The years passed. On my eighteenth birthday, he showed me the crystal cavern. On my nineteenth, he taught me the names of stars I had never seen from the village below. On my twentieth, we watched the northern lights dance across the sky while he told me stories of the gods who had created this world and the ones who sought to destroy it. Through it all, he remained—steady as the mountain itself, patient as stone, warm as the hidden fires that burned at the mountain's core. He watched me change, watched me grow, watched me become someone new with each passing season. And through it all, he never once asked me to stop coming.

  Then I turned twenty-one.

  One afternoon, as the autumn light painted the peaks in shades of gold and amber, I found myself asking the question that had been building in my heart for years.

  "Why do you let me come here?" I asked. "Why do you let me stay?"

  He was silent for a long moment, gazing out at the horizon. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet—softer than I had ever heard it.

  "Do you know what it is like," he said slowly, "to exist for millennia and never be truly seen? To tend to the wounds of mortals, to watch them live and love and die, and never once have any of them look at you and see anything but the healer? The myth? The stranger who appears and disappears like the wind?"

  I shook my head, though I suspected I was beginning to understand.

  "It is a loneliness so profound that it becomes part of you," he continued. "It settles into your bones like frost. You forget what warmth feels like. You forget what it means to be known." He turned to look at me then, and his eyes held something I had never seen before—a vulnerability so raw it made my chest ache.

  "And then you came."

  A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  "Not the child with scraped knees, though she was brave and foolish and I watched her from afar, wondering if she would survive her own courage. No—I mean the girl you became. The girl who, at fourteen, sat on that rock over there and spent an entire afternoon explaining to me, in exhaustive detail, why the village baker's new recipe had caused a scandal that would be talked about for generations."

  I groaned, the memory flooding back. "I talked about bread for three hours. I'm so sorry."

  "You were passionate." His smile widened. "And somewhere in that passion, in the way your hands moved when you described the failed loaf and the baker's wife's reaction, in the way you laughed at your own storytelling—I realized something."

  "What?"

  "I had not laughed in a thousand years." His voice was wonder, soft and wondering. "Not once. Not a single genuine laugh. And there you were, making me smile over bread."

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  I felt heat creep into my cheeks.

  "Do you remember what you said at the end of that day?" he asked. "When the sun was setting and you were preparing to climb back down?"

  I shook my head. I remembered talking—I always talked—but the specifics had blurred with time.

  "You looked at me, completely serious, and said, 'You know, for an immortal king, you're not nearly as intimidating as the stories make you out to be. You're actually quite terrible at being mysterious. You smile too much when you think I'm not looking.'"

  I covered my face with my hands. "I didn't."

  "You did." He was definitely smiling now. "And then you patted my arm—patted it, like I was an elderly grandfather—and told me you'd bring me more gossip tomorrow because clearly I needed entertaining."

  "Oh gods."

  "That was the moment I knew." He reached out and gently pulled my hands away from my face. "Not that you saw me—you had always seen me. But that you liked me. Not the king, not the healer, not the myth. Just... me. Enough to tease me. Enough to treat me like a person instead of a legend. Enough to make me laugh for the first time in a millennium."

  His fingers intertwined with mine.

  "I let you come here because I could not imagine not letting you come here. Because the days you did not climb were hollow and gray. Because your voice had become the sound I waited for, and your laughter had become the warmth I forgot I was missing."

  He lifted his free hand and touched my cheek, his thumb tracing the same path it had traced so many times before—but this time, his touch lingered. This time, something in his eyes had shifted.

  "I let you come here," he whispered, "because I love you, Giana. I have loved you since you were fourteen years old and insufferably pleased with yourself over a story about bread. I have loved you through every season, every year, every moment you have graced this mountain with your impossible, glorious presence."

  Tears blurred my vision. "I love you too," I breathed. "I think I've loved you since I was seven years old and too scared to do anything but run."

  He leaned forward, slowly—so slowly, giving me every chance to pull away, to laugh, to break the spell with some ridiculous comment about Valoks or virgin sacrifices.

  I did not pull away.

  His lips met mine, and the world stopped.

  Not like before—not with the mountain holding its breath, not with the frozen waterfall waiting in silence. This was different. This was warmth flooding through every part of me, melting the frost I hadn't realized had settled into my own bones. This was coming home to a place I had never been but somehow always known.

  His hand cradled the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair. His other hand held mine, tight, as if he was afraid I might disappear. And I kissed him back with everything I had—all the years of longing, all the years of watching, all the years of climbing this mountain just to be near him.

  When we finally broke apart, foreheads resting together, breath mingling in the thin mountain air, he whispered against my lips:

  "Stay."

  I nodded, not trusting my voice.

  "For a while. Let me show you why this mountain is worth protecting. Let me show you the world I guard."

  A pause. And then, even softer:

  "This would be our first kiss."

  I nodded again, tears streaming freely now.

  He pulled me close, and I pressed my face into his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of a heart that had beaten for millennia—a heart that now beat for me.

  I thought, foolishly, that the pattern of my life had settled into something bearable. The mountain was my refuge, the King my solace, and the village... the village was simply what I endured to reach him.