“To accept whatever class you’re going to offer me?” Tybalt asked. “Born ready.”

  In the back of his mind, Tybalt had a thousand other questions, but he did not want to bring them to the surface. He wanted this power. Any stray thought could prove him unworthy of the honor. It was a marvel that none of his disrespectful inner monologue had done just that already.

  It might be a little hypocritical after the rant I just gave her about classes, but without one, I won’t have the power either to take my revenge or to accomplish the mission that this god is giving me, he thought. Stay focused…

  “Excellent.”

  The angel lunged across the distance that separated her from Tybalt, faster than he could move away. He opened his mouth slightly in surprise, and his fingers even released the sword hilt he’d been holding onto all this time—and she planted a soft kiss on his lips. Her body must not have been as cold as he had imagined. The kiss was almost like the kiss of any other girl, except that her mouth was larger than Tybalt’s, because the angel was ten feet tall, and everything about her was proportionate.

  And there was just the slightest hint of corruption in her smell.

  Otherwise, it was a nice first kiss.

  As the angel pulled back, Tybalt looked up at her in surprise. There was something different, not about her, but about himself.

  Wait, my whole body feels better. Was that what she kissed me for?

  “I needed to physically touch you to initiate the transfer,” she said with a whimsical smile and a shrug, answering his unspoken question. “And yes, I healed you as well,” she added. “Though you may experience…”

  Darkness suddenly swirled around Tybalt, filling his field of vision with inky black energy. His hearing seemed to cut out at the same time.

  She didn’t even tell me what the rewards were, he thought. Not in any detail…

  But it was too late to ask now.

  The inky black energy pressed in close all around his body, and in the second after it made contact, he felt the substance enter his skin. A dark, magical power began to permeate his body—becoming part of his blood, part of his flesh and bones. Fusing with him in a way that he sensed went deeper than the physical.

  Then a wave of weakness crashed against Tybalt’s body.

  Instantly, he felt too weak to stay upright. He wondered if something was wrong, opened his mouth to ask the angel a question about what was happening—had the angel and her god been toying with him? Was this the beastfolk shaman’s revenge after all, instead of a reward? They were stripping him of what strength he already had?

  He opened his mouth to issue some protest, but before Tybalt could say anything, he collapsed and then slipped into a faint, sinking into the black void that had somehow supported his feet a moment before.

  The last sight his eyes saw was the dark visage of the Death God, its dragon head now staring straight at him. Or perhaps that was a hallucination, or a dream. It would be hard, in retrospect, to know where the lines between dreams and reality fell on that day.

  After the weakness overtook Tybalt, all was darkness.

  He drifted for a long time in black unconsciousness. Then he dreamt of the fox girl again—the one who had comforted him after the massacre at the village and shouted him out of his stupor in the Tower of Death, when the ghoul was strangling him.

  At first, all Tybalt saw was her face.

  When he became aware of his surroundings, they were sitting on a mountainside rock, holding hands. The time was clearly sunset, but the world around them was blurry, indistinct. That was what told him immediately that it was a dream.

  The fox girl was the most distinct presence in the space, and even she was hazy around the edges. Tybalt saw her usual features, but altered. She still had that cascade of blonde hair, pale oval face, full lips, blue-gray eyes—eyes that widened as he looked at her.

  “You look different,” he murmured, slightly confused. It was the same woman, right? She looked visibly older and thicker in places—not actually old or fat. But she was normally his age or slightly younger and very thin, and now she had filled out everywhere, in a healthy way. Perhaps in a maternal way? And her forehead had worry lines. She was still gorgeous; it was just a slightly more mature beauty.

  “So, now the dreams are mocking me,” she said quietly, bitterly. “Showing me visions of what once was. Things that made me happy.”

  “I’m sorry?” Tybalt said. “What visions are you seeing?”

  “You.” Her voice was listless. “You’re not real. I don’t know why I’m even talking to you.”

  Tybalt swallowed. “That’s supposed to be my line, I think,” he said. “You’re the girl who keeps appearing in my dreams. Usually less, um, sad than this.”

  She gave him a hard look. “This…” She shook her head and sighed. “This isn’t funny. Just like my grandmother… At the end, she would talk to the dead like they were alive, and she would talk about the living like they were dead. Talk to people from other worlds, other lifetimes. It was impossible for her to distinguish. I guess that is to be my fate. Crueler than most of the outcomes I foresaw.”

  “Are you… going mad?” Tybalt asked sympathetically.

  “Maybe. Probably. Usually you’d think a mad person wouldn’t know it, but given that I saw it happen to another member of the family, I might know what to expect well enough to grasp it as it’s happening to me. I am talking to a dead man.”

  “No, that’s the one thing I’m sure of,” Tybalt said. “I’m definitely still alive. But you do seem older than I remembered. And in a very different frame of mind. You’re usually more eager—” He didn’t want to give too many details of what the other dreams with her were like, not when she was in this mood—“I mean, usually happier to see me.”

  The fox woman seemed almost to come awake at those remarks.

  “When are you?” she asked sharply.

  “When? You mean who?”

  “No, I said exactly what I meant.” She sounded as if she was trying and failing to be patient. “When are you having this dream?”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Tybalt was at a loss on when in the Nietian calendar it was, and as he thought about it, he recognized he didn’t even know if beastfolk used the same calendar as Nietians.

  “All right. I’m twenty-one years old, if that helps.”

  “Yeah, that helps,” she breathed. “That would help. If it was possible. I’ve been mourning you for years. You were years older than that when you died… If this is real somehow—no, even if it’s not, I know it’s not—fuck, it’s nice to hear your voice again. Maybe this isn’t such a bad way to go insane…” Tears beaded at the corners of her eyes. For a few seconds, she quietly sobbed instead of speaking. Tybalt instinctively put an arm around her and pulled her in close.

  “I’m here now,” he said, voice low and gentle next to her ear. “It’s all right now.”

  “It’s never going to be all right,” the fox woman said, shaking her head but not pulling away. “Damn it, why do you—why do you smell so good? Why do I still remember that?! Is my brain trying to torture me with things I can’t have?”

  “I’m not a tw—not a damn memory,” Tybalt replied sharply. “Tell me what happened. You’re mourning me? I guess you’re saying you’re from my future. How do I die?”

  “There are many roads you can take to reach the future,” she whispered as if repeating a speech she had given before repeatedly. “Sometimes the path you take to avoid your fate is the one that leads you to it. There’s no point in me warning you. Not unless I really know what’s happening. I’ve tried warning you before. I… I loved you. The fact that I referred to you as a dead man ought to tell you that my advice isn’t completely trustworthy, no matter how hard I try. I swear, I did my best. But I failed you. I failed us. I’m s-sorry.” She broke down into tearful sobbing that shook her whole body.

  “Stop that now,” Tybalt murmured in her ear. He nuzzled at her hair. “Look, I’m right here, all right? I promise I won’t go anywhere for the rest of the dream, at least.”

  Her breathing hitched, and the sobbing slowed. She let out a long sigh and turned red, teary eyes to gaze steadily back at him, just a few inches away,

  “That’s right,” she said slowly. “I have you for now, at least. Tybalt, comfort me one last time…”

  She closed the short distance between them and pressed her mouth against his in a clumsy, forceful kiss. Tybalt felt her hands wrap around the back of his head, and he was surprised for a moment before he started kissing her back.

  The fox woman was always happy to see him, usually eager to please, but never this needy before.

  She said she’s been mourning me. Does that mean she’s been alone for a long time? When exactly did I die? What happened?

  She kissed him more deeply, tongue probing, hand running through his hair. He tasted her tears and realized she was still crying. He put more effort into kissing her back.

  I’ll make you forget it, then. For a little while, at least. Make you forget… about losing me.

  He raised a hand, caressed her long blonde hair, then moved it down her neck and finally placed it on her shoulder. He applied a gentle pressure, and she allowed him to push her onto the ground.

  As if she had done this with him many times before, she pulled her sackcloth dress over her head and threw it off the mountainside. The kind of recklessness one could only practice in dreams. Her clothing was more ragged than he had noticed before, he observed in the back of his mind as the dress flew away.

  But of course his eyes were mainly drawn to her nude form. Her slender figure had filled out, as he had noticed before. Her perky breasts sagged slightly now, but they seemed to be noticeably bigger than before. Her legs were as long and shapely as ever, but her hips were slightly wider than he remembered.

  Did she—did we—have a baby at some point?

  Tybalt pressed his mouth to hers, aggressively renewing their kiss. She received him hungrily, gripping the nape of his neck with one hand and the middle of his back with the other as if afraid he would leave at any moment. He reached up with his right hand and cupped her breast firmly, stroked her hard nipple with his thumb. She shuddered slightly, legs parting for him.

  She nodded slightly, as if telling him, Go ahead.

  With his left hand, he found her mons, then trailed his fingers down until they traced the moisture gathered between her legs. She was already wet.

  It took an effort of will not to say, You missed me, in a gloating tone of voice. In this context, it would only mock her grief.

  He broke off the kiss and pulled slightly away from her, kneeling between her legs.

  He pressed two fingers into her, curled them, and touched the rough patch of skin inside her with slow, tender strokes.

  She sucked in air and let it out quickly, lips curling in a smile of pleasure. Her hips rose and fell slightly, humping his fingers as they moved wetly inside her.

  I know you, he thought. After all these encounters, I know you as well as any woman I’ve ever slept with in real life. Better, maybe.

  “Put it in, Tybalt,” she groaned. “I don’t need foreplay. No teasing. I want to feel you. Not your fingers.”

  “As you wish,” he replied. There was just a hint of smugness to his voice. He couldn’t help that, and she didn’t seem to mind. Her eyes registered his tone with something between pleasure and fulfilled expectation.

  He entered her, and her fingers curled around the grass beneath them, gripping it so tightly she tore clumps from the ground. Her head tilted back, and her eyes closed, breath coming out shakily.

  She was hot and tight inside. He pushed in deeper, her body welcoming, hips pushing back up at him. Then he pulled most of the way out. Slowly pushed in and pulled out, enjoying the wet noises from his thrusts and the way she fucked back up at him, trying to keep as much of him inside as she could. As he entered her again, he leaned down and planned slow, gently sucking kisses up and down her breasts, neck, and shoulder.

  Do I seem real now?

  She let out a pleased sigh, opened her eyes again, and reached a hand up to the side of his face. Her fingertips caressed his cheek as he pushed into her again. She looked at him with mingled love and lust in her eyes, and she gave a quiet, breathless order.

  “Faster,” she said. “I love the way you fuck me, I miss it so goddamn much, but this won’t last. The dream’s not stable. Go harder and faster!”

  He did.

  As he thrust into her more forcefully, he noticed what she had said, how reality was breaking down, going gray and more unfocused around the edges. The world was shrinking, the horizon disappearing. Soon it would just be them on their mountain.

  He pulled his whole focus back to the fox woman. He stopped kissing and caressing her, raised her legs up, and gave it to her as hard and fast as he could.

  Her expression tensed, sweat beaded on her forehead, and her hands went to his ass, trying to pull him even deeper. When her orgasm swept over her, she brought Tybalt with her. He felt himself empty into her, and the pleasure overtook him for a few seconds. From her face, the fox woman seemed ecstatically happy.

  But Tybalt quickly came down from the high.

  “Hey, I need to know more,” he said, still inside her.

  He had wanted to comfort her, but he realized he needed to get back to business. The world around had mostly disappeared into nothingness. Even the mountain was just their little patch. There was no peak above, no ground level below, just their bit of dirt and grass.

  And this woman knew how he was going to die.

  “Thank you,” she said, eyes closed. The fox woman looked like she was ready to fall asleep. She seemed almost as if she hadn't heard him. “Even if I go mad, at least I had you with me one last time…”

  “Damn it, seriously, tell me what’s going to happen!” Tybalt said. He reached down and groped roughly at her right breast, considering twisting a nipple if that was what was needed. He had given her what she wanted; now she had to tell him what had happened to this future version of him. He was definitely not going to just let her fall asleep on him. “If you know the future, you have to tell me. Even if it won’t help me.”

  “There are futures where you die in a few different ways, Tybalt,” the woman said, finally opening her eyes and gazing up at him unsteadily. “Trust me, I’m not the fox you want advice from.” She let out a soft, bitter laugh. “I’m a failure. I hope the version of me in your timeline is cleverer than I am…”

  It was impossible for Tybalt to get anything more useful out of her before the dream faded to black.

  The last thing he remembered was the sound of a child. Quiet. Definitely present, though. Easier to hear after he gave up on making the fox woman spill the beans.

  Somewhere near them, but just out of Tybalt’s sight, a young child was crying. Perhaps in sympathy with its mother.