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 waskeepingher. 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.”
“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 gonethatlong.”
“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 enormouslygoodthing. 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 gettingreallybad—when we felt this huge surge of amazing dragon magic, and suddenly everything went right.” She grinned. “That must have beenyou! 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, IknowBob is on our side. Amelia trusted him with her lifeanddeath, and she doesn’t trust lightly.” She shrugged. “We just have to have faith that Bob knows what he’s doing. Hecansee 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.”
