The silver pocket watch sat on Adrian's desk, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight.
Vera noticed it the moment they returned from morning classes. Adrian had tossed his satchel onto the chair, loosened his collar, and immediately begun rummaging through his papers for the literature essay he needed to revise before his meeting with Professor Caldwell.
He hadn't seen it yet.
But Vera had frozen in the doorway, her breath catching in a way that would have alarmed her if she'd been paying attention to herself instead of the watch.
She knew that watch. Would have recognized it anywhere.
"Where did this come from?" she asked, her voice carefully neutral.
Adrian looked up from his papers, distracted. "Hm? Oh, the watch. Father gave it to me this morning. Said it belonged to Grandfather, thought I should have it now that I'm—Vera? Are you alright?"
She wasn't looking at him. Couldn't look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the silver case, on the intricate engraving she'd traced with small fingers eleven years ago.
"I'm fine," she said.
She was lying.
Eleven years earlier
Vera was six years old, and she was going to die.
She'd known this for three days now—ever since the fever had started, ever since her mother had stopped waking up, ever since the landlord had thrown them both into the street because dead tenants didn't pay rent.
She didn't know where she was anymore. Some alley in Ashworth's merchant district, probably. Somewhere cold. Somewhere that smelled like rotting vegetables and smoke.
Her mother was already gone. Vera had checked that morning, putting her small hand against her mother's cold cheek, and then she'd simply... sat there. Because she was six and didn't know what else to do.
She was hungry. She'd been hungry for weeks, but now it was the kind of hunger that felt like being hollow. Like there was nothing inside her except empty space.
Someone was shouting nearby. Adult voices, angry. Vera curled smaller against the wall, trying to be invisible.
Being invisible was her best skill.
"Disgusting," one of the voices said. "Someone should clear this alley. It's affecting business."
"Not our problem," another replied. "Let the city deal with it."
Footsteps. Coming closer.
Vera closed her eyes and waited to die. It seemed easier than trying to run.
"Papa, wait."
A new voice. Young. A boy.
"Adrian, don't—"
"There's a girl."
Footsteps again, smaller ones. Vera opened her eyes.
A boy was crouching in front of her. He couldn't have been much older than she was—maybe seven or eight. He had dark hair and gray eyes and clothes that looked expensive even to Vera's limited understanding of such things.
He was staring at her like she was something impossible.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
Stupid question. Obviously she wasn't alright. Obviously she was dying.
Vera said nothing.
"Adrian, step away from there." A man appeared—tall, stern-faced, dressed in the kind of coat Vera had only ever seen on rich people. "We don't know what diseases—"
"She's just a little girl, Papa." The boy—Adrian—didn't move. He was still looking at Vera. "She's scared."
"She's a street child. There are institutions—"
"She's scared," Adrian repeated, and there was something in his voice that made the man stop talking.
Vera watched them argue. She didn't have the energy to care about the outcome.
Adrian turned back to her. "What's your name?"
"Vera," she whispered. Her voice came out like broken glass.
"I'm Adrian." He smiled at her. It was a gentle smile, the kind that made her chest hurt for reasons she didn't understand. "Are you hungry, Vera?"
She nodded.
Adrian immediately began digging through his pockets. He pulled out a handkerchief, a piece of string, and finally—triumphantly—a small wrapped package.
"Here," he said, offering it to her. "It's chocolate. From the confectioner on Market Street. I was saving it, but you should have it."
Vera stared at the chocolate like it was a hallucination.
"Take it," Adrian urged. "Please."
She took it with shaking hands. Unwrapped it. Put it in her mouth and nearly cried at the taste of something sweet.
"Adrian," the man—Adrian's father—said quietly. "We can't—"
"We can't leave her here," Adrian interrupted. He stood up, all seven years of him, and looked at his father with absolute certainty. "Papa, we can't. Please. We have room. We have food. We have everything and she has nothing."
"It's not that simple—"
"Why not?"
Lord Whitmore looked at his son. At the small girl huddled against the wall. At the body lying a few feet away that he'd been trying to ignore.
"Please," Adrian said again. "She can stay with us. Just until she's better. I'll take care of her. I promise."
Something shifted in Lord Whitmore's face. He sighed—the deep, resigned sigh of a father who had already lost the argument.
"Alright," he said. "But she'll need to be examined by a physician. Cleaned. Properly fed."
Adrian's entire face lit up. He turned back to Vera, crouching down again. "Did you hear that? You're coming with us. You'll be safe now."
Vera didn't believe him. Safety wasn't something that existed for people like her.
But then Adrian did something that would change the entire trajectory of her life.
He took off his coat—the expensive one with silver buttons—and wrapped it around her shoulders.
"There," he said, like he'd solved everything. "Now you won't be cold."
The coat was warm. It smelled like soap and something else, something clean and safe that Vera had no name for.
"Can you walk?" Adrian asked.
Vera tried to stand. Her legs gave out immediately.
She didn't fall. Adrian caught her—or tried to. He was too small to actually hold her weight, but he didn't let go. Just braced himself and held on until his father stepped in to lift her properly.
"I've got you," Adrian said unnecessarily, walking beside his father. "You're safe now. I promise."
Vera, who had never trusted a promise in her life, looked at this strange boy with his gentle eyes and too-big heart.
And believed him.
Later—after the physician, after the bath, after the servants had clothed her in something clean and fed her soup that she immediately vomited back up—Vera found herself in a bedroom that was larger than any space she'd ever inhabited.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, overwhelming and soft, when Adrian knocked on the door.
"Can I come in?" he asked.
Vera nodded.
He entered carefully, like she might bolt if he moved too fast. In his hands was the silver pocket watch.
"This was my grandfather's," he said, holding it out for her to see. "Papa gave it to me last year. Look—it has an engraving."
Vera looked. The silver case was covered in intricate patterns—flowers and vines and birds she couldn't name.
"It's beautiful," she whispered.
"You can hold it if you want."
She took it with reverent care. It was heavy. Real. The kind of thing that belonged to people who mattered.
Adrian sat beside her on the bed. "Papa says you can stay as long as you need. And when you're better, we'll find you a position. A job. Something good."
"Why?" Vera asked. It was the first full sentence she'd managed.
"Why what?"
"Why are you helping me?"
Adrian looked confused by the question. "Because you needed help. And because..." He paused, thinking. "Because everyone deserves to be safe. And happy. And you weren't either of those things."
Such simple logic. Such an impossibly naive worldview.
Vera wanted to tell him that the world didn't work that way. That kindness was a luxury for rich boys who'd never been hungry. That she was going to disappoint him, because people like her always did.
Instead, she said, "Thank you."
Adrian smiled. "You're welcome." He stood up, heading for the door, then paused. "Vera?"
"Yes?"
"I'm glad you're here. I think we're going to be friends."
He left before she could respond.
Vera sat on the enormous bed, holding a dead man's pocket watch, and cried for the first time since her mother had died.
She cried because a strange boy had given her chocolate.
Because someone had said she deserved safety.
Because for the first time in her short, brutal life, someone had looked at her and seen a person instead of a problem.
Present Day
"Vera?"
She blinked. Adrian was standing in front of her now, his expression concerned.
"You've been staring at that watch for five minutes," he said. "Are you sure you're alright?"
Vera carefully unclenched her hands. She hadn't realized she'd been gripping the doorframe.
"I'm fine," she said. "I was... remembering."
"Remembering what?"
"The day we met."
Something shifted in Adrian's face. He picked up the watch, turning it over in his hands. "I remember that day too. You were so small. So scared."
"I was dying."
"You were surviving," he corrected gently. "There's a difference."
He said it like it was obvious. Like her mere existence had been an act of courage instead of desperation.
"I gave you chocolate," he continued, smiling at the memory. "You looked at it like I'd handed you a bar of gold."
"It might as well have been gold."
"I gave you my coat, too. You wouldn't let anyone take it from you for three days." His smile widened. "The servants were scandalized. But you just sat there, wrapped up in it, glaring at anyone who came near."
Vera remembered. She'd slept in that coat, eaten in it, refused to bathe until they'd promised to keep it safe.
It had been the first kind thing anyone had ever done for her. Of course she'd guarded it like treasure.
"I was thinking," Adrian said, setting the watch back down. "This should be yours."
Vera's eyes snapped to his face. "Absolutely not."
"Why not? It's just a watch—"
"It's a family heirloom. It belongs to you."
"It *belonged* to my grandfather. Now it belongs to me. Which means I can give it to whoever I choose." He pushed it across the desk toward her. "And I choose you."
"Mr. Whitmore—"
"Adrian," he corrected. "We're alone. You can use my name."
She almost never did. Using his first name felt too intimate, too much like crossing a line she'd drawn for her own protection.
"Adrian," she said carefully. "I can't accept this."
"Why not?"
"Because it's yours."
"So are you, technically. You're employed by my family. That logic doesn't hold."
"That's different—"
"How?"
Vera opened her mouth. Closed it. She didn't have an answer that wouldn't reveal too much.
Adrian stepped closer. He picked up the watch and held it out to her. "When I saw this this morning, the first thing I thought of was you. That day. How brave you were. How you've been brave ever since."
"I wasn't brave. I was a child with no options."
"You survived. You learned. You became..." He gestured at her, seeming to struggle for words. "You became extraordinary. And I think Grandfather would have wanted someone extraordinary to have this."
Vera's throat felt tight. "I can't."
"You can. You just won't." Adrian's expression softened. "Please, Vera. For me? Consider it a gift. For eleven years of putting up with my nonsense."
He was using that tone—the gentle, earnest one that made refusing him feel like kicking a puppy.
Vera took the watch.
Adrian's smile could have lit the entire city.
"Thank you," he said.
"I should be thanking you."
"We'll call it even." He glanced at the clock on the wall. "Oh, hell. I'm going to be late for Professor Caldwell. I need to—"
He spun around too quickly, knocked a stack of papers off his desk, and nearly tripped over his own satchel in the process.
Vera caught his elbow before he could face-plant into his bookshelf.
"Careful," she said.
"Right. Yes. Being careful." He laughed, embarrassed. "What would I do without you?"
The question again. Always the same question.
Vera looked at him—at this person who'd saved her life by offering her chocolate, who'd given her a coat and a home and eleven years of purpose.
Who had no idea that he'd owned her heart since the moment he'd smiled at a dying girl in an alley and told her she deserved to be safe.
"You'd manage," she lied.
"I really wouldn't," Adrian said seriously. Then he grabbed his papers, stuffed them haphazardly into his satchel, and rushed for the door. "Come on. If I'm late, Caldwell will have my head."
Vera followed him out, the pocket watch warm against her palm.
Two paces behind.
One pace to the left.
Where she'd been for eleven years.
Where she'd be for as long as he needed her.