The Curse of Time. Tobias & Stuart, #3

Time has committed a heist against itself. For those in their prime, ageing stops. Natural death stalls. The world keeps moving-but without its ending, everything starts to warp, and the Universe begins calling its scattered pieces home. Tobias hears that call like a tide under his ribs. He's a Birmingham academic on the cusp of a professorship, anchored to canal water and to Stuart-an A&E doctor whose steadiness has been forged in crowded wards and the aftermath of too many losses.
Their life is ordinary in the way good lives are: teasing tenderness, small routines, a future they're almost brave enough to name. Then Time and Death recruit Tobias, and the familiar tilts. An underground garden built for endings. A girl named Daisy, blank-minded and luminous, learning to hold starlight. Music in many forms-mischievous, unreliable, glittering with intent-pulling golden threads from a Phuket nightclub to an Andean summit.
Tam, the bagpipe made (mostly) human, who knows how to find Time. Eclipses gather. Supernovae press close. Eight hundred-plus golden timelines braid toward a single hour. And Tobias's problem becomes brutally clear: the Universe wants him "home." Only a risky alignment can keep him earthbound long enough to restore the bond between Earth and the Universe-without losing Daisy, without losing Stuart, without losing himself. The Curse of Time is Book 3 and the conclusion of The Tobias & Stuart Trilogy (best read in order). Content notes: explicit consensual sex scenes; a hospital assault resulting in injury; medical trauma; anxiety and panic; frequent strong language; apocalyptic themes.