//CLARA//

The stone-carved bench was biting cold through the silk of my skirts, but I didn’t care. I needed the chill. I needed the way the night air burned in my lungs to remind me I was still alive, still human, and still trapped in this century.

I stared up at the smudge of stars above the Manhattan skyline, so much brighter and more distant than the electric glow I remembered from the future. Everything was a mess. Gary was here, a living, breathing liability from my own time.

I had to protect him, but how? Every move I made to help him was another shovel-full of dirt on my own social grave.

And then there was Casimir.

The thought of telling him the truth bubbled up in my throat, tasting like salt. I’m not Eleanor. I’m a stranger wearing her face. I’m a ghost from a century you won’t live to see.

My stomach twisted.

What would he do?

He was a man obsessed with control, with possession. If I told him I was a time-traveler, he wouldn’t just be mad. He’d think I was broken. He’d send me to a madhouse where they’d bleed me and poke me until I actually did go insane.

He loved Clara, sure, but to him, that was just a nickname for a girl who’d finally grown a spine. Underneath it all, he still believed I was Eleanor Thorne, a fixed point in his Gilded Age world.

If I told him the truth would he love me enough to believe the impossible?

I wondered then if his devotion had limits. If it was deep enough to survive it, or if the Clara he worshipped would vanish the moment he realized Eleanor was truly gone.

The thought twisted in my chest, a stake driven through my heart, pinning my lungs against my spine.

I hate it.

Not yet, I told myself, clutching my shawl as if it could shield me from my own lies.

I’ll tell him when the timing doesn’t feel like a death sentence. I have no idea when that window will open, but I’ll find it... once we’re finally beyond the reach of everyone trying to break us.

I was about to stand up when a soft, metallic thud vibrated through the stone floor of the terrace. I didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was.

"You’re going to break your neck one of these days," I scowled, finally turning to see him.

Casimir was standing by the balustrade, his dark coat dusted with the grit of the stone walls he’d just scaled.

"Is the front door too mainstream for you? It’s dangerous, Casimir. One slip and—"

He didn’t listen. He just walked toward me, his boots clicking against the stone. He stopped inches from me.

"Who is he?" he asked. No preamble. No greeting. Just a cold, sharp blade of a question.

"Who?" I tried for oblivious. I failed. My voice went an octave too high.

Casimir’s eyes narrowed, the firelight from the room behind us catching the lethal hardness in his gaze.

"Don’t play me for a fool, Clara."

Clara. My heart did a slow, relieved roll. He was still calling me Clara. I was safe, for at least another hour.

"He’s an old friend," I said, raking my mind for an alibi. "A childhood friend, actually. From before... everything. I haven’t seen him in years. He happened to stumble upon me at the shop, and I almost didn’t recognize him. He was a chubby little thing when we were young, and now..."

I let out a soft, forced huff of a laugh. "Now he’s grown into a handsome man."

A flash of pure, grey-eyed jealousy flickered in Casimir’s expression. It was so sharp I could practically feel it.

"A handsome man who feels comfortable enough to spin you in the street?" The question scraped out of Casimir like gravel over bone. "A man who whispers to you for hours in a tea room while the rest of the world thinks you’re choosing your wedding entourage?"

"He was excited, Casimir! It had been a decade." I stepped closer, closing the distance until my chest nearly brushed his coat. "Do you truly think so little of me? That I’d throw away everything we’ve planned for a ghost from my past?"

"I think you are a woman of secrets," he countered, his hand snapping out to catch my wrist. Not hard enough to bruise, but firm enough to let me know I wasn’t going anywhere. "And I think this friend appeared at a very convenient time. Mrs. Jenkins said you were conspiring."

"Mrs. Jenkins is a ghastly spider who wants to see me bridled," I hissed, leaning into him with a defiance that only he could provoke.

I took his face into my palms. His skin was cold from the climb, his jaw corded with tension. I forced a small, soft smile onto my lips.

"Casimir, look at me. I agreed to elope with you. I threw away the prospect of becoming literal royalty for you. I don’t care if I wake up tomorrow and my name is a slur in every mouth in New York, as long as I open my eyes and you’re the one next to me."

I leaned in, my thumbs tracing the line of his cheekbones.

"You heard that spider. She exaggerated everything. We just talked. We were making up for all the years we lost."

Casimir’s eyes betrayed nothing, but I felt him lean, just a fraction, into my touch. It was the only surrender he ever gave. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"What is his name?" he asked.

"Elias Russell," I offered, trying to sound like I was just filling the silence.

Inside, my heart was hammering. I was practically begging for him to know the name, to give me something to work with.

"You know the type. He’s tucked away in a bachelor’s pad near Gramercy Park. Does the name ring a bell?"

I watched him closely, my heart hammering. If Casimir knew an Elias Russell, I’d have the key to Gary’s first mystery case.

"Elias Russell?" Casimir repeated the name, testing the weight of it.

I nodded, breathless.

"I haven’t heard the name," he said flatly.

The meager hope I’d been holding onto flickered and died. If Casimir Guggenheim hadn’t heard of a man in New York, that man didn’t exist.

Who the hell are you Elias Russell?

"I see," I whispered, hiding my disappointment. "I hope you can meet him one day. Then you’ll see he’s harmless."

"Harmless?" Casimir’s grip on my wrist tightened, and he jerked me flush against him. His other hand came up to tangle in my hair, pulling my head back just enough to force me to look at him.

"I don’t give a damn if he’s harmless. You were gone for hours. You had me worried until I was ready to burn this city to the ground just to find your tracks."

He leaned down, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear, his breath hot against the cold night air.

"Now... how are you going to make it up to me? For the state you’ve left me in?"

My smile broadened, dark and knowing. I reached up, my fingers curling into his lapels, and slowly pushed him backward. He went willingly, his eyes never leaving mine, until he hit the stone-carved bench.

"Sit," I commanded softly.

As he sat, his legs spread, his gaze went dark with anticipation.

I didn’t give him a second round of talk. I dropped to my knees between his shadowed form and the starlight.