It has already happened.
Just not to her.
Iris Hayes has spent three years trying to find her father.
Dr. Elias Hayes was a brilliant theoretical physicist and the mind behind the equation that made time travel possible. Iris was the one who made it real. Together, they built the first working device. She warned him it was not ready.
He activated it anyway and vanished.
After years of rebuilding his work and refining the calculations, Iris finally finds him.
Or at least, where he went.
But when she activates her own device, something goes wrong.
Instead of 1825, Iris lands in 1827, injured, alone, and without the one thing she needs to get home. Her device is gone. Stranded in a world she does not understand, she is taken in by a country doctor with more questions than answers and no clear way forward except to start over.
Adrian Brodwick, Marquess of Evermere, has already lost his wife once.
Iris Hayes appeared in his life in 1825 and, in the span of a year, became everything to him. Then she disappeared without a trace. There was no struggle. No explanation. Nothing left behind but questions, and the pendant she never removed is now gone with her.
For eight months, Adrian has chased every rumor, every lie, and every false hope.
Until now.
Because the woman he finds in 1827 is Iris.
She looks like her. She sounds like her. In every way that matters, she is her.
Except she does not remember him.
Iris is faced with an impossible truth.
The man searching for her is her husband, but not yet. The life he remembers has not happened. The choices that shaped it have not been made.
And yet, somehow, they already have.
As the pieces begin to fall into place, a new theory emerges, one that defies everything Iris thought she understood about time.
She is not lost.
She is exactly where she is meant to be.
Caught inside a closed paradox where every moment has already been written, Iris is faced with a devastating reality.
If she wants the future Adrian remembers to exist, she has to become the woman he already lost.
Even if it means surrendering her choices.
Even if it means walking a path she cannot change.
Because time is not waiting for her to decide.
It is waiting for her to follow it.
