The dark night breeze skitters down my spine, warning of the coming winter. Winters in the North appear later in the year and last for at least five months. I’ve always feared the winter, and in hindisight, it's premonitory, because in my first life, I die in the winter.

In that life, after I was banished from the village for treason, I barely made it a yard out. I was weak from starvation, my body riddled with pain from the torture I was forced to endure in the King's dungeon.

So, I gave up.

I simply lay there in the icy field as the cold crept over my bones and my lungs turned to ice.

In my second life, I ran away before I could get banished, but I still had to make the journey in the winter. I had a coat and was slightly more prepared, so I made it out much farther, going as far as I could. After my meager supplies ran out, I ate raw animals to survive and I once fought with a vulture over the corpse of a rat.

But I still eventually sunk into despair. I was still a long way from the nearest village, and I wasn't even sure they would give me asylum.

I gave up once more, but luckily I didn't die then. On my third day of starvation, I was rescued by a traveling caravan.

In my second life, I died later in the summer.

My fear of winter persists though, because there's nothing quite like starving and freezing to death.

Crawling on raw knees, over cold so sharp it felt like a knife's edge. My stomach hollowed and leaden at the same time, my bones brittle and weak. The infernal pain formed mirages in front of me, of the Prince's regretful look as his father banished me permanently from the North for my crimes.

And finally, when I couldn’t move anymore, I could only lay down and succumb to it. In my first life, I learned that freezing to death was a slow process, something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. It's just constant unending pain, reaching for the bliss of nothingness while watching a dark, large beast waiting in the distance.

I wonder if that too was my imagination.

I wonder if the beast eventually ate my corpse.

I wonder if I had a corpse, if my body was left there while my soul traveled back in time.

There are a lot of things I don't understand about this power of mine, the time traveling. A lot of it feels random, especially given that I respawn at different pivotal moments in time.

But when I return, it's always back to some point in the original timeline, my first life, and never to the second or third life.

I can't help but think it's because I failed the achieve what I was supposed to in my second and third life, that I was missing something vital. The reason for my rebirth. And I would keep reliving this life, until i got it right.

No you won't, comes the indescribable voice in my head. This is your last chance.

I swallow. Even with that foreboding statement the questions I have continue. Why me? Why now? Loss aches in my chest. I wish I could have respawned just a month earlier in my third life. That would have changed everything. I could have saved them, my friends in Venetia.

Instead, they perished with me.

Or rather, without me because here I am now, for reasons I still don't understand.

Never mind that. I shake my head, shaking the morose thoughts off. You have something to do. And you need to get moving if you want to make it to your destination on time.

It's why despite the chill in the atmosphere and my lack of appropriate clothing, I continue down the dark cobbled stones of the winding pathway that leads back to the village square. The streets are empty, and shops shuttered closed. It's so quiet that not even a bird can be heard.

Most people in the North fear the dark and nighttime especially. Night is when creatures emerge from the Dark Forest seeking lost souls to lure back.

The only people out right now are desperate fools like me, and men who fear nothing.

I'm on my way to meet the latter right now.

I duck behind the thicket of shrubs, partially shielding a crooked pathway leading down a hill to a hut. Carved on top of the stone building are the words Hovel's Pub. The dim lantern flickers in their window and a mean-faced man stands at the entrance, not so much protecting the people inside but protecting those outside from the miscreants within. A lot of terrible things happen at Hovel's pub, and it's nowhere for a seventeen-year-old girl, almost eighteen-year-old woman, to be at night.

Yet here I am.

I approach the door and the guard holds out one meaty hand, his disapproving gaze flickering to me.

“Leave.”

I glance up at him and reply in a bored tone. “I wish I could. Unfortunately, leaving won't get me paid.”

His eyebrows furrow over his eyes. “You’re a performer?”

“New,” I respond. “My name is Adria Elvswick. I’m told I’m to sing to the heathens this night.”

He doesn't look like he completely buys my story but I keep going. “If you would but summon your employer, Mouse, I’m sure he would verify my identity.”

The guard's gaze hardens, but I don't flinch.

I already have a plan in mind, in case he calls my bluff and does contact Mouse but I know he won't. Mouse, the owner of Hovel, is notoriously ill-tempered especially when interrupted during his trysts. And that's probably precisely where he is right now.

In my first life, I visited this same bar on this day and told the same lie. It worked and I got in.

Of course, at the time, I came here out of heartbreak and a stupid foolhardy plan to drink my life away. And perhaps I thought maybe that if news reached the prince that I was in danger at Hovel's then maybe he would come find me. He would throw away this entire farce with Genya and finally claim me as his one true love, as Princes often did in the stories.

Oh, what a stupid girl I was.

Anyway, hopefully, it will work again.

“You look too young to be here,” the man says.

I smile tightly. “Is that not precisely why I was hired?”

The guard grimaces. I think I see something resembling pity cross his features. With a reluctant sigh, he withdraws his hand and gestures me in without making any other eye contact.

Suddenly, I remember him from my first life too.

When things got too hectic and the men had tried to descend on me like rabid dogs, it was he, and not the Prince, who got me out of Hovel. He’d fought through them, grabbed my hand and thrown me out, told me never to come back.

“I have a sister your age,” he said then. “And if she ever did something as foolhardy as you just did, I would have given her a beating.”

At the time, adrenaline prevented me from thanking him. I was still reeling from what nearly happened to me. I was also incredibly self-absorbed now that I think about it, preoccupied with only my own problems and unable to see how I caused problems for others.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

So now, I finally record his features in my mind, noting the reluctance in his eyes. I hesitate at the door now and then turn around. “What’s your name?”

He frowns. “Is that relevant?”

“I’m just curious.”

He glances around. “They call me Stone.”

I nod. “Thank you, Stone.” I’ll remember this.

I enter the dark room, that is packed with male bodies, stinking of sweat and desperate hunger. All the men are quite entranced by a modern dancer, clad only in swathes of soft fabric, weaving her body seductively and daring each person to reach out and touch. As she dances onto the edge of the stage, one portly man obliges and tries to grab her but she's quick enough to evade him.

I squeeze my way toward a side door near the entrance, ascending up a slightly inclined dark hallway. Soon I get to the line of the barely awake women with eyes hung low over their lids, and bodies marked with evidence of an unwanted embrace. One of them starts giggling maniacally as a tiny herb touches her tongue.

I head to the front of the line, where a bored slender man leans against the wall. His eyes barely flicker to me and I start explaining,

“Mouse asked me to come here and try out my chances today."

His eyes run down my body. I remove my cloak so he could see my figure clad in a night-dress. It's not much but it's the nicest thing I own. Most importantly, it's the most revealing.

Appreciation enters his gaze, as revulsion echoes through me. I hate the look in his eyes but today I needed to use that to my advantage.

He scans me for only a few minutes before he nods to this stage. “You'll go after her.”

I blink surprised. I didn't think I would be put on so fast, but the woman at the front of the line doesn't seem to mind. She shrugs and takes a step back to allow me to take her place. Then again, I'm sure she isn't in any hurry to face the crowd tonight.

Obscured by the curtain, I observe the crowd get louder and more hectic as the teasing dance continues. I hear the dancer scream a little as they grab her pulling into the throng, and it's a while before she can fight her way back to stage. She executes a bow to their applause, but when she returns behind the curtains she has a vacant look in her eyes and a bruise on her chest.

Sympathy fills me but I say nothing as she walks past me.

"You're up," says the slender man.

I glance at him, swallow and then walk forward through the curtains.

It's far more intimidating than I thought it would be. There are a lot of them, dozens. Although the darkness conceals most of their expressions, I can still feel the oppressive presence of their gazes. Occasionally the dim lights flicker over the crowd and the monsters suddenly become real, expressions ranging from boredom to hunger.

No, not monsters, I remind myself. They are simply men.

Some were soldiers cast away due to injury and left to fend for themselves. There were also miners who worked backbreaking labor and never saw the sun, mercenaries, and sell-swords.

They were men who needed distraction from the violence and death and nothingness that was so often a part of their daily existence.

I swallow and walk up to the stage. The grumbling begins but whether its discontent or interest is hard to know.

I immediately search for him in the crowd, but it's too dark to tell, and he's far too good at hiding in the shadows. I won't find him no matter how hard I look.

If I want him, I need to lure him to me.

I take a deep breath and begin to sing,

A jacket of light made partly of wool,

A year-old craft for a crazy fool,

She surrenders seconds to feel a touch,

Of time's embrace, a soothing rush

"Dance, pretty flower!" a masculine voice demands, interrupting the melody.

"Without the dress!” Another corroborates and laughter accompanies it. Annoyance and anxiety nearly seize my vocal cords, especially when I think about them dragging me off stage.

What if I made a mistake? The anxious thoughts start. What if he’s not here?

But then something shifts, like a large figure separating itself from the shadows. I get a glimpse of those yellow eyes, just like I did lifetimes ago.

He’s here.

I keep singing

A promise of darkness comes to woo

She never believed it would come so soon

She battles and barters and pleads and rages

For a babe still fallen in death's embrace

The light flickers and I catch sight of those eyes once again. He's watching me intently right now, probably wondering how I know the song. It's a song nobody else in this village should know. It's a song his mother sang to him often.

And he would sing that song to me in the future, while he held me in captivity.

When my body was riddled with fever, after he hunted me down, he hummed it to me...

The hands of time she fought to turn,

Like holding the tides of an ocean storm,

On hands that were grizzled, and covered with grime

And the strength that failed the test of time

She struck a deal and swore an oath

And made a friend of a forever foe

She held up the world, in her weakened hands

And when time passed, she was infinite as the sand.

The boos reverberate through the room but I don't take that as a judgment of my performance. These men were misled by my attire to believe that I would perform a sensual dance for them so the singing is, of course, unsatisfactory.

Either way, I fulfilled my purpose tonight.

He would come look for me now.

It's my last thought, as the slender man drags me off stage biting out, “That was the most pathetic performance I’ve ever seen. Never come back here again."

----------------------------------------

As I walk back home, I sense his presence behind me. I try to pretend I don't notice, but I can't stop myself from turning several times to see if I can spot him even though I know I can't. I never could.

Frustrated, I wonder when he'll finally approach me.

I slow my steps deliberately hoping it will be soon but I'm nearly to the village square and still no sign of him, only the faint skitter of awareness.

And then I finally get tired of waiting.

I stop, sigh, and say, “I grow weary of waiting. If you’re going to kill me, have at it and be done with it.”

I wait in the silence and then once again, like magic, he separates himself from the shadows, his footsteps echoing as he approaches to towering over me. For such a large man it’s uncanny how inconspicuous he can be, how well he can hide when he wants. But I know it's only one of his many many talents.

He stares down at me, with those yellow pupils, stark against skin that isn't quite as brown as mine but glitters like sand in the moonlight.

“Why would I kill you?” His voice is mostly rough, smooth only at the very end of his sentence. It's like his vocal chords haven't been used in a while, and he's making a conscious effort to soften his tone

“Because you're following me. Or perhaps you want to get rid of me somewhere more private.” I shrug. “You can do it here. No one would care anyway.”

There's no sympathy in his gaze. Only confusion.

"Who are you?"

"Wouldn’t it be customary to introduce yourself first?" I know who he is already. Everyone in town knows who he is and he probably already knows that.

"They call me Wolf," he answers anyway. "Now are you going to tell me what name I have to put on your gravestone or would you rather it go blank?"

"Gravestone? I assumed that after you were done with me there would be nothing left to bury."

His eyes scan down my body but it doesn't give me the same feeling as the men in the bar did. He's not lusting after me, he's trying to figure out who or what I am.

But somehow his gaze feels more dangerous, more invasive.

And somehow more alluring.

"I’m Adria," I say and something in the wind rustles at the introduction.

There's something poignant about this moment even as he frowns, eyebrows furrowing thoughtfully.

For a second, I think perhaps he remembers. Perhaps he's been flung through time same as me and remembers everything that passed between us.

I don't know if the thought terrifies me or makes me hopeful.

But then he says, "What kind of name is that?" and that fantasy washes away.

“It means dead flower in Kabanni," I say.

"You are a Kabbani?"

"Isn't it obvious?” I hold out my hand so he can see the darker skin with blue veins running underneath it.

He shakes his head. "My smell is better than my eyesight."

With that, he grabs the arm and before I can react, he brings it up to his nose and whiffs.

Goosebumps break out of my skin and the feel of his nose running over my skin does untold things to my psyche. I try to pull back but I’m no match for his strength. Only when he’s done tracing his nose all the way to my palm does he finally let go.

"Adria," he whispers and I shiver, feeling heat fill my face.

“Glad you’ve registered my smell like a bloodhound. Now, what do you want with me?”

A flicker of an almost smile appears on his lip. He's bemused. Perhaps not too many people call him names like bloodhound to his face but they definitely say it behind his back.

“Where did you learn that song?” he asks.

“I saw it in a vision,” I say.

“You lie.” Wolf can sniff out a lie better than any bloodhound.

“You’re right. I did.” I cross my hand over my chest. “But I also don’t know why I should tell you the truth.”

“Is the threat of death not enough of a reason?”

“You won’t hurt me.”

“You mistake me for a pup." He comes closer to me as though to intimidate me.

“A rude one." I provoke and I'm not sure why I'm doing so, except for the fact that I'm enjoying myself.

It's been a long time since we danced this dance. Bantered like this. Wolf has never been much of a talker, but when he does talk, it's typically witty.

And a part of me missed it. Missed him.

But I remind myself not to feel anything for him. Whatever I thought about our friendship the truth is that this man eventually led to my destruction.

I killed him in my first rebirth.

He killed me in my second.

“You were the one who lured me out here,” he whispers and his voice sends tendrils of something foreign through me. Fear? Desire? I don't know. I shouldn't feel such things anymore.

Then again, all the trauma I went through in my first life hasn't happened yet so who knows what my body can or can't feel?

“Yes,” I admit.

“Why?”

“To ask you to help me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I can give you what you want.” My heart stops in my throat as he leans down.

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” I said. And I stand on the very tips of my toes, drag his head closer, and whisper his deepest desires into his ears.