He turned his head, and his heart stuttered when he saw her.
Tula sat in a chair beside his bed, her dark hair piled on top of her head in a loose bun, her attention focused on the tablet inher hands. She looked tired and a little worried, but she was still stunningly beautiful and achingly familiar.
For one disorienting moment, time collapsed in on itself, and he was back in the harem on Navuh's island, waking up after a late night of marathon lovemaking to find her reading a book beside him. They were still together. They were still happy. Or perhaps only he was because she had never been really happy with him.
Tula had left him for Esag, and she seemed much happier with the immortal than she had ever been while she and Tony had been together.
He'd found happiness, too.
With Shira.
The cute redheaded librarian was so much easier to get along with than Tula. It wasn't the same as what he'd had with Tula. Nothing would ever replace her for him. But it was good.
It was really good.
"Hey," he managed, his voice coming out rough and scratchy, like he'd been gargling sand.
Tula's head snapped up, her blue eyes meeting his. A smile spread across her face—that warm, familiar smile that had captured his heart.
"Hey, yourself." She set down her tablet and rose from the chair, moving to stand beside his bed. Reaching with her hand, she brushed a strand of sweaty hair from his forehead in an achingly familiar gesture.
"Do you know where you are?" she asked.
"The village clinic," he said. "I'm transitioning."
The words felt surreal leaving his mouth. He, Anthony Russo, was becoming immortal. It was the kind of thing that happened in fantasy books, not in real life.
But then again, he'd realized a long time ago that reality was much stranger than fiction and that most humans had no idea about what was really going on behind the stage. He hadn't arrived at this point by accident, and what had happened to him hadn't been a coincidence.
The Fates had guided him so that he would end up in this village of immortals and realize that he was one of them.
Tula walked over to the sink, filled a paper cup with water from the faucet, stuck a bendy straw in it, and returned to the bed.
"Here you go. Drink slowly. It's just so your throat doesn't feel so raw. You're getting all the fluids you need from the IV."
Tony had a feeling that she'd made the same speech many times already, but this time it was different than the brief surfacing he'd made before. This time, he had emerged fully on the other side, and he wasn't going back.
He smiled, feeling a sense of rightness settle over him. "I was correct," he said. "It wasn't a coincidence that brought me to Kaia and then to that damned island. I was meant to end up here."
Tula laughed. "You've been saying that every time you woke up. Well, variations of it anyway."
"How long have I been out?"
"Almost three days. The fever started Tuesday morning, and it's Thursday evening now." Tula sat on the edge of his bed, careful not to jostle the IV line attached to his arm. "You've been wakingup from time to time for a few minutes, but you were completely out of it. You didn't know where you were, and you kept asking if anyone was taking lecture notes for you."
"Lecture notes?"
"You thought you were still a student at Stanford." Her smile turned fond. "You kept apologizing to someone named Dr. Henderson for not submitting your homework on time."
Tony groaned, letting his head fall back against the pillow. "Stanford was the best time of my life," he admitted. "I actually felt like I was going somewhere back then. Like I had a future."
"You still have it." Tula patted the hand without the IV. "A much longer one now, actually. You could go back to Stanford if you want and pursue a professor's position."
He grimaced. "I didn't have a chance in hell to get a position then, and I don't have one now. That's why I was so easily lured to the island. I thought I would carve out a future somewhere else. I didn't expect that this future would not lead me to academic excellence but to becoming a breeding stud for the harem of a megalomaniac immortal warlord."
Laughing, she put a hand on her rounded belly. "You did a good job of that."
He felt the familiar sadness descend over him. "Let's hope so. You know what they say about genes. It's like genetic roulette. Junior could come out like my good-for-nothing cousin Vincent."
