Page 102

“These are their last hours. I’m sure they want to spend them alone.”

His gaze wanders back to the closed door. “How do you know they want to be …alone?”

I can tell he finds my word choice strange—aloneis traveling through a foreign land for weeks on end and never once speaking to another soul. It’s most definitely not holding onto another human being murmuring in low tones about things only lovers know.

Pestilence is staring at me, waiting for my answer.

How to put this? I never thought I’d have to explain something this obvious to someone else.

“I mean that they want to be alone together,” I say. “They want to share their final time enjoying each other’s company, not ours.”

The horseman is still looking at me with no small amount of confusion, so I elaborate. “We only get so many minutes alive,” I say. “When you find someone worth spending that time with, you don’t want to share those minutes with anyone else.” Particularly not your final few minutes.

For a long moment, Pestilence digests this. Eventually, he inclines his head. “Then I will leave them …alone.”

I peer closely at him. “Why were you watching them anyway?”

Pestilence doesn’t really like watching people die, for all the death he delivers.

He hesitates before saying, “They are in love.”

Now it’s me who isn’t following.

When Pestilence sees this, he explains, “This is the first time I’ve seen humans in love. It’s … curious,compelling, to see a side of human nature that has been previously hidden from me.”

I don’t know what to make of that. “But you’ve been alive to witness thousands of years of human history. You must’ve seen love at some point during all that time.” After all, he’s the one who’s always waxing on about how ageless he is.

“Yes,” he says slowly. “But not like this.”

Not as a living, breathing,feelingthing. And somehow thatmakes all the difference.

Chapter 34

Rob goes first. It’s a cold, bleak morning, the day he dies.

Ruth’s weak cry wakes me up. Though the sound of it is faint, there’s something to it that hits me low in the gut, and I just know he’s gone. The great love of her life is gone.

I hurry to her bedroom, even though there’s no reason to rush at this point. Pestilence is already there, Rob’s frail and pockmarked form cradled in his arms.

The horseman’s sorrowful eyes meet mine, and he looks so hopelessly adrift. I can’t make sense of his emotion, this horseman who insisted they must die.

Moving past him, I kneel at Ruth’s side. Even in the middle of her fever, she cries weakly. I pull up a chair to her bedside, and I stay with her, clutching her hand in mine as her grief works its way through her system.

You’d think that after a lifetime together, Ruth would be inconsolable, but not an hour after I entered her room, her sadness has passed like a storm moving through a city.

“I’ll be with him soon enough,” she tells me. “It really is a blessing, to leave this world together. And to live in an age when I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’ll see him again—and so soon. I can almost pretend he simply left the house on an errand.”

Only, Rob’s not coming back.

Her eyes grow distant and sad. “I just can’t believe it’s over …”

Just then, Pestilence re-enters the room, his presence like that of the Grim Reaper. But maybe that’s just me because when Ruth sees him, she has a smile ready for the horseman.

Instead of returning the look, Pestilence glances my way, his brow wrinkling with concern as he frowns. He stops well away from the bed.

“Don’t be a strangernow,” Ruth chastises him. “Come closer.”

The horseman moves towards Ruth like she’s a cobra set to strike. It’s almost laughable to see formidable Pestilence wary of soft, loving Ruth.