Paultin lurched to consciousness, suddenly aware of several things: bright morning sunlight piercing through his eyelids, an awful headache beating inside his skull, and the rapid chatter of a woman whose voice he didn't recognize.

Shit.

Fearing what he would see, Paultin sat up slowly, brushed his hair away from his sweaty face with a shaking hand, and opened his eyes just enough to get an idea of what was going on. He was in his bed at the inn in Daggerford, fully clothed (thank the gods), although still wearing his boots (moderately shameful). A figure clad all in white was zooming about the room, and another two slouched in the doorway. Paultin weighed opening his eyes enough to make out exactly who they were, but decided he could stand not knowing; if he had met them last night, he wouldn't remember them anyway.

"Come on Paultin, it's time to get moving!" The figure in white stopped in front of him, blocking some of the light from the window, and Paultin could see that it was a woman, tiny, with curly golden hair and a huge smile on her face. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach completely unrelated to the hangover; it was never a good sign when women he couldn't remember knew his name.

"This is dumb. Can't we just go?" another voice, also female, called from the doorway. Paultin considered looking, but the way the room had begun to spin warned him that he had better sit still for a while.

"We can't go before everyone's ready Strix, or we'd be all split up!" The woman in front of him replied.

"We'll wait downstairs, Evelyn. C'mon, Strix." A third voice, male, sighed. Paultin heard the two of them clomp down the stairs, Strix muttering something that sounded suspiciously like "barmy idiot" as she went.

"Don't mind them, they're always grumpy in the morning." The woman, Evelyn, looked if possible even more cheerful, and somewhere beneath his rapidly mounting worry and nausea he wondered if she was just oblivious, or actually blind.

Who was she, and why was she so convinced that he was going with her?

"Ready to get up?" she asked.

"Uh-"

Evelyn hauled him to his feet with a strength he never would have guessed someone so small could have mustered. Paultin felt the room tilt beneath him and was suddenly face to face with the ground, held upright only by Evelyn's freakishly strong arm around his shoulder. She was wearing winged boots, he noted with interest.

Those are some very nice boots he tried to say, as he instead threw up on her very nice boots.

Welp.

Evelyn sat him gently back down on the side of the bed, gave him a sympathetic pat on the back, and said "I'll go get you some water." She didn't make a sound as she hurried downstairs; apparently, the boots he'd thrown up on could fly.

Paultin reached under the bed and grabbed a wineskin to cleanse his palate while he waited. He had no idea whether these people were mercenaries, assassins, or circus performers, but whoever they were, he was sure he was in for a wild ride.

~--~

"C'mon Paultin, just one song?"

Paultin had been on the road with Evelyn, Strix, and Diath for the better part of a month and, though he still had no clue what they did, one thing was abundantly clear to him; Evelyn was, as Strix so eloquently put it, "completely sodding barmy". Nobody could be that cheerful all the time. Nobody could get up before the nonexistent dawn to pray to a sun god during a downpour, hike through the mud for hours, and then want to cap the day off by listening to a (very soon to be) drunk(er) man play the bagpipes. Paultin stared into her huge, hopeful eyes.

You must have some secret. You must eat babies or something.

Some of his befuddlement must have shown on his face, because she continued,

"It's just that you play so beautifully, and isn't it wonderful on a day like today to be able to bring more light into the world with the power of music?"

"Yeahhhhh..." he began. He was going to follow it up with a "no", but before he could, Evelyn launched into a tackle-hug that nearly knocked him off the wet log they had been sitting on.

"Thank you, you sweet, sweet man!" She drew back, eyes shining. "Do you know 'Lathander's Light Shines in the Morning'?"

There was his out. "Nope", he replied. Undeterred, Evelyn said,

"I'll teach it to you!" and ran off to where she had set her pack down, returning moments later with some rather battered-looking panpipes.

She's actually terrible, Paultin thought as she began to play. It was surprisingly almost fun, listening to Evelyn's attempts and trying to extrapolate the correct notes to accompany her. They made their way, haltingly, through 'Lathander's Light Shines in the Morning', 'Glory to the Morning Lord', and a number of other hymns whose names Paultin couldn't be bothered to remember. Evelyn's playing remained awful throughout, but as the night went on, Paultin found he was impressed despite himself; The way Evelyn threw herself wholeheartedly into each song, gave it her all regardless of the inevitably dismal outcome, was strangely inspiring.

Just like everything she does.

"One more before we call it a night?" Evelyn asked. Paultin nodded, and to his surprise, Evelyn hesitated before continuing. "How about 'The Dawnflower'?" The fire was low and smoky from the day's rain, but in its dim light Paultin could have sworn he could see her blushing.

Paultin swallowed hard. Unlike her previous suggestions, he knew that song well; it was a love song. Deep in his chest he felt something stir that promised pain, and heartbreak, and loneliness.

No. Nonononononono.

"Why don't we play that one about Lathander again?" he croaked.

"The Light of a New Dawn?"

"That's the one."

"That's my favorite too!" To Paultin's relief, she launched into it without another word about 'The Dawnflower'.

This can never happen again. Paultin thought, heart pounding in his chest. Never. Definitely never.

They played together nearly every night until they reached Barovia; Paultin could never decide whether routine mortal peril was a fair trade for the agony of both dreading and hoping that Evelyn would one day suggest 'The Dawnflower' again.

~--~

I love you Paultin!

I know. It's...fine.

Paultin shook his head, trying to jar the echoes from his mind. There were far more important things to think about; the gigantic owlbear that would probably eat Strix in her sleep during the night, the strange murder puppet that had come tumbling down the chimney, and the ravenous, man-eating dragon roosting somewhere outside all presented themselves as more pressing issues than what regrettable thing he had said to Evelyn days ago. And yet.

You could have just said it back.

Paultin shook his head again and, when that didn't work, took a long pull from one of his wineskins.

It was a zone of truth, she would have believed you.

Even the alcohol was useless. His mind was spinning in circles; she had actually said it. He wasn't blind, he had seen the way Evelyn looked at him, the way she both figuratively and literally floated off the ground when he spoke to her. He had just never really considered that she might actually love him, that she might feel for him anything different that the love that she somehow had for every living thing. Every time he thought he understood her, she went and did something completely confounding. Paultin felt a horrible twisting in his guts.

How could somebody so smart be so wrong?

She had made a terrible misjudgment, of that he was certain. Evelyn was light, and joy, and happiness, and her one flaw (he had finally, after years of searching, found one) was that she had somehow deemed someone who was none of those things worthy of her love. Paultin leaned back against the side of the hut, trying to bite back nausea that for once had nothing to do with alcohol.

I'm going to break her heart one day.

He was glad, he decided, that in the end he hadn't said it back. Hearing it out loud, she may have realized just how little his love was worth after all.

~--~

Far below him, Evelyn rode atop Morning Glory toward a light so blinding Paultin could hardly stand to look at it. Black tendrils burst from nowhere just as she began to reach toward something he couldn't see, and she screamed as they dragged her down into the rapidly-expanding abyss below. He had to save her, he was the only one who could do it, but Paultin's wings were frozen, he could only reach uselessly toward her as she was pulled into the maw of that horrible green face-

EVELYN!

Paultin was jarred suddenly awake by an intense pain in his right hand; he had evidently rammed it into the cave wall next to him as he slept. It was very dark, and he felt as much as saw Strix's staff whiz above his head as, startled awake as well, she sprang to her feet shouting,

"What's going on who's dying?!"

Diath too had spun around, silhouetted with Gutter in hand at the cave mouth where he had been on watch. Though none of them (save for Strix) could see in the dark, they didn't dare set a light; the jungles of Chult were not kind to those who drew attention to themselves.

"It's fine. Just a nightmare, right Paultin?" Evelyn's voice echoed quietly from her artificial shell. Embarrassed, Paultin said nothing. He had almost certainly shouted, since he had woken everyone, but had he shouted what he did in his dream?

After a few moments of silence, Diath turned back to his watch, and Strix huffed "Just don't bleed on me," curled back up, and went back to sleep.

"Did you hurt yourself?"

Paultin jumped; Evelyn was so quiet now, when she sat still, that he often forgot (as much as he could ever forget) that she was there.

"It's fine," he mumbled. Wordlessly she took his hand in hers, the pale light of her healing magic reflecting eerily off her metal face. His pain was gone within moments, and the light faded to darkness once again. Evelyn began to draw her hand away, but Paultin, still shaken from the nightmare, reflexively clamped down on it. Though it made no sense, he was sure that if he let her go now, she would be lost to him forever, whisked away somehow into the smothering darkness of Chult.

You saved her. It's fine.

The thought did nothing to comfort him. He had been so, so close to losing her forever; had nearly failed to grasp her in his claws, had nearly forgone the chance to act at all as he had hovered, frozen, above her. He had frozen, too, the night she kissed him. He hadn't known what to say to her then, if there was anything he could even say at all. Nothing he thought of ever seemed good enough to say to her, so he had said nothing and nothing until their time together nearly ended. Until Evelyn was very nearly gone forever.

She must know, right? She has to know.

Emboldened, perhaps, by the darkness, Paultin pressed his lips softly against Evelyn's metal knuckles. He couldn't bring himself to ask if she was even able to feel it.

~--~

"We did it," Diath breathed, a look of complete incredulity on his face. "We actually did it."

Paultin too was shocked; he would have thought it impossible if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. The Soulmonger was vanquished, the Death Curse ended, Chult saved, and Evelyn...

Evelyn was back in her old body, only there was nothing 'old' about it. She was somehow more vibrant, more lively, more Evelyn than she had ever been. She had stopped flying loops through the air long enough to get hugged by Strix in a rare show of affection, and Strix was crying, and Evelyn was crying, and even Diath was crying, and Paultin stood a few steps back, taking deep breaths and telling himself that that was one bandwagon that he was not jumping on. No matter how much his eyes seemed to protest otherwise, a man had his limits.

"No one died!" Strix crowed, "No one died and everything's actually fine this time!"

"Well of course everything turned out fine, with the Light in our hearts and-"

"Don't talk about Lathander right now," Strix cut in wetly.

"I didn't mention Lathander, I just said 'The Light' and don't say those are the same thing. Aren't they different, Paultin?"

She looked up at him, eyes sparkling, and Paultin, battered though he already was, felt as though he had been hit in the chest by something large and heavy. She couldn't always have looked at him like they were the only two people in all the Planes. It was impossible. He would have remembered.

"Paultin?"

He managed to tear his gaze from hers, somehow, and blink back the tears to maintain some semblance of stability. He walked forward, clapped her on the shoulder with a hand he willed not to shake, and said with a smile he hoped was less brittle than it felt,

"Good to have you back."

He left without breaking stride, before his composure could break down completely.

~--~

Evelyn sat, haloed by the morning light, on the hill above their camp. Quietly, Paultin climbed up next to her and waited for her to complete her morning prayers. Daggerford loomed in the distance; they were nearly home.

"Morning, Paultin." She smiled, same as ever, that smile that made all his words freeze in his throat. He looked away, out over the spires of Daggerford, where the sun was just beginning to rise.

"I have something of yours," he said quietly. He turned back toward her, drawing her family ring out of his pocket.

She must know, right?

He took her hand and slid the ring back onto the same finger she had taken it from months ago, when they thought her time was at an end.

She has to.

Paultin looked up at her, her hand still in his, met her eyes and tried to say the words he had known to be true since the first time they played music together. They died, as ever, on his lips; how could the thing he had felt for so long feel so inadequate when he tried to speak it out loud?

"Paultin, it's fine." Evelyn leaned toward him, kissed him softly in the dawn light. "I know."