“Not that,” he said, turning even redder. “I meant this.”
He brushed his fingers over the place on her unmarked back where General Jackson’s shot had passed through. He could still see the horrible wound in his mind: the smoking edges, the way scarlet blood had spread like spilled ink across her shirt. The memory of her death was one he’d never shake no matter how long he lived, so now that it was suddenly undone, he couldn’t relax until he knew.
“Is this real?” he whispered, clutching her. “Are you really back?”
She laughed. “Do I need to prove it to you again?”
“I’m serious.”
He must have sounded it, because Marci stopped laughing. “That’s a complicated question,” she said, pushing up on her elbow so she could look him in the face. “The short answer is yes, I’m back, and I’m human. A mortal, just like I was before, only minus the holes.”
She smiled down at her healed chest like that was a joke, but Julius was shaking. “How?” he asked again. “Last I checked, humans didn’t come back from the dead.”
“Not normally,” Marci agreed. “But it’s amazing how flexible the rules get when multiple immortals need your help. Amelia always intended to bring me back with her, but Raven was the one who did the actual hauling. He flew me back from the other side so I could reclaim my body and do my job as Merlin.”
Then Julius owed Raven a debt he could never repay. “Could he do it again?” Because if people could be brought back from the dead, then the greatest problem of falling head over heels in love with a human had just been solved.
“If you mean ‘Are you immortal now?’ I’m afraid the answer is no,” Marci said, shaking her head. “Happy as I am that it worked this time, the whole ‘rise from your grave’ thing was the product of highly unique circumstances that probably shouldn’t be repeated. But don’t worry. I’m not planning on dying again any time soon.”
He kissed her in thanks for that. Then he kissed her again, just because he could. He was about to kiss her a third time when Marci started in with questions of her own. “What about you? How did you end up in the DFZ with the Dragon Emperor of China? And why does Chelsie have a baby now? I wasn’t gone that long.”
“The baby’s not actually new,” Julius said, racking his brain to think of a shorthand way to explain what had happened with Chelsie and the Qilin, or Chelsie and Bob. He couldn’t come up with one that made any kind of sense, though, so he wound up telling her the whole story of Chelsie’s ill-fated journey to China and the fallout that had haunted his clan for the last six centuries. Marci listened raptly all the way through, though her eyes got really wide at the end.
“So the Qilin thanking you was what caused that golden hammer thing at the end?”
“I don’t know about a hammer,” Julius said, confused. “But it was definitely a luck bomb.”
Marci shook her head rapidly, making her short hair fly. “No way. Bombs are bad things. This was an enormously good thing. When we were in the Heart of the World, Amelia kept saying that Bob had warned her not to let any of us charge into the fight until we got his signal. Trouble was, she had no idea what that signal would be. We were about to go anyway—because things were getting really bad—when we felt this huge surge of amazing dragon magic, and suddenly everything went right.” She grinned. “That must have been you! Bob clearly knew it was coming too, which was why he told Amelia to wait. He knew we’d need imperial levels of magical good fortune on our side to make everything work.”
The mention of his brother’s name made Julius flinch. “I’m not so sure Bob is on our side anymore.”
“What are you talking about?” Marci said, incredulous. “He and Amelia planned this whole thing. The fact that I’m alive and with you right now is mostly due to him.”
“He’s also why you died in the first place,” Julius said angrily. “I’m not arguing with the results, but his methods are not good, Marci. Bob used us all. He let Chelsie and her children suffer for six centuries. He could have ended it all at any time just by telling Bethesda to stop. Mother always listened to him.”
“Would Chelsie, though?” Marci asked. “You just told me it was her idea to keep her children locked in the mountain so they’d be safe from the Qilin. Even if Bob had freed them all early, she still wouldn’t have let the Fs go for fear of her ex. Don’t get me wrong. I agree it was all terrible, but I don’t think anyone was trying to be cruel. It just sounds like a lot of desperate dragons trying to do the best thing in bad circumstances. But while he’s definitely pulled some sketchy stunts, I know Bob is on our side. Amelia trusted him with her life and death, and she doesn’t trust lightly.” She shrugged. “We just have to have faith that Bob knows what he’s doing. He can see the future, after all.”
“I’ve never questioned that,” Julius said. “I’m just worried about what he’s willing to do to the present to get there.”
“Well,” Marci said, snuggling closer. “If this is Bob’s chosen timeline, I’ve got no complaints. It sucked for a while there, but now I’m back, Amelia’s back, and Chelsie’s free and reunited with her boyfriend, which will hopefully make her less snappy. We’ve even got a bona fide lucky dragon on our team! That’s a huge deal, because the way things are looking, we’re going to need all the luck we can get.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the window, where the rainbow glow of the rising magic was still shining like the Northern Lights through the lowered blinds.
“What are we going to do?” Julius whispered, pulling her closer. “I couldn’t follow all your theory talk last night, but I know visible magic rising from the ground like backward snow is not good.”
“Actually, the magic itself is fine,” Marci said. “It’s not like we pumped the system full of new power. This is just the magic the ancient Merlins stole from the rest of the world finally flowing back to where it belongs. I always meant to return it. Not in one big blast, of course, but while this situation sucks in the short term, over the long haul, I think this will actually turn out to be a very good thing.”