Clockwork Kiss

A Year of Ghosts

The museum started to feel less like a workplace and more like a high-security prison for my sanity. Three months had passed since I landed back in the warehouse. The quiet rhythm of my curator life was a thin, easily fractured veneer over the chaos of Aethelgard. I had managed to explain away the missing pocket watch as “damaged during transit”. Somehow, the lie went unchallenged. A relief that took some of the emotional weight I carried off my shoulders. The tattered velvet dress was hidden in the back of my closet. A physical ghost of a life I could no longer touch.

My official job description included researching European antiques. My actual job had become obsessively investigating elven folklore, celestial alignments, and the properties of the legendary “Veil Between Worlds.” I worked late every night, hunched over digitized medieval manuscripts that described the Drakemoor Dynasty. I only used Torian’s name in private searches.

Everything I found was written as if it were a part of a myth. Ancient folklore from a civilization forced into conversion. I had no way of knowing how much of it was true, but from what I’d found, I learned that the Drakemoor bloodline possessed an intuitive bond with elemental earth magic, which explained the blue light of Torian’s sword. I learned that the First Solstice was not just a historical event, but the first time a Guardian had successfully manipulated the Veil to seal Aethelgard from the mortal world.

My colleagues whispered that I had become “intense.” My apartment was covered in scattered notes, complex astrological charts predicting the next Solstice, and blurry photos of my great-grandmother Rose, whom I was now certain was the original Guardian.

I often stared at the nutcracker in the glass display, and felt the faint, warm pulse of the Temporal Key inside my own chest. The only thing keeping me sane was the knowledge that the wooden shell was locked up. And, more importantly, Valerius didn’t have the tuning mechanism.

The shattered pocket watch became my most frustrating project. I had taken it to three different clocksmiths who specialized in antique clock repair, claiming it was an obscure 19th century prototype. All of them gave the same baffled report: the gears were fine, the warped casing could easily be fixed, the face could be replaced, but the mainspring was simply inert. As if the concept of time had been drained from it.

I knew better. The watch wasn’t broken, it was magically spent. It wasn’t the key itself, but the mechanism used by the Guardian to align the two realities. I wasn’t sure where it had been while I was in Aethelgard, but I was certain it was the only way I could return to Torian.

In my office, hidden beneath a stack of acquisition reports, I kept my tools. I had microscopic tweezers, tiny vials of cleaning solution, and a makeshift jewelers loupe. Many afternoons were spent carefully trying to resemble the shattered face. I painstakingly tried to reconstruct the exact clock pattern. Each attempt ended in failure. The pieces refused to fit back together. The watch didn’t want to be whole again.

The most insistent ghost of all was Torian. He was a phantom limb I constantly ached for. A warmth I could no longer find.

And he was a scent. The faint, persistent scent of winter spice and cinnamon had clung to me since my return. Sometimes it was just a hint, barely there like a faraway memory. Other times, like when I was stressed or near the nutcracker, it was overwhelming. It was a warm, sensual cloud that wrapped around me, pulling me back to the archives, to his grip around my waist, and to his raw, desperate last words.

My dreams were haunted too. I didn’t dream of the escape, I dreamed of the moment right before the ambush. I dreamed of the way his long, cold fingers covered mine. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his intense lavender gaze behind my lids, and his words whispered in my mind, a soft confession, “…one who smells of winter spice and cinnamon.”

As the months continued to pass, I tried to maintain the facade of a normal life. It was nowhere near easy. My breast friend, Clara, set me up on a date with a well-meaning accountant named Mark who liked to talk about spreadsheets and fantasy football.

I met him at a dimly lit bar, wearing a carefully chosen outfit. Black slacks and a loose black blouse. It was nice enough, but Clara complained I looked like I was going to work rather than on a date. The last thing I wanted to be doing though was go on a date.

“Give him a chance,” she pleaded, one last time before I’d walked into the bar. “Please. He’s really nice, and it’ll be good for you to get out of the museum,” her voice echoed over the speakers in my car, connected to my phone via Bluetooth.

“I’m only doing this for you,” I reminded her.

“Stop being afraid to have fun,” she demanded before ending the call. I breathed a reluctant sigh and went inside.

After twenty minutes of Mark staring blankly at a wall, he finally spoke, “So Anya…Clara said you’re a curator. That sounds…mystical. You must see some crazy stuff.”

“It’s mostly dusty old paperwork,” I replied, forcing a smile.

“Right…you know, you remind me of someone I saw in a Renaissance painting once,” he continued, and I assumed it was an attempt to flatter me. “You just…you have this very intense look to you. Like you have a whole other world hidden behind your eyes.”

I flinched. He had no idea. He couldn’t have any idea. But paranoia came creeping in anyways. I was a mortal woman with a magical light hidden in her chest, likely being hunted by a half-demon elven lord.

I looked at Mark’s kind, uncomplicated face, and realized I couldn’t be here. He didn’t smell like pine and cold magic. He smelled like generic cologne and laundry detergent. He would never understand the tock-tock-tock of the Bell Chamber. Or the brilliance of the blue elemental light.

“I’m sorry, Mark,” I said, sliding out of the booth. “I think…I just left my entire world in my office.”

I left him with the check and walked out into the chilly night. The familiar, comforting scent of cinnamon rose to meet me. I hadn’t lost my mind, I was just desperately in love with a ghost a realm away. I knew the only way to find peace - or war - was to fix that damn pocket watch before the next Solstice.