Once more, she found him in the exact spot where they'd been cursed many lifetimes ago.

Fifty years without him had left her with a thirst only he could quench.

He turned around and smiled the smile that stopped her heart. It stuttered back to life when he wrapped his hand around her waist and pulled her close.

"My love. How has your life been?" he murmured against her cheek.

His stubble scratching the delicate skin of her throat sent a shiver down her spine.

"Empty without you. You took all colour with you. Living for fifty years in a black-and-white world is poison to my soul," she told him while her fingers reacquainted themselves with the muscles, the scars, the strength of the body that housed the soul of her mate.

"I'm sor—"

"Don't say it." She covered his mouth with her hand and laughed like a frivolous girl when he licked her palm. The giggle stretched into a sigh when he kissed his way up her palm to the inside of her wrist.

He backed her against the wall of a barn that hadn't been here fifty years ago. Looking up in his grey eyes, she watched the storm of emotions rooted in the depths of his soul.

Melancholy. Regret. Desperate longing. And love. So much love.

"Five hundred thousand minutes to give me memories that will last me the next fifty years, my love." She wished repeating the mantra would ease the ache thundering through her body at the thought of losing him again. Knowing she'd have to carry his body to another pyre so his soul could be released almost proved too much for her trembling legs. Only the strength of his arms and the love shining from his eyes kept her standing.

Even if she could go back to the moment where she saw him from afar and fell in love, she never would. Even knowing his betrothed would curse them to a lifetime of longing and loss, every minute she did get to live with him was worth the agony.

All she could do was love him. Love him from up close for five hundred thousand minutes. Then love him, beyond death, in searing grief that never diminished while she waited for her life to end, for their reunion in the next life.

Twenty five million minutes without him.

Every minute one of eternal love.