Prologue

Time, bestower of gifts and thief of the essential. The delicate dichotomy that gives life and leeches it away on an intangible spectrum, the fulcrum unseen. While it is monetized in our words—we spend, lose, squander, and waste time—it is forever the wisp of an idea that we would give any amount of money for just a little more of it.

Until we wouldn’t.

Like time, love has the power to heal and to destroy. It can be the strength that moves mountains or the Achilles’ heel of whoever finds themselves in the planets-aligned path of the devastation we call devotion.

It’s rare, but if you’re lucky enough, love will swoop you up into a spiral of sensations that will send you into forever loops of lust and tenderness. Again and again, you’ll come back to the signpost that is the pure bliss of requited adoration.

It’s extremely rare, but if you’re unlucky, time can do the same. The swoops, spirals, loops, and signposts can grow into a haunting torture. For what makes time precious beyond compare, is that it ends.

When time fails to be finite, attacking relentlessly without reprieve, the only hope that remains is to be defended by love.