Midnight came with a soft knock.
I was already awake—sleep was more of a suggestion than a requirement after 127 loops of nightmares.
"Come in," I called quietly.
Sarah slipped through the door, wearing sleeping clothes and carrying a blanket. She'd made this a routine now—showing up around midnight, keeping watch, making sure I didn't spiral into trauma-fueled nightmares.
Tonight, though, something was different. She looked... tense.
"Bad day?" I asked.
"Complicated day." She set the blanket down but didn't sit in her usual chair. Instead, she stood by the window, looking out at the darkened campus. "Can we talk?"
"We're talking now."
"No, I mean really talk. Not just... surface conversation. Actual talking."
I stood, walking over to join her at the window. The academy grounds were beautiful at night—gas lamps creating pools of golden light, the distant forest dark and mysterious, stars visible despite the light pollution.
"What's wrong?"
She was quiet for a long moment. Then: "I have to leave. For about a week. Royal summons."
My stomach dropped. "When?"
"Day after tomorrow. My father is hosting a diplomatic summit in the capital. Representatives from Nordholm and Solvaris. Very formal, very political, very much requiring the princess's presence." She laughed without humor. "Can't have a royal event without the royal daughter, after all."
"You don't want to go."
"I really don't. But refusing would cause an international incident, and my father would probably have an aneurysm." She leaned against the window frame. "It's just a week. Seven days. I'll be back before you know it."
"A lot can happen in seven days."
"I know. That's why I'm telling you now instead of just disappearing." She turned to face me. "Marcus, I need you to promise me something."
"Depends on what it is."
"Promise me you won't do anything stupidly heroic while I'm gone. No confronting mysterious watchers. No breaking into vaults. No challenging gods to single combat. Just... stay alive and relatively uninjured until I get back."
"I can't promise that. Trouble finds me regardless of my intentions."
"Then promise me you'll try. Try to be careful. Try to not die." Her voice cracked slightly. "Try to be here when I come back."
I cupped her face gently. "I'll be here. I've survived 127 loops. One week without you won't kill me."
"But I won't be here to keep watch. To wake you from nightmares. To—" She stopped, frustrated. "I don't like leaving you alone."
"I'm not alone. Celeste, Luna, Raven—they're all here."
"That's not the same."
"No," I admitted. "It's not."
She kissed me then—sudden, desperate, like she was trying to memorize the moment. I kissed her back, pulling her close, feeling her heartbeat against my chest.
When we finally separated, she was smiling despite the tears in her eyes.
"That was better than the river," she said.
"Higher stakes. Imminent separation. Very dramatic."
"Shut up and hold me."
I did, and we stood there by the window, just existing in each other's presence.
"I have one more request," she said after a while.
"What?"
"Come with me. Outside. I want to walk."
"It's past curfew."
"I'm a princess. Curfew doesn't apply to me."
"Pretty sure it does."
"Then we'll be rebels together. Come on." She grabbed my hand, pulling me toward the window.
"Sarah, we're on the second floor—"
She'd already opened the window and was climbing onto the ledge. "I've been practicing. Watch."
She dropped lightly to the ground below, landing in a crouch that would have made my combat instructors proud. She looked up at me, grinning. "See? Easy. Your turn."
"I've created a monster."
"You created a student. Now get down here before I leave you behind."
I jumped, landing beside her. "Where are we going?"
"Somewhere quiet. Somewhere we can talk without walls listening."
We slipped through the campus like ghosts—her royal training in stealth etiquette combining with my 127 loops of experience. Guards passed within feet of us and never noticed.
She led me to the gardens behind the academic hall—a maze of hedges and flowerbeds that were beautiful by day and eerily peaceful by night.
We found a bench hidden among the roses. Sat down. The only sound was wind through leaves and distant night birds.
"This is nice," I said.
"I come here sometimes when I need to think. When being a princess gets too heavy." She leaned against my shoulder. "It's the only place on campus that feels real. Everywhere else is performance—smile right, stand straight, be graceful. Here, I can just... exist."
"You're always real to me."
"Liar. You've seen me die forty-two times. Some of those versions weren't real—they were just the princess mask all the way down."
"And some of them were you. The real you. Fighting, surviving, choosing to stand even when running would be smarter." I put my arm around her. "That's the version I keep seeing. Even in this loop."
She was quiet. Then: "I'm scared."
"Of the summit?"
"Of leaving you. Of coming back and finding out something terrible happened. Of—" She stopped. "Of coming back and finding out you got close to someone else while I was gone."
I blinked. "What?"
"You're surrounded by girls, Marcus. Celeste with her brilliant mind and powerful magic. Luna with her mysterious anomaly allure. Raven with her shared history from Earth." She pulled back to look at me. "I'm gone for one week. That's a lot of time for someone to... move in."
"Are you jealous?"
"Yes! Obviously yes! I'm leaving the boy I kissed by the river, who I've been sleeping next to every night, who I'm clearly falling for despite every logical reason not to, and I have to trust that he won't—that you won't—" She groaned. "I sound insane."
"You sound like someone who cares."
"I do care. Too much. It's terrifying." She looked at me seriously. "So I need you to promise me something else."
"Another promise?"
"Promise me that while I'm gone, you won't... get involved with anyone else. No late-night conversations that turn romantic. No bonding moments that lead to kissing. No accidentally falling for someone just because I'm not here."
"Sarah—"
"I know it's possessive. I know we've only kissed three times. I know we haven't even defined what this is. But I'm asking anyway." Her voice was small. "Because in twelve timelines, we fell in love. And I don't want to come back from this stupid summit to find out Loop 128 isn't one of those twelve because I left at the wrong time."
I took her face in both hands, making her look at me.
"I'm not interested in anyone else. Celeste is my student. Luna is helping me break my curse. Raven is my friend from another life who's processing her own trauma. None of them are you."
"But—"
"In twelve timelines, we fell in love. In eight of those, you died. In four, I died. In one, we had a daughter together." I leaned my forehead against hers. "Do you think I'd risk losing that again because you went to a diplomatic summit for a week?"
"When you put it that way, it sounds stupid."
"It's not stupid. It's scared. There's a difference." I kissed her softly. "You're not losing me to someone else while you're gone. You're barely losing me to sleep most nights. I'm pathetically devoted already."
She laughed, crying a little. "Pathetically devoted?"
"Would you prefer 'hopelessly attached'? 'Catastrophically invested'? I have options."
"I'll take any of them." She kissed me again, longer this time. When we pulled apart, she was smiling. "Okay. I feel better now. Less psychotically jealous."
"Only less?"
"I'm still going to worry. But it's manageable worry instead of spiraling panic."
"Progress."
We sat there in the garden for another hour, talking about nothing important—her memories of previous summits, my stories from loops that didn't end in disaster, hypothetical plans for a future that might not exist.
It was peaceful.
It was perfect.
It was temporary.
Eventually, we had to go back. Dawn was approaching, and training started at 4 AM whether I'd slept or not.
We climbed back through my window—her giggling as I had to help pull her up because she'd overestimated her upper body strength.
"Graceful," I teased.
"Shut up. You have unfair advantages. Super strength, 127 lifetimes of experience, probably classified as a weapon in most jurisdictions."
"I prefer 'enhanced individual.'"
"That's worse."
She stood in my room, suddenly awkward. "So. I should go. Let you sleep. Training in three hours."
"Or," I said carefully, "you could stay. Like you've been doing. Keep watch. Make sure I don't have nightmares."
"I thought you said tonight would be fine?"
"Tonight will be fine. But it'd be better if you were here."
She bit her lip, considering. "Just sleeping. Nothing else. We're not—I mean, we haven't—"
"Just sleeping," I confirmed. "You on your side, me on mine, perfectly appropriate if anyone asks."
"Which they won't because no one knows I'm here."
"Exactly."
She climbed into bed, and I lay down on the other side. Safe distance between us. Perfectly proper.
For about five minutes.
Then she moved closer, her head finding my shoulder, her arm draping across my chest.
"This okay?" she whispered.
"Yeah. This is okay."
"Good. Because I'm comfortable and not moving."
"Noted."
We lay there in comfortable silence. I thought she'd fallen asleep until she spoke again.
"Marcus?"
"Hmm?"
"In those twelve timelines where we fell in love... were we happy? Even with everything else going wrong, were we happy together?"
I thought about Loop 34 with Elara—wrong person, but similar feeling. Loop 96 with pregnant Sarah planning our future. Loop 112 with Aria teaching me to laugh again.
"Yeah," I said softly. "We were happy. Not always. Not constantly. But in the moments between disasters, between fights, between all the terrible things... yeah. We were happy."
"Then that's what I want. The moments between disasters. The happiness that exists despite everything." She squeezed me gently. "One week. Then I'm back. Then we figure out what this is and where it's going."
"Deal."
She fell asleep like that, curled against me, her breathing evening out into soft rhythm.
I stayed awake longer, staring at the ceiling, thinking about promises and goodbyes and the seven years until Azkaros came back to destroy everything.
But for now, for tonight, I had this.
A girl in my arms. A moment of peace. A reason to keep fighting besides spite and stubbornness.
It wasn't much.
But after 127 loops of having nothing, it felt like everything.
I closed my eyes and let myself sleep.
For once, the nightmares stayed away.