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I stand up, my despair transforming into something hotter, meaner, as I stare down the sentient thing thatcouldtake away their illness.

“Or else what?” I ask, stepping up to him. I push at his torso. “Will you tie me up again? Drag me behind your horse until I’m within an inch of death? Expose me to the elements until I get hypothermia?”

He narrows his eyes. “All great suggestions.”

“Why save me but not them?”

“I intend to make you—”

“Suffer. I know. God, do I know.” I back away from him and sit down wearily once more on the bed.

He stares at me for a long moment, then he takes a step forward. I tense, and he must notice because he stops. Then, defiantly, he closes the rest of the distance between us.

Pestilence sits down beside me, his body dwarfing mine. I’m about to get up when he puts an arm around my shoulders.

I should be pushing him away. I should be yelling at him or storming out of the room. I should be doing a hundred different things. Instead I lean into his embrace and bury my head in his shoulder. My body shakes as I begin to cry great, heaving sobs. His other arm comes around me, and he pulls me onto his lap, cradling me against his massive torso. I take perverse comfort from him, even though he’s the very thing responsible for my grief.

He presses his cheek to my temple, holding me so tightly that I wonder whether he too is taking comfort from the embrace.

“Don’t be sad,” he says, his lips brushing against my skin.

I shake my head against his chest. What he’s asking is impossible. And yet, the longer he holds me, the better I feel.

I breathe him in. “I’m not going to be able to survive this.” I whisper my greatest fear to him.

Pestilence’s body locks up.

“You will,” he insists, “because you must.”

I pull away long enough to stare him in the eye. “I won’t,” I say again. “I’m going to die before you’re finished with this world.”

And then Pestilence will be the only one left to suffer.

Chapter 33

You can feelthe end coming, like a wave rushing in. It moves over you, makes itself at home beneath your skin. It settles into your lungs and slips into your heart and eventually inserts itself into your mind. This terrible, awful thing called death goes from being a distant eventuality to a sudden certainty.

As the evening stretches on, Ruth and Rob need more and more care, and it’s somewhere during that time that I feel Death join our little party, lingering in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to collect these souls. The elderly couple must feel it too because even though they’re weak and in increasing amounts of pain, they manage to move into each other’s arms.

Pestilence stares at them curiously, as though he’s never seen anything like this before.

Their skin is old, their bones are old, their hearts are old. And they’ve loved each other for a long, long time. And yet it’s clear that even after all the years they’ve had together, this parting is too soon.

Far too soon.

My throat clogs. This is … personal. Really, really personal. And heartbreaking—and not for my eyes. I bow my head and eventually slip out of the room.

The horseman doesn’t follow after me, choosing instead to be an interloper. Five minutes pass, then ten.

What could he possibly be doing in there?

Finally, when it seems like an eternity has passed, I open the door again and peek in. Pestilence sits next to the bed, his large frame dwarfing the side chair. He watches the couple with a confounded look on his face.

Ugh, need to remember that this guy has zero social skills.

Slipping inside, I take his hand and tug him off the chair and out of the room. He appears just as confused by this new turn of events as he did about the couple he was staring creepily at.

“What is it, Sara?” he asks when I shut the door behind us.