Chapter 01 | A Wife from the Future

The smell reached him before consciousness did.

Leon surfaced slowly from sleep, drawn upward by something warm and savory curling through the air — the rich, peppery scent of roasted chicken, herbs, and something faintly buttery that his nose recognized before his mind could fully catch up. For a half-dreaming moment he simply breathed it in, and it felt like comfort, like a Sunday afternoon, like someone who knew exactly what he loved.

Then his eyes opened.

He stared at the ceiling of his bedroom. The digital clock on his nightstand read *7:04 AM*.

He lay very still.

The smell was still there. So was the faint, distant sound of something sizzling — and beneath it, even fainter, someone humming.

Leon sat up slowly. His apartment was a one-bedroom unit on the fifth floor of a building that was not, to the best of his knowledge, haunted. He had locked his door last night — he was certain of it, the deadbolt and the chain, both, as was his habit. The only person in the world who held a spare key was his mother, and she was three hundred kilometers away in Cedarport, helping his older sister through the exhausting, sleepless first weeks of a newborn. She had called him two days ago, laughing and complaining about the baby's volume. She was not here.

No one should have been here.

He got up carefully, as though volume might shatter whatever strange logic was currently governing his morning. He pulled on the shirt draped over his desk chair and moved toward the bedroom door. His hand rested on the handle for a moment. Then he turned it and opened the door slowly, enough to see.

There was a woman standing at his kitchen counter.

She had her back to him. Long dark brown hair fell smoothly down between her shoulder blades, the kind of hair that looked effortlessly kept, not styled but simply healthy. She wore a plain black short-sleeve shirt and a long black dress that reached her ankles, and she stood with the easy posture of someone entirely at home — one hand resting on the counter, the other moving a pan with practiced, unhurried skill. She was humming something low and tuneless, the sort of sound people make when they're thinking about something pleasant.

On the stove sat a pan of roasted chicken breasts, peppered and golden, glistening in their own juice.

His favorite.

Leon exhaled carefully through his nose. Then he stepped out of the bedroom.

"Excuse me," he said, keeping his voice steady. "Who are you?"

She didn't flinch. There was no startled gasp, no clatter of the pan. She simply stopped humming, set down the spatula with a small, deliberate click, and turned around to face him fully.

She was shorter than he expected — notably so, though she carried herself in a way that filled the space around her. Her skin was pale, her face calm and open. A large pair of rounded glasses sat on her nose, the lenses slightly oversized in the style that made people look simultaneously bookish and bright-eyed, and on her they did exactly that — they framed a gaze that was alert and warm and faintly, unmistakably amused. Her black shirt had a modest U-neck. Nothing about her was excessive or dramatic. She was simply — present. Solid. A well-built, mature woman looking at him the way one looks at something they are very familiar with.

She nodded once, reached over, and shut off the stove.

"My name is Nina," she said. Her voice was even, unhurried. "I'm your wife."

Leon opened his mouth. Closed it. "I'm not married."

"No," she agreed pleasantly. "Not yet. You will be. Next year, actually." She tilted her head just slightly. "I'm from ten years in the future. Your future. Our future."

He looked at her for a long moment.

"Is someone putting you up to this?"

The corner of her mouth lifted. She reached into the small pocket at the front of her dress and produced what looked, at first glance, like a television remote — compact, matte black, with a single prominent button and several smaller ones along the side. She held it up between two fingers so he could see it clearly.

Then she pressed the button.

The world didn't shake or flash or make any dramatic declaration. She simply wasn't where she had been — and then a half-second later he felt it: a warmth near his left cheek, a softness, the lightest press of lips. A kiss, brief and gentle, unhurried and sure.

He turned his head and she was already stepping back, already crossing the kitchen to return to where she'd been standing, the device held loosely in her hand. She didn't rush. She looked at him with an expression that was equal parts mischief and tenderness.

"Space-time displacement," she said, holding up the device. "A prototype. I built it." A small, satisfied smile. "It has a few quirks, but the short-range precision is quite good, as you can see."

Leon blinked.

He was a reasonable man. He dealt in observable facts. He had just observed, with his own two eyes, a woman vanish from one side of his kitchen and reappear beside his face in the span of a breath. He did not have an explanation for this that didn't involve accepting what she had just told him.

He blinked again.

"...Okay," he said, very quietly.

Nina gave a small, satisfied nod — the nod of someone who had anticipated this exact conversation and was proceeding according to plan. She turned back to the stove, lifted the pan, and carried it to the table. There was already a plate waiting, he realized. A glass of water. Chopsticks. She had set the table while he was sleeping.

"Eat," she said simply. "You'll be late for work."

"I have—" he started.

"Questions," she finished, without looking up. "I know. Many, I imagine." She pulled out the chair opposite his and sat down, folding her hands on the table. "I will answer all of them. Tonight, when you come home." Something flickered across her face — a brief, almost apologetic softness. "Right now, I've spent most of my temporal energy on the transit and the displacement. I need to go into stasis to recharge, or I won't be able to maintain coherence here. So — tonight."

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

Her eyes, behind those large round glasses, were clear and dark and full of something he didn't have a word for yet — a quiet certainty, a patience, something that looked very much like love worn so comfortably it had gone soft at the edges.

Leon pulled out his chair and sat down.

He picked up his chopsticks. The chicken was perfectly roasted, the pepper crust dark and fragrant, the meat yielding exactly as it should. She had added something — rosemary, he thought, and a touch of garlic — and it was, without exaggeration, one of the better things he had eaten in recent memory.

He ate. She sat across from him and watched, not intrusively, not strangely — just with that same easy expression, like she had done this a hundred times and found it just as good each time.

He was halfway through the plate when she pushed back her chair.

"I need to go," she said, standing. She smoothed the front of her dress. "I'll be back this evening. I'll cook dinner."

"You don't have to—"

"I know." She picked up the device from the counter, turned it over in her fingers once, and looked at him across the small kitchen. Her expression was warm and a little wry. "But I want to."

She pressed the button.

There was a soft, low sound — not quite a hum, not quite a crack — and a flash of blue-white light bloomed briefly around her, brilliant and clean, like the moment before lightning. Then it folded inward, and she was gone.

The kitchen was quiet. His plate was still warm. On the stove, a small pot held what smelled like soup, still gently steaming, left for him in case he wanted it.

Leon sat at his table for a long moment, chopsticks in hand, staring at the space where she had been.

Then he finished his breakfast.