Crime was crime—ever-present as long as mortals were present—but he’d done his best to catch the swindlers and conmen who tried to prey upon the rebuilding people. He didn’t want to use magic against such criminals if he could help it—preferring mortal methods. He gripped the white mercury sword at his side, knowing to draw it would be pointless in such a small alley.

And so he ran.

And the person behind him ran, too, footsteps echoing.

He raced through the alley, throwing trash bins and paper piles to the side to distract his stalker. They were fast, and good—he could hear them leaping over the debris easily, redoubling their pace.

But he was better.

He called his crow form and flung himself over the wall to his left, white feathers whirling in his wake as his feet touched ground and his cloak streamed behind him. His human legs pumped again, ducking around a butcher’s blood run and through a stretch of low, drying herbs on twine. He was losing them—he was sure of it. Their footsteps were fading.

And then he swung himself around a corner and, without his perfect mental map of the old Vetris, into an unfortunate dead end. He pulled his sword out and whirled to face his stalker, but the dead end was still too small for the blade to be swung properly.

“Tsk, tsk. Should’ve brought a dagger, Your Highness.”

His mind stuttered, his ears pricking at the voice.

Surely not.

There was no way—now, of all times? Here? Following him like she had that first time they met? She wouldn’t—this was surely a hallucination as it had been all other times, as it had been in the times in his bed, alone, in the quiet moments of a bath, a meal, where he had wished she was here, her voice playing in his head—

They appeared from the shadows, a cloaked figure.

“Enough games!” he snarled. “Who are you?”

The figure paused and then pulled her hood down.

Golden hair, spilling over shoulders. Blue-gray eyes, like autumn sky. A smirk, that beautiful smirk, pulling at her rosebud lips.

He wanted to doubt. But he couldn’t. Not with that smirk.

It was her.

…

If one were to cross the bridge high between Hordon’s Grocer and Willowtree Housing at this moment, one would see two figures in the dead end below, one black of hair, the other gold, embracing as if the world were ending, and their murmurs to each other faint.

“How—how did you survive?” the dark-haired one asked.

“I remembered,” the golden-haired one replied.

“Remembered what?”

A smile, and then, “That you love me.”