He felt the Nameless End’s temptation like a shiver around him. She was very lonely. All ends were, but it couldn’t be that simple. The little creature would not offer something so precious unless it wanted a very great boon in return. What did it want?
“There’s an End coming to my plane,” he explained. “I don’t know when or how yet, but I know it arrives during my lifetime. If I’m to beat it, I need an ace of my own. I came here thinking that was you, but now that you’re in front of me, I realize I was thinking too small. I don’t just need you to come back with me to beat another Nameless End. I want you to come with me, because I’m lonely too.”
That was far more personal than Brohomir usually liked to go, but he only had one shot at this, and the truth was always more compelling than a lie.
“I’m a seer,” he said. “Every time I meet someone, I can’t help but see their death. I see all the ways they could betray me, even if they never do. That’s why seers go mad. When you’re always evaluating every possibility of every individual you meet, it’s impossible to interact with others like normal dragons do. But you’re different. You have no future as I know it, so when I look at you, all I see is this.” He waved his hands at the darkness. “Emptiness. Nothingness.” He sighed. “Do you know what a relief that is? How beautiful you are?”
The Nameless End flipped her tendrils. That was foolish. Endings could not be beautiful or ugly. They simply were.
“I disagree,” Brohomir said with a smile. “I think you’re marvelous, and impending apocalypse aside, I’d very much like to have you with me. I think we’d be good for each other. I think you’d be good for me.”
Already, he could feel her calm in his mind, helping him focus, which was an enormous relief. He’d seen what life as a seer would do to Estella, and it had terrified him to the point where getting dumped by the most beautiful dragoness he knew he’d ever meet was almost a relief. The shadow of that same madness and paranoia was always lurking when he looked at his own future, but in the new timelines where the Nameless End was with him, the stain was lessened, or missing entirely.
That gave him enormous hope, which was why, even though he knew his time here had to be almost up, he didn’t step back toward the portal. He moved closer to her instead, walking into her tentacles with his mind open in the hope she could see what he saw.
“Come away with me,” he whispered. “Share my present until it becomes past, and so long as I live, I swear, we will never be alone.”
The words shook. This was his final gamble, but it seemed to work. He could actually feel the Nameless End in his head now, her vast presence sliding over his thoughts like silk over a topographical map, followed by a question.
What should I be?
“Anything your heart desires,” Brohomir said, his heart leaping even as the portal behind him started to cave. “It’s your life. So long you spend it with me, I will be happy.”
The Nameless End’s touch brushed over his mind one last time, then one of its continent-sized tendrils reached out to touch the palm of Brohomir’s outstretched hand, leaving him holding something heavy and fragile. The moment he had it, Brohomir clutched the precious object to his chest and whirled around, diving through the portal seconds before it collapsed. He landed hard in the sand on the other side, skidding to a stop beside Amelia, who was heaving on her back under the stars.
“What part of five minutes did you not understand?” she gasped. “I almost died!” She gulped down several more lungfuls of air before turning her head to look at him. “At least tell me it worked.”
Instead of answering, Brohomir opened his hands to show her the small egg-shaped object.
“What’s that?”
“I have no idea,” he said giddily. “But the Nameless End agreed to come with me, so I assume it’s—”
He stopped as the object began to shake. It cracked wide open a second later, the mottled shell splitting apart as a wet, ugly, spindly hatchling forced its head through.
“What the—” Amelia recoiled in horror. “That’s a Nameless End?”
Brohomir nodded, his green eyes wide with wonder.
“What’s it supposed to be? A chicken?”
He breathed in deeply. “Smells more like pigeon to me.”
His sister looked scandalized. “I risked death and worse to help you bring the Final Future—the death of our home plane—into this world, and it’s a pigeon?”
“Don’t call her that,” he snapped, cupping the newborn chick in his hands. “She can be whatever she likes.” He smiled. “I think she’s beautiful.”
And she was. The scope was much smaller, but when he looked at the bird in his hands, he saw the same stunning emptiness he’d witnessed in the void. She had the same calm as well, staring up at him with black eyes deeper than any mortal animal could possess. As Brohomir stared back, he felt the tiny tendrils of her chains spreading like roots through his mind, tying them together. When she was anchored deep, she spoke again in his mind, only this time, the words came out in an actual voice.
I’m here, she said, her new tone excited as the baby pigeon looked around. When do we begin?
“Right now,” Brohomir said, scrambling to his feet. “Come on, Amelia!”
Amelia rolled her eyes, grumbling under her breath about the dangers of physical exertion after performing miracles as she pushed off her knees, brushed the sand from her trousers, and starting jogging down the moonlit beach after her brother.
Chapter 1
Julius woke to the alien feeling of absolute contentment.
He was still in his old room in the DFZ, squeezed into his narrow twin bed with Marci cuddled up against his side. He had no idea what time it was, and he didn’t care. If his arm hadn’t been falling asleep, he would never have moved again. He was trying to ease the offending limb into a different position when Marci’s brown eyes fluttered open.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
Marci just smiled and rolled over, flattening herself against his chest with a contented sigh. Julius sighed too, running his now freed hand up her naked back with a shiver of wonder. He’d been here for all of it, but it still didn’t seem real that Marci was here with him, whole and alive again. She didn’t even have a scar, a fact that he knew firsthand after the rampant nakedness of the previous hours.
That thought made him blush beet red. But while he’d been able to ignore the obvious questions during the rush of getting the person he loved most back from the dead, this wasn’t something he could put off much longer. Now that the initial out-of-his-mind joy at getting Marci back had faded to a more manageable level of extreme happiness, Julius’s number-one concern was keeping her. It felt like bad form to question a miracle, but he’d sworn he was never letting her go again, and if he was going to make good on that, then he needed to know exactly how this miracle had occurred.
“Marci?”
“Hmm?”
Julius tightened his arms around her. “How did this happen?”
Her lips curved in a mischievous smile. “I’m pretty sure you started it.”