The Taste of Burnt Copper
Kael Thorn was alive.
Elara sat on the edge of her workbench, her hands trembling so violently that she had to press them flat against the scarred wood to still them. The pocket watch sat in her lap, warm as a living thing, its brass casing catching the amber glow of her shop’s gas lamps. She had not put it down since the rewind. She could not.
The memory of the explosion was still raw in her chest. The heat. The sound. The way Kael’s body had looked beneath that beam—wrong, broken, his eyes open and empty. She had seen death before. Her mother, pale and still in a bed that smelled of lavender and rot. Master Orin, slumped over his workbench with a screwdriver still in his hand. But Kael had been different. Kael had been *moving* one second, and the next he was nothing but meat and bone and shattered glass.
And then the watch had ticked.
She had been on her knees in the rubble, her throat raw from screaming, her fingers bloody from digging. The watch had been in her pocket, cold and dead for three years. But at 4:17 PM, it had pulsed. A single, deep thrum like a heartbeat. The second hand had jerked forward. And the world had folded.
She remembered the sensation: a violent tug behind her navel, a rush of air that tasted like burnt copper, and then she was standing in the same spot, but the factory was whole again. The clock on the wall read 3:17 PM. The explosion had not happened yet.
She had found Kael in the hallway, adjusting his goggles, humming a tune she had heard him whistle a hundred times before. He had looked at her, grinned, and said, “Ready to see something beautiful?”
She had grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the boiler. He had protested, confused, but she had not let go. She had dragged him out of the factory, through the back alley, and into the rain. Behind them, the boiler had ruptured. The explosion had been smaller—contained by the reinforced walls—but it had still sent a shudder through the ground.
Kael had stared at the smoke rising from the factory, his face pale. “How did you know?”
She had lied. “A bad feeling.”
He had accepted it. Of course he had. Kael was a man who believed in intuition, in the gut instincts of inventors and artists. He had clapped her on the shoulder, laughed nervously, and said, “You saved my life, Elara. I owe you a drink.”
Now they were in her shop, and he was alive, and the watch was warm in her lap, and she did not know what to do with any of it.
“You’re shaking.”
She looked up. Kael was standing by the counter, holding two mugs of tea that he had insisted on making. His hands were steady. His face was flushed with residual adrenaline, but his eyes were clear. He was alive. He was *alive*.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re not.” He set the mugs down and walked over to her. He did not sit beside her—he was too respectful for that—but he crouched in front of her, bringing himself to her eye level. “Elara, you pulled me out of a building three minutes before it exploded. You’re allowed to be shaken.”
She wanted to tell him the truth. The words were right there, sitting on her tongue like hot coals. *I watched you die. I held your hand while the life went out of you. And then I went back and saved you. I have a watch that can rewind time.*
But she saw the way he was looking at her. Trusting. Grateful. He thought she was a hero. He thought she had saved him through sheer instinct and courage. If she told him the truth, he would think she was mad. Or worse, he would believe her, and then he would be afraid of her.
“I just had a bad feeling,” she repeated.
He studied her for a long moment. His eyes were the color of wet slate, flecked with gold in the gaslight. She had always thought they were beautiful. She had never told him that.
“You’ve been having a lot of bad feelings lately,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The last time we had dinner, you told me you dreamed about a clock falling off a tower. And the week before that, you said you felt like someone was watching your shop at night.” He tilted his head. “You’re not sleeping, are you?”
She had not been sleeping. Not since she received the watch. Not since she read Master Orin’s will. The old man had left her a timepiece that did not work, a cryptic note, and a lifetime of questions. She had thought it was a sentimental gesture. Now she knew it was something else entirely.
“I’ve been busy,” she said.
“You’re always busy.” He reached out and took her hand. His fingers were warm, calloused from years of handling metal and steam. “But you don’t have to be busy tonight. Let me make you dinner. Real dinner, not tea and biscuits.”
She should have said no. She should have told him she needed to study the watch, to understand what it was and what it wanted. But she was tired. And he was alive. And she had spent the last three years burying her feelings for him so deep that she had almost forgotten they existed.
“Okay,” she said.
He smiled, and the sight of it made her chest ache.
---
Dinner was a simple affair: roasted potatoes, pan-seared fish, and a bottle of wine that Kael had bought from a merchant in the Upper Spires. He cooked in her tiny kitchen while she sat at the table, watching him move. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with hands that were surprisingly gentle for a man who built machines. He chopped vegetables with precision, seasoned the fish with a practiced flick of his wrist, and hummed that same tune from the factory.
“You’re staring,” he said without turning around.
“I’m admiring your technique.”
“My technique?” He laughed. “I’m just throwing things in a pan.”
“You’re an inventor. Everything you do is technique.”
He turned and pointed the spatula at her. “Flattery will get you seconds.”
She smiled. It felt strange on her face, like a muscle she had not used in years. But it was real. She was smiling, and he was alive, and the watch was sitting in her pocket, warm and patient.
They ate at her small table, their knees brushing beneath the wood. He talked about the steam-core prototype, about the modifications he wanted to make, about the guild’s interest in funding his next project. She listened, nodding, asking questions, but her mind was elsewhere.
She kept thinking about the explosion. Not the one she had prevented, but the one she had witnessed. The way the beam had fallen. The way Kael had looked at her, his mouth open in surprise, before the world went dark. It had not been an accident. She knew that now. The boiler had been tampered with. Someone had wanted him dead.
“Elara?”
She blinked. Kael was looking at her, his fork halfway to his mouth.
“You went somewhere,” he said.
“Sorry. I’m just tired.”
“You said that already.” He set his fork down. “What’s really going on?”
She opened her mouth to lie again, but the words would not come. He was looking at her with those slate-gray eyes, and she felt the weight of the watch in her pocket, and she realized that she could not keep this from him forever.
“I need to tell you something,” she said.
He waited.
“The watch I inherited from Master Orin. It’s not just a watch.”
“What do you mean?”
She pulled it out of her pocket and set it on the table. The brass casing gleamed in the candlelight. The second hand was still, frozen at the 4:17 mark.
“It rewound time,” she said.
Kael stared at her. “What?”
“When the factory exploded. I was inside. I saw you die.” Her voice cracked. She forced herself to keep going. “You were under a beam. I couldn’t get to you. And then the watch ticked, and I was back at 3:17, and I knew what was going to happen, so I pulled you out.”
He did not speak for a long moment. He looked at the watch, then at her, then back at the watch.
“That’s impossible,” he said.
“I know.”
“Time travel isn’t real.”
“I know.”
“You’re telling me you have a device that can rewind time by one hour.”
“Yes.”
He picked up the watch. He turned it over in his hands, examining the gears through the glass face, the intricate engravings on the casing. He was an inventor. He understood mechanisms. But this was beyond anything he had ever built.
“Master Orin made this?” he asked.
“I think so. I found a note inside the casing. It said, ‘The heart must break to mend the gear.’”
Kael’s jaw tightened. “That’s morbid.”
“It’s cryptic. I don’t know what it means.”
He set the watch down and looked at her. His expression was unreadable. “You saw me die.”
“Yes.”
“And then you saved me.”
“Yes.”
He reached across the table and took her hand. His grip was firm, grounding. “Thank you.”
She had expected him to be angry. Or scared. Or skeptical. But he was just grateful. He was looking at her like she had given him a gift, not like she had revealed something terrifying.
“You believe me?” she asked.
“I believe that you believe it.” He squeezed her hand. “And I believe that you saved my life. The how doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you did.”
She felt tears prick at her eyes. She blinked them back. “Kael, someone tried to kill you. The boiler was tampered with. I saw a figure in a top hat running from the factory after the explosion.”
His face went pale. “A top hat?”
“Yes. Do you know who it might be?”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. But I have rivals. Silas Crowe has been trying to steal my designs for months. And the guild has been pressuring me to sell them the steam-core patent.”
“The Guild of Precision?”
“They want control over all steam-core technology in the city. If I don’t sell, they’ll find another way to get it.” He let go of her hand and ran his fingers through his hair. “This is bigger than I thought.”
“We need to be careful,” she said. “Whoever it is, they’re willing to kill.”
He looked at her, and there was something new in his eyes. Something that had not been there before. “You’re not going to let me out of your sight, are you?”
“No.”
He smiled, but it was a tired smile. “I suppose I should be grateful for that.”
They finished dinner in silence. Elara washed the dishes while Kael sat at the table, staring at the watch. She could see the gears turning in his mind, the inventor’s curiosity warring with the survivor’s fear.
When she was done, she walked over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her.
“I’m going to figure this out,” she said. “I’m going to find out who wants you dead, and I’m going to stop them.”
“And if you can’t?”
She thought of the watch. Of the warmth it held. Of the way it had pulled her back from the edge of grief.
“Then I’ll keep saving you,” she said. “As many times as it takes.”
He stood up. He was taller than her, close enough that she could smell the wine on his breath and the oil on his skin. He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The gesture was so tender, so intimate, that her breath caught in her throat.
“Elara,” he said.
“Yes?”
He leaned in. She felt the heat of his body, the brush of his breath against her lips. And she panicked.
She stepped back.
“I should check the watch,” she said. “I need to see if it’s still working.”
He froze. The moment shattered like glass. He dropped his hand and nodded, his face carefully neutral.
“Of course,” he said. “I should go. It’s late.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I should go.” He grabbed his coat from the hook by the door. “Thank you for dinner. And for saving my life.”
“Kael—”
But he was already gone, the door clicking shut behind him.
Elara stood alone in her shop, the watch cold in her hand, the taste of burnt copper still on her tongue. She had saved him. But she had also pushed him away. And she did not know which was worse.
She looked down at the watch. The second hand was still frozen at 4:17.
But she could have sworn it had moved.
Elara sat on the edge of her workbench, her hands trembling so violently that she had to press them flat against the scarred wood to still them. The pocket watch sat in her lap, warm as a living thing, its brass casing catching the amber glow of her shop’s gas lamps. She had not put it down since the rewind. She could not.
The memory of the explosion was still raw in her chest. The heat. The sound. The way Kael’s body had looked beneath that beam—wrong, broken, his eyes open and empty. She had seen death before. Her mother, pale and still in a bed that smelled of lavender and rot. Master Orin, slumped over his workbench with a screwdriver still in his hand. But Kael had been different. Kael had been *moving* one second, and the next he was nothing but meat and bone and shattered glass.
And then the watch had ticked.
She had been on her knees in the rubble, her throat raw from screaming, her fingers bloody from digging. The watch had been in her pocket, cold and dead for three years. But at 4:17 PM, it had pulsed. A single, deep thrum like a heartbeat. The second hand had jerked forward. And the world had folded.
She remembered the sensation: a violent tug behind her navel, a rush of air that tasted like burnt copper, and then she was standing in the same spot, but the factory was whole again. The clock on the wall read 3:17 PM. The explosion had not happened yet.
She had found Kael in the hallway, adjusting his goggles, humming a tune she had heard him whistle a hundred times before. He had looked at her, grinned, and said, “Ready to see something beautiful?”
She had grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the boiler. He had protested, confused, but she had not let go. She had dragged him out of the factory, through the back alley, and into the rain. Behind them, the boiler had ruptured. The explosion had been smaller—contained by the reinforced walls—but it had still sent a shudder through the ground.
Kael had stared at the smoke rising from the factory, his face pale. “How did you know?”
She had lied. “A bad feeling.”
He had accepted it. Of course he had. Kael was a man who believed in intuition, in the gut instincts of inventors and artists. He had clapped her on the shoulder, laughed nervously, and said, “You saved my life, Elara. I owe you a drink.”
Now they were in her shop, and he was alive, and the watch was warm in her lap, and she did not know what to do with any of it.
“You’re shaking.”
She looked up. Kael was standing by the counter, holding two mugs of tea that he had insisted on making. His hands were steady. His face was flushed with residual adrenaline, but his eyes were clear. He was alive. He was *alive*.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re not.” He set the mugs down and walked over to her. He did not sit beside her—he was too respectful for that—but he crouched in front of her, bringing himself to her eye level. “Elara, you pulled me out of a building three minutes before it exploded. You’re allowed to be shaken.”
She wanted to tell him the truth. The words were right there, sitting on her tongue like hot coals. *I watched you die. I held your hand while the life went out of you. And then I went back and saved you. I have a watch that can rewind time.*
But she saw the way he was looking at her. Trusting. Grateful. He thought she was a hero. He thought she had saved him through sheer instinct and courage. If she told him the truth, he would think she was mad. Or worse, he would believe her, and then he would be afraid of her.
“I just had a bad feeling,” she repeated.
He studied her for a long moment. His eyes were the color of wet slate, flecked with gold in the gaslight. She had always thought they were beautiful. She had never told him that.
“You’ve been having a lot of bad feelings lately,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The last time we had dinner, you told me you dreamed about a clock falling off a tower. And the week before that, you said you felt like someone was watching your shop at night.” He tilted his head. “You’re not sleeping, are you?”
She had not been sleeping. Not since she received the watch. Not since she read Master Orin’s will. The old man had left her a timepiece that did not work, a cryptic note, and a lifetime of questions. She had thought it was a sentimental gesture. Now she knew it was something else entirely.
“I’ve been busy,” she said.
“You’re always busy.” He reached out and took her hand. His fingers were warm, calloused from years of handling metal and steam. “But you don’t have to be busy tonight. Let me make you dinner. Real dinner, not tea and biscuits.”
She should have said no. She should have told him she needed to study the watch, to understand what it was and what it wanted. But she was tired. And he was alive. And she had spent the last three years burying her feelings for him so deep that she had almost forgotten they existed.
“Okay,” she said.
He smiled, and the sight of it made her chest ache.
---
Dinner was a simple affair: roasted potatoes, pan-seared fish, and a bottle of wine that Kael had bought from a merchant in the Upper Spires. He cooked in her tiny kitchen while she sat at the table, watching him move. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with hands that were surprisingly gentle for a man who built machines. He chopped vegetables with precision, seasoned the fish with a practiced flick of his wrist, and hummed that same tune from the factory.
“You’re staring,” he said without turning around.
“I’m admiring your technique.”
“My technique?” He laughed. “I’m just throwing things in a pan.”
“You’re an inventor. Everything you do is technique.”
He turned and pointed the spatula at her. “Flattery will get you seconds.”
She smiled. It felt strange on her face, like a muscle she had not used in years. But it was real. She was smiling, and he was alive, and the watch was sitting in her pocket, warm and patient.
They ate at her small table, their knees brushing beneath the wood. He talked about the steam-core prototype, about the modifications he wanted to make, about the guild’s interest in funding his next project. She listened, nodding, asking questions, but her mind was elsewhere.
She kept thinking about the explosion. Not the one she had prevented, but the one she had witnessed. The way the beam had fallen. The way Kael had looked at her, his mouth open in surprise, before the world went dark. It had not been an accident. She knew that now. The boiler had been tampered with. Someone had wanted him dead.
“Elara?”
She blinked. Kael was looking at her, his fork halfway to his mouth.
“You went somewhere,” he said.
“Sorry. I’m just tired.”
“You said that already.” He set his fork down. “What’s really going on?”
She opened her mouth to lie again, but the words would not come. He was looking at her with those slate-gray eyes, and she felt the weight of the watch in her pocket, and she realized that she could not keep this from him forever.
“I need to tell you something,” she said.
He waited.
“The watch I inherited from Master Orin. It’s not just a watch.”
“What do you mean?”
She pulled it out of her pocket and set it on the table. The brass casing gleamed in the candlelight. The second hand was still, frozen at the 4:17 mark.
“It rewound time,” she said.
Kael stared at her. “What?”
“When the factory exploded. I was inside. I saw you die.” Her voice cracked. She forced herself to keep going. “You were under a beam. I couldn’t get to you. And then the watch ticked, and I was back at 3:17, and I knew what was going to happen, so I pulled you out.”
He did not speak for a long moment. He looked at the watch, then at her, then back at the watch.
“That’s impossible,” he said.
“I know.”
“Time travel isn’t real.”
“I know.”
“You’re telling me you have a device that can rewind time by one hour.”
“Yes.”
He picked up the watch. He turned it over in his hands, examining the gears through the glass face, the intricate engravings on the casing. He was an inventor. He understood mechanisms. But this was beyond anything he had ever built.
“Master Orin made this?” he asked.
“I think so. I found a note inside the casing. It said, ‘The heart must break to mend the gear.’”
Kael’s jaw tightened. “That’s morbid.”
“It’s cryptic. I don’t know what it means.”
He set the watch down and looked at her. His expression was unreadable. “You saw me die.”
“Yes.”
“And then you saved me.”
“Yes.”
He reached across the table and took her hand. His grip was firm, grounding. “Thank you.”
She had expected him to be angry. Or scared. Or skeptical. But he was just grateful. He was looking at her like she had given him a gift, not like she had revealed something terrifying.
“You believe me?” she asked.
“I believe that you believe it.” He squeezed her hand. “And I believe that you saved my life. The how doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you did.”
She felt tears prick at her eyes. She blinked them back. “Kael, someone tried to kill you. The boiler was tampered with. I saw a figure in a top hat running from the factory after the explosion.”
His face went pale. “A top hat?”
“Yes. Do you know who it might be?”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. But I have rivals. Silas Crowe has been trying to steal my designs for months. And the guild has been pressuring me to sell them the steam-core patent.”
“The Guild of Precision?”
“They want control over all steam-core technology in the city. If I don’t sell, they’ll find another way to get it.” He let go of her hand and ran his fingers through his hair. “This is bigger than I thought.”
“We need to be careful,” she said. “Whoever it is, they’re willing to kill.”
He looked at her, and there was something new in his eyes. Something that had not been there before. “You’re not going to let me out of your sight, are you?”
“No.”
He smiled, but it was a tired smile. “I suppose I should be grateful for that.”
They finished dinner in silence. Elara washed the dishes while Kael sat at the table, staring at the watch. She could see the gears turning in his mind, the inventor’s curiosity warring with the survivor’s fear.
When she was done, she walked over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her.
“I’m going to figure this out,” she said. “I’m going to find out who wants you dead, and I’m going to stop them.”
“And if you can’t?”
She thought of the watch. Of the warmth it held. Of the way it had pulled her back from the edge of grief.
“Then I’ll keep saving you,” she said. “As many times as it takes.”
He stood up. He was taller than her, close enough that she could smell the wine on his breath and the oil on his skin. He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The gesture was so tender, so intimate, that her breath caught in her throat.
“Elara,” he said.
“Yes?”
He leaned in. She felt the heat of his body, the brush of his breath against her lips. And she panicked.
She stepped back.
“I should check the watch,” she said. “I need to see if it’s still working.”
He froze. The moment shattered like glass. He dropped his hand and nodded, his face carefully neutral.
“Of course,” he said. “I should go. It’s late.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I should go.” He grabbed his coat from the hook by the door. “Thank you for dinner. And for saving my life.”
“Kael—”
But he was already gone, the door clicking shut behind him.
Elara stood alone in her shop, the watch cold in her hand, the taste of burnt copper still on her tongue. She had saved him. But she had also pushed him away. And she did not know which was worse.
She looked down at the watch. The second hand was still frozen at 4:17.
But she could have sworn it had moved.