Aislinn drew in a slow breath.
The warmth of his body was gone. The yard, the baby, the mirror, all of it slid away like water drying on skin.
She blinked.
The candle on the table in front of her snapped into focus. The rich scent of incense pushed back the memory of summer air and baby lotion. The beaded curtain hung still in the background. The walls of Madame Zara's shop folded gently around her again.
Her chest still hurt.
"You were gone FOR…EVER," Hadley hissed beside her ear. "I was this close to checking your pulse and planning your eulogy."
Aislinn flinched. "Do not whisper directly into my soul, it might think you're serious."
Hadley backed up a step, one hand pressed over her own racing heart. "Note to self, no more spiritual hijacks before I have breakfast."
Zara's gaze never left Aislinn's face. Her eyes were calm, but there was a keen interest behind them, like she had been reading every flicker of expression.
"You saw him again," Zara said.
Aislinn nodded slowly. "I saw… more."
Hadley dropped into a nearby chair. "Define 'more' in a way that won't make me lose my grip on reality and force you to call my husband. He said he's not rescuing me again until after lunch."
Aislinn tried to find words for things that had not really been images so much as sensations, like trying to explain a song using only colors.
"I saw pieces," she said quietly. "Not clear things. Just moments. Feelings. Our first kiss, I think. Not like a scene, but like my body remembered it. Then the feeling of him asking me to marry him and putting the ring on my finger. The wedding night. Him behind me in front of a mirror, holding me like he had no intention of ever letting go. A baby girl in my arms. My son, laughing with him in a yard I recognize but don't recall. Our children in his arms."
Her throat tightened.
"It felt like I had lived an entire life with him already. But I could not see his face. Not really. Just the way it feels to be with him, the way his body feels against mine."
Hadley sat very still, for once without a joke ready.
Zara tipped her head slightly. "And the ring."
Aislinn looked down at her own hand. "That is the clearest part. His ring. Silver. Celtic. The triquetra. On his right hand. That detail never blurs, even when everything else does."
"Good," Zara murmured.
Aislinn frowned. "Good?"
"It is a key," Zara said. "For you. Something that will tell you what is real when it comes."
Hadley let out a low breath. "I am halfway between swooning and screaming right now."
Aislinn gave a helpless, shaky laugh. "I feel like I am grieving for something that never actually happened."
Zara's expression did not soften, but it grew more intent. "Sometimes the soul moves faster than the life it sits in. You have seen a path, Aislinn. One of many."
"And if that path never happens?" Aislinn asked. "If he never appears, or if he is not who I think he is in that dream?"
Zara's eyes flicked briefly to the faint circle around Aislinn's finger, then back up.
"Then you still know something you did not know before," she said. "That you are capable of that kind of love again. That you can feel more than grief."
Aislinn's eyes stung.
Hadley shifted, her voice gruff. "I hate that this is kind of beautiful."
Zara ignored her. "What you saw was not a promise of an exact sequence of events. It was a truth about connection. About possibility. About who your heart knows how to belong to."
"That is a lot for someone who has not even had their third coffee yet," Hadley muttered.
Zara smiled faintly. "You chose to bring her here."
"Correction," Hadley answered. "I dragged her here by emotional blackmail and the power of our shared lease for the coffee shop."
Aislinn managed a faint smile.
Zara leaned in slightly. "Listen to me, Aislinn. You will want to dismiss this later. You will tell yourself it was nothing but a dream. A story your mind made up because it is lonely and tired. When that happens, remember what you are feeling right now, not the images. The weight of it. The way your body reacted."
Aislinn swallowed hard. "Why?"
Zara's gaze drifted ever so slightly over Aislinn's shoulder, toward the doorway beaded curtain, as if sensing something moving behind the veil of the shop. Her expression wavered, almost imperceptibly, from serene to alert before she forced it smooth again.
"Because there will come a day," Zara said softly, "when something or someone will try to cloud your instincts. When you will need to trust what rises in you, even if you do not understand why."
Hadley squinted. "Is that a fortune or a threat, because the tone is giving me heartburn."
Aislinn glanced back at the curtain, confused. "What are you talking about?"
Zara's attention snapped back to her. "Nothing you need to fear. Not today." Then, almost too quietly to hear, "Not yet."
Aislinn blinked. "Recognize what?"
Zara held her gaze for a long heartbeat.
"When you wake up," she said simply.
Aislinn frowned. "What do you mean, wake up, I am awake."
Zara's smile deepened, just a fraction. "Not yet."
Before Aislinn could form a response, Zara brought her hands together in a single, sharp clap.
The sound cracked through the room like a line drawn through a painting.
The shop vanished.
Not with violence, not with a violent drop, but with a soft, complete erasure. The candlelight stretched, then folded in on itself. The scent of incense thinned, then broke apart.
Aislinn floated in a moment of nothing.
Then light pressed gently against her closed eyelids.
Her lungs pulled in a sudden breath.
She opened her eyes.