself it was the bells. I lied."
The forge feels smaller suddenly. Warmer. The air between us charged with something I don't know how to name.
"You never spoke to me," I mention.
"I didn't trust myself to. I already explained that." He replies swiftly. “I thought speaking to you would make leaving impossible."
The confession hangs between us. I should step back. Create distance. Instead I move closer, closing the gap he's maintaining so carefully.
"Maybe," I say quietly, "you should stop trying to leave."
His jaw tightens. "Roseth?—"
"You treat yourself like something dangerous. Like something that needs to be controlled constantly or terrible things will happen." I reach up, fingers brushing the edge of his collar where the fabric parts. His pulse jumps beneath my touch. "What if you're not dangerous? What if you're just afraid?"
"I have reasons to be."
"Of what? Your magic? Your past?" I hold his gaze. "Or of wanting something for yourself?"
