The next morning dawned grey and heavy over Hawthorne, the kind of sky that looked like damp wool stretched too thin. Aria rose from her boarding house cot before the bell rang, quietly tying her apron and smoothing her hair, trying and failing not to think of the man she had seen again outside the mill.
She didn't even know his name and yet something inside her chest fluttered like trapped wings when she remembered the way he had looked at her.
Not like a stranger. No, strangers look through you.
He had looked into her.
As if searching for someone he had lost.
Kaelan should have been at the town archives that morning. He had interviews scheduled, reports to collect, documents to review. His research on industrial working conditions was already late, and his sponsors in Cambridge were impatient men who measured worth in timeliness. But as he sat at his desk in the small inn where he lodged, quill in hand, all he could see was her face. Those dark eyes bright with exhaustion, but carrying something deeper beneath the surface. Something he felt he had known for years.
Decades. Centuries. Impossible.
He pushed back from the desk abruptly, startling the innkeeper's cat that lay curled under the table.
This was ridiculous, She was a factory worker one of hundreds he had passed during his travels. But his chest tightened with an aching certainty:
If I don't see her again today, something will break inside me.
And so, despite every reason not to, despite logic, duty, and social propriety, Kaelan left the inn and walked toward the Hawthorne Mill.
Aria tried to ignore the lingering warmth on her skin from yesterday's encounter. She stood again at the mill entrance, waiting for the doors to open, the sky still dim. Steam hissed from vents. Workers murmured sleepily. Someone coughed behind her, a harsh, rattling sound. The city felt sickly, as if every brick was soaked in soot and sorrow.
But then-
Good morning.
His voice drifted to her like a memory.
Aria stiffened. Slowly she turned and there he stood again.
Closer, this time.Close enough that she could see the faint ink stains on his fingertips, the slight curl in his chestnut hair, the crease between his brows as if he studied the world too intensely.
Her breath caught.
She should look away. A girl like her should not be seen speaking to a man like him. But her heart pulled her forward, softly, insistently.
Good morning, she whispered.
He smiled at the timidness in her voice not mockingly, but with a warmth that settled into her bones.
I never learned your name, he said.
She hesitated. Workers filed around her, entering the mill. The overseer wasn't within sight, thank God.
Aria, she finally said.
His smile deepened ever so slightly, as though the name fit some puzzle inside him.
Aria, he repeated softly. I'm Kaelan.
The name carried a strange echo inside her, like a bell ringing deep in a cathedral. She shivered.
He noticed.
Are you cold? he asked gently.
No, she lied. Just, late. I need to go.
But even as she turned away, Kaelan found himself taking a small step after her.
Will I see you again?
Aria paused at the threshold of the mill door.She shouldn't answer.She knew she shouldn't.
But something older than her body, older than this life, older than this century answered for her.
Yes.
Aria worked harder that day than she had in months, not because she wanted to impress anyone, Kaelan couldn't see her inside the spinning room but because she needed something, anything, to drown the thoughts that raced through her mind.
Every time she blinked, she saw him again.
That smile. That strange familiarity.That impossible sense that she had stood across from him before.
She couldn't afford these thoughts.Women like her didn't get to fall in love with scholars.
Workers were replaceable.Disposable.Forgettable.
Her mother used to say:
A well-fed man will never understand the hunger of the poor. Don't look at them, and they won't look at you. But Kaelan had looked at her.
And Aria feared she'd never be able to look away.
Kaelan spent the day wandering the city with a notebook open but barely used.
He interviewed coal carriers, loom operators, children who worked twelve-hour shifts. He scribbled down injuries, working hours, wages. He asked about living conditions, health, education.
But every answer felt hollow compared to the pulsing curiosity in his chest about one person.
When he should have been walking toward the archives, he found his feet moving to the mill gate instead. He lingered there again at dusk, pretending to count workers, pretending to study the flow of traffic—
But truthfully, he was waiting.
He had never waited for a woman before.Not like this.Not with this strange, aching anticipation that made him feel like each passing second was borrowed time.
When Aria finally emerged from the mill, he exhaled quietly, almost gratefully.
She stopped when she saw him.Her lips parted in surprise.
You came again.
Kaelan smiled. I said good morning. I didn't say goodbye.
Her breath hitched.
No man had ever spoken to her that way.
He did not ask to walk her home.He simply walked beside her, close enough to feel her presence, but not close enough to frighten her.
Aria kept her eyes ahead, but her cheeks warmed with every step.
Why are you here? she finally asked. At the mill, I mean.
I'm a scholar, Kaelan said. Studying labor conditions in industrial towns. Your mill is notorious for its, he hesitated, risks.
That's one way to put it, she murmured bitterly.
The sadness in her voice tugged at him.
What about you, Aria? he asked softly. Have you lived here long?
Her throat tightened.A life of small rooms, cold meals, relentless machinery, and dreams denied, it was not a story meant for the ears of a gentleman.
But for some reason, she found herself answering.
I came here three years ago, after my mother died. Hawthorne seemed like the only place to find steady work.
And have you found it?
Work? She laughed without humor. Yes. Life? No.
Kaelan's chest constricted.
She walked with the posture of someone who had learned to make herself small.But her quiet strength shone beneath the exhaustion, like steel hidden beneath soft cloth.
They reached the end of the road where their paths would divide, Aria to her crowded boarding house, Kaelan to the respectable inn on Hawthorne Street.
She stopped.He stopped.
The evening air settled between them.
If the overseer sees you again, she whispered, he'll think I'm…he'll think we're…
I don't care what he thinks, Kaelan replied.
You should, she insisted. Men like you aren't supposed to speak to women like me. It's dangerous.
He stepped closer, just slightly, just enough that she had to tilt her chin to keep their eyes aligned.
Aria, he said softly, I don't know why, but speaking to you feels like the only thing in this city that makes sense.
Her breath trembled.
She should turn away.She should walk into her house without another word.
But her heart, so tired, so longing betrayed her.
I'll see you tomorrow, then, she whispered.
It wasn't permission.It wasn't a promise.
It was a confession.
Her first.
And Kaelan felt it settle deep inside him, like destiny threading two lives together again after centuries apart.