“My marriage to him would mean nothing, my love. I would find a way to rid myself of him in time.” I’m desperate now, not wanting to let him go and unable to stop the river of tears splashing onto his forehead.

“I would rather perish than put you in that position. I’d likely end up in the gallows anyway for murdering the scoundrel.”

I shake my head, not wanting to listen to reason. “Let’s keep you alive now and find a way to deal with this later. I’ll break you out of the dungeons before they can hang you if I have to, and we can make a run for it.”

“We won’t get far, my love, and probably both end up getting hung for the effort.”

I grip his hand tighter, hoping the longer I hold onto him, the longer he’ll stay with me, but I can feel his strength waning. He can barely keep his eyes open, his breath raspy and labored. Soon, he will leave me. “Stay with me,” I plead through sobs.

“That’s the one good thing about this curse.”

He must be losing his mind. “There’s nothing good about this curse.”

“Not true. I will get another chance with you in my next life.”

“Pfft.” I can’t help laughing through my sorrow. He’s so irritatingly optimistic at times. The laughter doesn’t last long before turning back to weeping. “You probably won’t even remember me. I’ll be an old maid.”

“I’ll always remember you.”

Breaking down, I cradle his head in my hands and press my forehead to his. “Until we meet again, my love,” I whisper.

He takes his final breath, and I sit there for a while, rocking back and forth. His face is peaceful, no longer tinged with constant pain, but I don’t want to believe he’s actually gone. The healers have to pry him from my arms. As they carry him away, my body trembles uncontrollably, the emotions overpowering me. I feel anguish over his loss, but more than that, a violent furor toward the man who took him from me.

Over the following years, I devise various plots to take Erevos down, but he is a powerful magus of influence, and it’s nearly impossible to get him alone. It takes decades for me to catch him slipping one night after leaving a brothel without one of his guards.

“You’re a hard man to get alone,” I say as I pull out a dagger, grab his greasy ponytail, and hold the blade against his neck. It cuts into him just enough to draw blood but not enough to kill. I want him to know why he’s about to die.

“Whatever I’ve done, miss, I’m sure there’s a way we can settle this without further bloodshed.”

“Tell that to my dead husband.”

He pauses for a moment before the recognition dawns on him. “Avlore?”

“Good, you remember. Now you know why you must die.”

He laughs, making me want to vomit. I dig the blade deeper into his neck, and he stops, but I can still see the look of amusement on his face. “And what will you do afterward? No matter where you go, my men will find you and make you beg for death. Is that what Finnegan would want for you?”

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“Don’t you dare say his name!” I shout, cutting deeper. “You’re not a quarter the man he was, unfit to even clean the horse dung off his boots.”

I can feel my anger rising, the taste of sweet revenge within reach. But our conversation is cut short by a guard on patrol who grabs me from behind and twists the dagger from my grasp. I cry out in pain as his thick, gauntleted arm wraps around my neck, scraping against the delicate skin.

“Thank you for your assistance, good lad. You will be rewarded handsomely. Take her to my personal dungeons while I think of a proper punishment,” Erevos says with a devilish, covetous grin.

I kick and try to scream, but my airway is blocked. Eventually, I pass out, Erevos’ evil grin the last thing I see.

The next morning, I awaken chained to the damp, musty floor of his dungeon. It remains my living quarters long enough for my desire for revenge to die. Occasionally, Erevos comes to torture me and remind me of my failure, but eventually, he grows bored once I stop reacting, and the visits cease.

His final words to me are, “What a pity. We could have done great things together,” but I elicit no response, not wanting to give him any reason to return. Resolving to spend the rest of my days locked away, the memory of my late beloved is enough to keep me alive.

Several centuries pass, and Erevos falls out of favor after committing countless atrocities. He is stripped of his title and assets and left to die as an old pauper on the streets. Most of his prisoners are pardoned, including myself. When I pass him on the street one day, I feel only pity for what has become of him. Living out the rest of his days this way seems a fair punishment for his crimes.

With my newfound freedom, I travel from town to town, experiencing the innovations that time has wrought. Riding on one of the new magic-powered airships, I embrace the freedom of leaving my past behind. I view a stunning, full-color picture show on a colossal screen with a clever, romantic leading man who reminds me of Finn. Awe-inspiring structures glow with magical light in vast cities, the need for candles and lamps extinguished. Floating metropolises surrounded by picturesque oceans and fluffy clouds dot the coastlines.

Eventually, I settle in a small, quaint town that reminds me of my younger years. I look after the children of the busy wives and tend to a small garden in my spare time.

One day, a woman whose children I look after welcomes her eldest son home from war, and something about him seems familiar. The way he talks and laughs reminds me of Finn. I watch him from a distance, allowing myself to reminisce, but never muster the courage to approach him. Instead, he approaches me one day on my way home.

“I feel like I know you from somewhere,” he says with a smile that nearly gives me a heart attack.

“I highly doubt that, young man. I recently moved to this area while you were away at war.”

“Well, all the same, I’d like to get to know you better. You seem like a cool old lady,” he says, chuckling.

“I assure you there’s nothing remarkable about me,” I protest, but he won’t hear it. Every time I see him after that day, he stops to talk to me.

As time passes and I get to know him, I become even more sure that he is the husband I lost long ago. But I see no point in telling him so. He has his whole life ahead of him, and I’m an old, elven woman at the end of my current lifetime. Who knows how many years it will take me to reincarnate? Things are better with him remembering me this way.

As I lay on my deathbed, he holds my hand gently but firmly, tears welling in his eyes. “This is probably going to sound crazy, Avlore, but I think I remember you from a past life. The story you told me about your husband getting killed by an evil magus feels like a distant memory.”

My eyes widen, and I struggle to speak. “It doesn’t sound crazy at all. You remind me a lot of Finn. I almost told you so, but I didn’t think it would be a good idea.”

“I wish you had told me. Now I feel like I wasted so much time building the courage to tell you how I feel about you.”

“I’m still here...for now.”

“I love you, Avlore, and I never forgot about you.”

Tears trickle down my temples, and the weight of the past lifts from my old heavy body, the longing I felt for centuries finally satiated. “I love you, too. Until we meet again, my love...”