“Listen to me.” Marlow spun around in his chair. “Millennia ago, an old colleague of mine targeted your planet for destruction. I thought it a grand idea to hire the very mercenaries who inhabited the planet, since I figured you two might want to stay alive and keep your loved ones alive too. Unfortunately, you failed, your planet was destroyed, taking your lives with it, but not before I could bless you with an extremely rare gift of rebirth. Throw in a few extra shakes of sorcery, and bam, you’re always reborn on his next target. You have since failed your home planets ninety-eight times. The least you could do this time is pretend that you care.”

“Dude, what?”

“I’m out.” Danielle concurred. “Pinch me. I’m getting out of this dream.”

The man was clearly going through puberty again. That was the only explanation anyone would have surmised. Including Danielle, who finally turned her head in his direction and asked, “The hell is wrong with your voice?”

“Like I said, you have to see it to believe it.”

Danielle slammed her coffee cup onto the counter. This was the first time she had seen him in months. His hair was the same. His skin was still pale, especially now that summer was over. His face, however, was anything but what she recalled.

“Did you get plastic surgery? Your chin is different. And maybe your nose too… actually, you look… different.” More like unsettling. Devon was the same, yet something was amiss.

“Because this happened!” Devon lifted his sweatshirt.

“My body is older than yours, but my soul is as young as yours. I couldn’t control who I was born as. Not today, and not a thousand years ago. But the Void decided that nothing was more important than us crossing paths one day. I’ve regretted every time I’ve let you out of my sight since.”

That head of blond bowed, a hand covering her face.

“You don’t remember me because of something we did. Something we can’t take back.” Miranda switched to English. “We can’t take it back. But it’s not our fault. We did what we had to do.” Miranda wasn’t as strong as Danielle. She had to shed more than a few tears as she fought for the words to say that would get her point across without potentially damaging Danielle’s soul. “I wish to the Void you could remember. Anything. Even the worst day of our lives.”

When Joiya turned her benevolent attention to Yara, a new rush of anxiety flowed from one woman’s heart to her extremities. It wasn’t that Yara didn’t respect the High Priestess or believe in her holy existence. If anything, Yara ate up the Temple’s preaching as readily as any other citizen of the Federation.

But she was never supposed to see the holiest woman in the universe for herself. The High Priestess was a concept. A character. She had once lived and breathed the same cosmic particles that Yara d’Alacron would experience for herself an age later, but she was now the head citizen of the Void. A place Yara was not supposed to see for herself until her next death.

Yet here she was. Here was Joiya, as normal-looking as any other woman to cross Yara’s path on Terra III. Her aura radiated a warmth that rivaled Yara’s own mother, and her essence touched the deepest parts of the universe that no soul had ever traversed before.

Still, she was maternal. Lifelike. Mortal.

            And Miranda had the gall to approach her as if they were one in the same.

“Please…” was all Sulim could say. “This is my home.”

“Trust me, it ain’t your home anymore. Look around and say goodbye.” The gun was in Sulim’s side now as if to reiterate that point. “And you ain’t alone. My partner got some of your friends from the other cellar.”

Eyne and Manda. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“Don’t give me a reason to. Come peacefully. Our ship is only a half-mile away.”

Sulim’s body was too limp for the journey. She collapsed into the grass—my family’s grass—and plastered herself against the soil—the soil my food comes from—and willed herself away from Qahrain and the aunt who sold her for a boy who wet himself.

My mother, my real mother would never have. She would have protected me. My father would have killed them, I know it. I want to go back, I want to go back, I want I want I want…

The mercenary called for help when it was clear Sulim was as good as out in her grief. Another girl strode across the grass and laughed when she saw Sulim’s state. “Ha! It ain’t a good raid unless you’ve got a girl with you, ain’t it, Cairn?” The last thing Sulim remembered was collapsing into Cairn’s arms from the drug-soaked cloth covering her face.

“Listen to you. Don’t you know who I am?” Nerilis came closer, as if he wished to show Ramaron a flower he had found in the middle of the Great Forest. Except that was a ring in his hand, and the forest was already ripped out of the ground and tossed into the hungry maw of the Void. “I was born with this strength in my blood so I could do terrible things. Things nobody else will!” The ring wobbled in his palm and he held it in Ramaron’s’ face. “If not me, then who!”

Ramaron’s throat was dry. From the lack of oxygen? From his fear?

“Don’t do this.”

“I don’t have a choice!”

“There’s always a choice!” Ramaron barked back.

“And what choice do I have? Let us all forget existence?”

“If you do this, you can’t ever return to Yahzen. You can’t enter the Federation. You’ll be a pariah! They’ll… Doih, he will… the Grand Chancellor…!”

Nerilis closed his hand over the ring. Sulfer, smoke, and smoldering stone tickled Ramaron’s senses. “I’ve accepted my fate,” Nerilis said. “I have served, and now I support. I will do whatever it takes to ensure that life continues in this universe.” He lowered his arm. “Even if it means sacrificing a few souls along the way. They’ll live again. That’s all that matters.”

“You’re gone mad.”

“I’ve asked too much of you,” Mira said with a hint of regret in her quiet voice. “I’ve given you too much special treatment. At first it was because you were the only competent one on the roster. Then it was because I trusted you. You’re disingenuously mature, Sulim. I’ve lost perspective on how young you actually are.”

“I… I see.”

Mira said those things but did not move away. Nor did she try to touch Sulim, who was only a fingertip away.

It was torture, to be neither pushed aside nor drawn closer. The most imperfect purgatory.

Sulim forced the breath out of her lungs and swallowed the saliva pulled away from her dried-out lips. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“For what? I’m the one who didn’t stop things before they got out of hand.”

Was that a tear in the corner of Sulim’s eye? Shit. Here I go. Embarrassing myself. Was it possible to feel worse than she did a moment before? “Guess I wanted to believe, you know?” What an awful life lesson to learn right now.

            Mira took Sulim’s hand. It was a touch worth its weight in gold… only a few minutes ago. Now? The gold melted into lead. Alchemists across the universe treated Sulim with more disdain than this single priestess before her.

“It’s not your fault.” Mira squeezed her hand.

She attempted to draw her hand away from Sulim’s, yet one of them refused to release the hold they had on each other. Sulim didn’t want to believe it was her. It had to be Mira, who offered an apologetic veneer as the rest of her came closer to Sulim’s face.

Why would Sulim deny this moment?

Her heart swelled in delight and disbelief as Mira’s lips brushed against hers. Sulim did not jump in as the rest of her body begged her to. She didn’t want to be that girl who took things too far. If this was Mira’s battle to fight, then Sulim wouldn’t give her reasons to continue the war within her. She wanted Mira to lay down her weapons and embrace the peace they could offer one another.

Right here, with nothing but their breaths becoming one.