Page 161 of The Chosen One Universe: Volume One

“Come inside. I want to tell everyone else, but I wanted you to know first.”

Draco linked their fingers together and they walked down the flight of stairs and into the master bedroom. The rest of the guys were sitting on the bed, waiting for their return. Sawyer gave Draco a gentle push toward the bed. His dragon wasn’t impressed, but went and curled up around Henry.

“Sawyer?” Henry asked. He glanced down at Draco and then back. “What’s wrong?”

“Well… okay, where to start.”

“The beginning normally works,” Eduard said with a small smile. He looked worried, too.

Sawyer sighed. “So I guess that would be the other day when you read me the prophecy. By the way, it was really sexy when you read it in Greek, too. I don’t think I told you that.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Anyway, so Eduard’s sexy voice aside, I couldn’t stop running the words through my head and I started thinking… maybe you guys had possibly missed something in translation. Eduard reminded me of it, that we hear stuff now that was written a long time ago and we don’t understand it. And then I remembered one of my English professors, he wrote this sentence on the board and it had a bunch of different meanings depending on which word you gave emphasis to. It’s one reason English is such a difficult language.”

“Get to the point,” Draco said.

“Oh, stop being such an ass. I want you to hear my train of thought so you can decide whether or not I’m crazy, except after tonight, I’m either actually really crazy or…”

“Sawyer. Enough.” Andvari stood and crossed the room to him. “Tell me.”

Sawyer stopped his worried pacing and met Andvari’s zen master gaze. “There was one part that really stood out to me. Nothing will stand in their way.”

“Okay. What jumped out at you?”

Andvari was so calm about everything. Sawyer reached out and touched him, just to ground himself in the moment. “Nothing. I mean, the actual word. Nothing. It can mean multiple things, right? Nothing. Zero…” Sawyer paused and drew in a breath, but Andvari had followed his line of thought. It showed in the way his eyes widened just a bit and he took another step toward Sawyer.

“Null.”

“Yeah.”

Andvari turned to Eduard. “Do you have the original translation?”

“Downstairs.”

“Go get it.”

Eduard rose from the bed and hurried downstairs. He’d developed a puzzled frown as well. Henry was the only one who still looked completely confused. Then again he also looked half-asleep so Sawyer couldn’t blame him. He’d been thinking on this for a while and still thought it sounded crazy. Draco was staring at Sawyer with a mix of hope and fear, like he couldn’t bear for Sawyer to be wrong. Eduard ran back in with the leather book in his hand. He opened it to the pages with the prophecy and held it out to Andvari.

Andvari read it, then scowled. “Henry, where is your laptop?”

“Downstairs, but I have the new tablet Draco gave me in the drawer.”

“Grab it for me, would you? I need to look something up.”

“Sure.” Henry rolled to the side and took the tablet out of the bedside table. He got it opened up, then held it out. Sawyer went and got it for him, ready to use the keypad as Andvari pointed to a specific word in the translation.

“Look this up.” Andvari traced his finger over the world τίποτα.

“I have no idea how to do Greek letters.”

Andvari took the tablet and typed while Sawyer looked on. Define Greek tipota.

The results took less than a second to load. Andvari checked a couple links, his scowl deepening by the second until he finally found a Greek dictionary. It listed tipota as nothing. And also nil, naught, and zero.

Sawyer caught the tablet when it slipped from Andvari’s fingers.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But then I thought it was just wishful thinking on my part because really.”