Iris Silvermoon started appearing wherever Marcus went.
She called it "cultural study."
Marcus called it "being shadowed by an ancient elf."
He found her in the academy gardens, gently touching a rose petal.
"This flower's lifespan is approximately two weeks," she said.
"Why do humans cultivate something so fleeting?"
"Because it's beautiful," Marcus replied.
"Its beauty is precious because it doesn't last."
Iris considered this. "A strange philosophy."
He found her in the capital marketplace, staring at a stall selling spicy peppers.
"This food causes physical pain," she observed. "Yet humans consume it willingly. Why?"
"For the thrill, I guess. Some people enjoy the intensity."
"So they enjoy suffering?"
"No, they enjoy overcoming it."
Iris took a pepper and examined it like a scientific specimen.
"Fascinating. Humans are very strange."
Her questions were endless.
Why do humans laugh at misfortune?
What is the purpose of singing sad songs?
Why do you keep pets with lifespans shorter than your own?
Marcus answered every question patiently.
To him, she was like the ultimate exchange student.
An intelligent, curious person trying to understand a new culture.
He forgot she was a five-hundred-year-old being with god-like magic.
He just saw Iris, who was trying to understand why humans were so weird.
"You're a good teacher," she told him one afternoon.
"I just answered your questions."
"You don't treat me like a legend or a myth. You treat me like a person."
"You are a person, aren't you?"
Iris's violet eyes widened slightly. "I suppose I am. I hadn't thought of it that way."
She hadn't thought of it that way? Marcus's brain stuttered.
What did elves think they were, exactly?
"What do other people treat you like?" he asked.
"A political tool. A historical artifact. A symbol of the Elven Conclave." She paused.
"No one has ever asked me what my favorite color is."
"So... what is your favorite color?"
"I don't have one." She looked at a nearby sunset. "But I find the way the sky turns from orange to purple... aesthetically pleasing."
"So your favorite color is sunset."
Iris considered this. "Yes. I believe it is."
She smiled. A small, genuine, breathtaking smile.
Marcus felt his chest do something complicated. He quickly changed the subject.
"Speaking of aesthetics, have you had a chance to observe Theodore's... aesthetic sword forms?"
Smooth, Marcus. Real smooth.
Iris's smile faded slightly. "Theodore's forms are perfect. His focus is absolute. He is a very effective sharp rock."
"He's more than that!"
"Is he? Has he expressed interest in anything besides swords?"
"He... likes food?" Marcus offered weakly.
"So does every living creature."
Marcus sighed. She had a point.
"I'm working on him."
"Yes," Iris said, her gaze lingering on Marcus. "I've noticed."
✧✧✧
They were on a balcony overlooking the city at dusk.
The sky was a masterpiece of orange, pink, and purple.
The city lights of Luminaris began to sparkle below.
"For elves, time is a river," Iris said quietly.
"Slow. Deep. Unchanging. We watch centuries pass like seasons."
"That sounds peaceful."
"It is. And lonely." The admission was soft.
"We live so long that connections become... theoretical.
We know we will outlive everyone and everything that isn't elven."
"That sounds hard."
"It is our nature." She looked at him. "But you humans. Your lives are so short. A frantic sprint from birth to death."
"We try to make it a beautiful sprint," Marcus said.
"Why? Why try so hard when it all ends so quickly?"
Marcus thought about his previous life.
Overworked, exhausted, dying alone on his office floor.
"Because it's all we have," he said. "The sprint is the point. The fact that it ends is what makes it precious."
"Like the rose in the garden."
"Exactly. If roses lived forever, would we still stop to admire them?"
Iris was silent for a long time.
She watched the last sliver of sun disappear below the horizon.
"Your sprint," she said. "How long is it?"
"For humans? Seventy, maybe eighty years if we're lucky."
"And you are twenty-three."
"Physically, yes."
"So you have... fifty years left. Approximately."
"If I'm lucky," Marcus repeated.
Fifty years. In his old life, that would have seemed like a long time.
Now, sitting next to someone who measured life in centuries, it felt like a single breath.
Iris looked at him. Really looked at him.
Her ancient eyes seemed to see right through him.
"When I think of your sprint ending," she said, her voice barely a whisper,
"I feel an unpleasant sensation in my chest."
Marcus's life coach brain immediately identified the emotion. "Sadness?"
"Is that what it's called?" She touched her chest lightly. "It is... sharp. I do not like it."
"No one does. It means you care about what you might lose."
"I care?" Iris seemed genuinely shocked by the idea.
"I am an observer. I am not supposed to care. I am supposed to analyze."
"Looks like your analysis has led to an emotional conclusion."
"This is an unexpected variable."
She looked at her hands like they belonged to someone else.
"My mission was to assess Theodore. Instead, I am assessing my own unfamiliar emotions."
"And what have you found?"
"That I've been tranquil for five hundred years," she said. "But I haven't been alive."
The sun was gone now. The city glowed below them.
Marcus didn't know what to say to that.
His usual coaching responses felt inadequate. He was out of his depth.
He was talking to a five-hundred-year-old elf about her existential crisis.
A crisis he had apparently caused by asking a simple question.
What do YOU want?
"Marcus," Iris said, her voice still quiet.
"Yes?"
"When you asked what I wanted... I didn't have an answer."
She turned to him, her violet eyes luminous in the twilight.
"I think... I think I want to understand this feeling. This sadness at the thought of your sprint ending."
Oh no.
Marcus's internal panic alarm started blaring.
She's not supposed to care about me.
She's supposed to form an alliance through Theodore.
This is bad. This is very, very bad.
"It's just empathy," he said quickly. "A normal response."
"For five hundred years, I have felt nothing but distant curiosity. This is not normal. This is... new."
She reached out and lightly touched his hand.
Her fingers were cool and delicate.
"Your hands are warm," she said. "Full of life. A short, frantic, beautiful life."
Marcus pulled his hand back like he'd been burned.
"I should go. Theodore will be looking for me. For sword advice."
He stood up, his heart pounding. "It was a good conversation. Very... cultural."
Iris didn't move. She just watched him with those ancient, now very much alive eyes.
"Yes," she said. "It was."
Marcus practically ran from the balcony.
He'd done it again. He'd tried to be helpful. He'd tried to be a friend.
And he'd accidentally acquired an ancient elf who was now having an existential crisis about his mortality.
This was the fourth one.
Seraphina. Catarina. Vivienne. And now Iris.
All four heroines. All four of Theodore's destined romantic partners.
And all of them were interested in the wrong brother.
"I have doomed the world," Marcus muttered as he hurried through the empty hallways.
"I have doomed the entire world because I can't stop being a good life coach."
He needed a new plan. A better plan.
A plan that didn't involve him talking to any more of the heroines.
But as he ran, he could still feel the phantom coolness of Iris's fingers on his hand.
And the sharp, unfamiliar pang in his own chest.
It felt suspiciously like he cared too.