By the time Evan Parish walked through the double doors of the estate, the sky had gone bruised with dusk, the kind of dusky blue that made oil lamps glow too early and clocks seem judgmental. He'd barely closed the door before he heard it:
"Do you have any sense of time, Evan Andrew Parish?"
His mother's voice—Lady Julia Greece Deline-Parish—carried down the hallway like a well-aimed slipper. She stood framed in the archway to the drawing room, hands folded in that elegant, irritated way she'd perfected after twenty-five years of raising an heir.
"I do," Evan replied coolly, undoing the top button of his coat. "It was dusk. I returned at dusk. You're very welcome."
"Don't play clever. You left before breakfast and now it's nearly supper," she said, eyeing the state of his boots with subtle horror. "You're the head of the Parish name. Not a stableboy who vanishes into trees."
His father, Lord Edmund James Parish, emerged from his high-backed chair beside the fireplace, a glass of port in hand. "She's right. Next time, leave a note. Or a rider. Or at least don't drag mud through the foyer."
"I was thinking of writing a full apology letter to the rugs," Evan muttered, kicking off his boots and setting them neatly by the door.
Edmund raised a brow. "What exactly required you to be gone all day?"
"I took the north trail past the ridge."
Julia frowned. "Alone?"
Evan didn't answer at first. He moved to the sideboard, poured himself a drink, then leaned against the mantle like a man preparing for a trial.
Evan didn't bother to finish his drink. The warmth of the hearth had already worn thin, and the presence of his parents was beginning to settle on his shoulders like a wool coat in summer. Heavy. Itchy. Unwanted.
"I'm going to my room," he said abruptly, already heading toward the corridor that led to the east wing.
But of course, his mother wasn't finished.
"Oh no, you're not," Julia said, rising with the slow, theatrical grace of someone about to recite a well-rehearsed monologue. "You'll not sulk into that wing like a brooding ghost without answering properly why you came home covered in mud, after sundown, with the expression of a man who's seen a banshee."
Evan paused at the archway, back still to her. "I told you. I was riding."
"In Hughes?" she asked, pointedly. "Because that's where Mrs. Caldwell said you were seen. Dismounting. Alone. Looking positively possessed."
"She's got excellent eyesight for someone who can't recognize her own sheep," he muttered.
"Evan."
He turned, slow, sharp. "I was in Hughes, yes. I was passing through."
Julia didn't sit back down. Instead, she moved closer, arms folded, her expression tight with that particular blend of suspicion and maternal concern.
"Passing through and looking haunted?" she said. "What exactly happened there?"
Evan's gaze flicked to his father, who had resumed his seat but was watching him now with the quiet scrutiny of a man who'd once run whole towns with a glance. There was no way this would be dropped easily. And yet—how did one explain that?
A strange woman in strange clothes.
Talk of the future.
A pendant that hummed with no wind.
He drew a slow breath and let it out, careful with each word. "I came across someone. In the woods."
Julia blinked. "A traveler?"
"Of sorts."
Edmund lifted a brow. "Of sorts? Was she selling charms or poisoned bread?"
"No," Evan said, too quickly. "Nothing like that."
Julia tilted her head. "Then what, Evan?"
Evan hesitated. The silence swelled.
He could see it now—her reaction. His mother's immediate disbelief. His father's silent judgment. One wrong word and he'd be painted as foolish at best, unstable at worst. And while Evan Parish had many things, a reputation as unpredictable was not among them.
He forced a mild shrug. "She was... just lost. Seemed disoriented. I gave her directions and moved on."
Julia didn't buy it, not completely. "Alone in the woods, was she? What was her name?"
Evan took another sip of the drink he hadn't wanted. "Didn't ask."
His father gave a pointed look. "You always ask."
"I didn't this time."
Julia's eyes narrowed. "And yet you look like someone who did."
Evan put the glass down with a soft clink. "I'm tired."
"You're avoiding something," she said flatly.
"I'm tired," he repeated, already turning again toward the hall.
"Was she a Parish servant's daughter?" Julia pressed. "Some merchant's niece?"
"I said I didn't ask." His tone had sharpened now, a quiet edge beneath the formality.
And with that, he left the room—quick, composed, but not entirely calm.
The walk down the corridor to his wing was quiet, the thick rugs muffling his footsteps. But inside his head, there was anything but quiet.
He hadn't lied. Not fully.
He had met someone in the woods.
A woman with strange clothes. A woman who spoke of timelines and cursed heirlooms and twenty years that hadn't happened yet.
He hadn't told them her name. Hadn't dared.
Because something about her name lingered.
Like the ache of a song half-remembered, or the torn page of a book he was sure he'd read once—only now the chapter was missing, and it drove him mad not knowing what it said.
He should've dismissed her. He wanted to.
She didn't belong here. Not just in the village, but in this time, in this world. Everything about her screamed foreign—her clothes, her words, her eyes that flickered with too much memory for someone her age. But more than that, she had carried herself like a question no one had answered.
And he hated unanswered questions.
He had spent his life in neat rows of rules and expectations, in study and structure, in becoming the man everyone believed he was supposed to be. Heir. Gentleman. Rational thinker.
And then she came tearing through that with dirt on her shoes and a wild look in her eyes, talking nonsense and holding an heirloom that shouldn't exist.
She hadn't asked for help. She hadn't even looked lost—not in the way people usually did. She'd looked… disoriented. Like someone who'd read the ending of a story before the beginning.
And when she looked at him…
It wasn't pleading. It wasn't fear.
Anger. Was it him barreling towards her with his horse, Spirit? Maybe.
It was as if she recognized something in him before he'd even spoken. And that—that was what had lodged itself in his chest like a sliver of glass.
Evan stepped into his room and closed the door softly behind him, the latch clicking like punctuation. The fire was already lit, casting soft shadows against the stone. His shirt lay folded with mechanical precision on the armchair.
Everything was in its place.
Except him.
He moved to the window, fingers brushing the velvet curtain aside just enough to see the distant black line where the trees began.
She was still out there. Somewhere.
Wandering through a time that didn't want her. Or maybe one that needed her.
He didn't know what she was.
Mad, cursed, delusional… or something else entirely.
But he knew what he was now: curious.
And curiosity, for him, was never casual. It rooted. It gnawed.
He should forget her. Let the world right itself. Return to the man everyone expected him to be.
But he wouldn't.
He would see her again.
Even if it meant sneaking out like a damn fool. Even if it meant chasing ghosts.
Because part of him—some raw, ungoverned part—already knew:
That girl hadn't stepped into his world by accident.
And he wasn't sure he wanted her to leave it.
Evan let the curtain fall back into place, the heavy fabric swallowing the view of the woods and the moonlit fields beyond. The room dimmed again, bathed in soft firelight and the faint glow of a single oil lamp on the desk. Quiet settled over everything. Too quiet.
But his mind hadn't settled. Not in the least.
He turned from the window, jaw tight, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
That glance—quick, assessing, almost startled—hadn't been the wide-eyed gaze of a girl lost in the woods. It had been sharp. Searching. Like someone flipping through pages, trying to place the next sentence.
Evan moved to the bookcase again, this time faster. His fingers dragged across spines, titles blurring past: Local Folklore & Country Legends, Theories of the Natural World, Records of the Ridge and Hollow. None of it helped.
Still, he yanked three books free, dropped them onto his desk, and opened the first.
What exactly was he looking for?
Not an explanation. Not really. He didn't believe he'd find her name written in some dusty margin or buried in a story meant to scare children. And yet—
He began flipping pages.
Something had shifted in him. Not belief, not yet. But a crack.
Because the strange part wasn't just her arrival or her manner or the impossible things she'd said.
It was the way she'd looked at him—like she expected something of him. Like he was already involved.
The book in front of him was titled Accounts of the Unusual: Superstitions & Phenomena of the Low Counties. The title itself was worn, nearly rubbed out by years of fingers passing over it without care. Evan remembered buying it in secret at a market years ago, stuffing it under more respectable purchases—political treatises, philosophy—and hiding it from his father like a boy hiding a flask.
He flipped through the pages again, slower this time.
Mostly, it was nonsense. Old wives' tales. Shape-shifting animals. Ghosts in hollow trees. Portals in the base of wells. But something in him refused to shut the book. He scanned the passages anyway, half-embarrassed, half-hungry for something—anything—that would explain what had happened out there.
The wind had howled when she appeared.
There had been no clear trail. No companion. No carriage. No proper shoes on her feet.
No fear. Just surety. As though he was the confusing part of her story.
He flipped to a chapter labeled: "Slips in the Veil: On Time Displacement and Crossing Threads."
His brow furrowed. Well, that's new.
The pages here were more fragmented—half-transcribed interviews, odd diagrams, a drawing of a circle split by jagged lines, not unlike—
He paused.
The symbol on the heirloom she was holding.
He knew it hadn't been a trick of the light.
He stared down at the sketch: a broken hourglass encased in a ring, one side cracked like lightning had struck through time itself. The caption below it read:
"Markings sometimes seen in tales of the tethered—those 'dragged through folds' by inheritance, curse, or unfinished tether. Often family-linked. Objects bound to time's edge."
His breath caught.
He sat straighter, hand hovering over the page. He read the paragraph again, slower this time.
"The Tether is not a machine, but a memory. Those bound to it often carry relics—keepsakes, heirlooms—that act as anchors. Some claim it seeks bloodlines. Others say it seeks answers. But the constant across stories is this: the person called by the Tether never arrives by accident."
Not by accident.
Evan's hands had gone cold.
He closed the book, then opened another—an even older one, dusty and cracked at the spine: Field Reports on Temporal Aberrations, 1721–1833. It had always seemed ridiculous before. A curiosity. But now—
Now he flipped to a section called "Echoes of the Out-of-Place."
There were fragments of reported sightings: travelers dressed strangely. Strangers who spoke in clipped rhythms, misnamed everyday things, or panicked at the sight of horses.
"She asked where the Wi-Fi was," he muttered to himself, recalling the way she had glared at the sky like it betrayed her.
His eyes darted down the page.
"Several accounts speak of individuals arriving with objects they do not understand. Often mechanical in nature, sometimes glowing. Occasionally, these strangers possess unexplainable knowledge—names, events, or locations yet to occur. In one instance, the stranger knew the names of the landowners before arriving in the town."
He stood up so quickly his chair scraped the floor.
That was it.
She hadn't said his name. Not aloud. But her face—her face—had held it. Had weighed it. Had spoken to him with the ease of someone who possibly already knew who he was supposed to be.
Evan stepped back, away from the books, away from the desk.
He rubbed his hands together like that might stop the shaking.
He didn't know what she was. A jester? A time-walker? A prophet? A delusional soul caught in a story too big for her?
But he knew this:
Somehow, possibly, she knew him.
And now he couldn't stop wondering if she knew something he didn't.