The storm retreated overnight, leaving the palace smelling of wet stone and cooled iron. By mid-morning the sky had cleared into a pale sheet of winter blue, sharp enough to cut. Asha's workshop glowed with that clean light, every brass wheel and slender spring turned into a small sun.
She set the first components of the forgetting clock on the bench: a skeleton frame of tempered steel, teeth of fine brass, a cage for the escapement that would need to breathe like a living thing. Her hands moved by instinct—measure, mark, file, breathe. Each stroke of the file drew a faint music from the metal.
Kairon entered without a sound. His reflection arrived first, a dark figure in the polished cabinet glass. He carried a scroll sealed with deep red wax.
"You look like someone building a star," he said.
"Stars burn," Asha replied, eyes still on the gear. "This will erase."
He placed the scroll on her bench. "Council minutes. They want to close the east wing completely."
"You refused?"
"I postponed." His voice carried a low, deliberate rhythm. "They suspect structural failure. I suspect something older."
Asha brushed shavings from the bench. "You're afraid of the past."
"I respect it," he said. "Fear is for men who don't plan."
She set the gear aside and faced him fully. "What lives behind that door?"
He held her gaze. "A promise I once made to someone I can't remember."
The words hung between them like a clock that had stopped but still ticked inside.
Later, he walked her through the upper gardens. Rain still clung to the carved balustrades, dripping silver. The air smelled of crushed rosemary where servants had trimmed the hedges. Birds flared and vanished like thoughts.
"Your council will not wait forever," she said.
"They will wait as long as I hold them," he answered. His tone made it sound like holding a line in battle.
"And if they push?"
His eyes met hers, a flicker of wryness breaking through the soldier's mask. "Then I'll need a clock that forgets their objections."
Asha allowed a small laugh. The sound surprised them both.
They walked on. When a gust of wind pulled at her shawl, Kairon reached to steady it, fingers brushing her shoulder. The touch was brief, almost formal, yet it left a warmth that outlasted the chill.
Night came early. From her balcony she saw lanterns scatter their light across the inner courtyard, a constellation drawn by human hands. The palace below hummed with its secret machinery—guards changing posts, distant bells marking hours that felt older than the city.
Asha laid the first completed gear of the forgetting clock on the windowsill, where moonlight turned it to silver. The metal felt alive, as if it already understood what it was meant to do: hold a memory until someone decided it should fade.
She wondered which memory Kairon feared most.
She wondered which one she would choose, if the power were hers alone.
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