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I nestle closer to him as I let myself drift off.

One of his fingers traces over my stomach.

His body slides away from mine, and his voice filters in from the edge of sleep. “I’m sorry, Sara. I was waiting for this, and I thought that maybe … maybe you getting better would change my mind, but it hasn’t. It’s only made me surer of what I need to do.”

I grope for his hand, but it’s gone.

Chapter 49

The next morning, I make my way into the kitchen, trying not to let Pestilence see just how fatigued that simple action makes me.

I shouldn’t have bothered. For once the horseman isn’t even paying attention. The television in the living room is on, and Pestilence is standing in front of it, his arms folded, staring at the screen grimly.

I glance at the T.V., just to see what has tied up his attention.

“… Breaking news: virulent outbreak of Messianic Fever along the West Coast and Pacific Northwest, spreading into Mexico. State and local governments are rapidly trying to quarantine infected areas. No known sighting of the horseman yet. Please stay in your homes and avoid city centers. I repeat, please stay in your homes and avoid city centers. To all those affected: our prayers and thoughts are with you.”

My stomach bottoms out.

I stand there for a long time, not talking, not reacting, just …staringat the television dumbly. The report replays itself five different ways, the information regurgitated to fill the empty minutes. They are showing the pictures of Central Park taken after Pestilence passed through the city months ago, with its mass graves filled with bodies. Then images from Toronto and Montreal appear, the few photos anyone has of the Fever. There are even a couple from Vancouver and Seattle, places I saw with my own two eyes.

But now new footage joins the old. A shaky video of a hospital in San Francisco appears, the place filled with the dying. Another from Los Angeles, where people are lying in the streets, their eyes sunken and their faces flushed with the beginnings of fever.

San Francisco, Los Angeles. Those places arestatesaway.

I grow cold.

I manage to rip my eyes away from the screen, and now,nowPestilence is looking at me. There’s still that damn apology in his eyes, but no remorse.None. In its place is a familiar coldness.

My throat works. I don’t want to ask because asking makes it real, and this can’t be real. The words come anyway.

“What did you do?” I whisper.

“My purpose.”

Chapter 50

I can’t breathe.

At this very moment, the entire West Coast of North America is a wasteland.

In my mind’s eye, I see all those dead bodies lying in the hospital’s hallway. I try to imagine a city’s worth, two cities’ worth—hell, entirestates’worth—but I can’t. The scale of that devastation is unimaginable. My mind won’t let me comprehend that sort of loss.

Amongst all those millions are mothers, daughters, sons, brothers, friends, lovers, grandparents, children, babies. People that mean something to one another, innocent, kind people. People deserving of life. Right now, they’re all dying.

Pestilence couldn’t have done this. Pestilence, who questions the morality of his actions. Pestilence, who loves me.

He couldn’t have.

The two of us stare each other down. I expect to see something defensive in Pestilence’s eyes—he always had to explain himself in the past—but there’s nothing there. No guilt, no defensiveness, no stubborn tenacity.

His cool gaze is steady.

Because hediddo this. More than that, heplannedthis. All the signs have been there. His dark moods, the ice in his blue eyes, the half-remembered apology he murmured to me yesterday when he left my side.

“How?” The scale of the devastation is so much larger than ever before. Before, Pestilence had to pass through a town to infect it. Now his reach seems to be boundless, stretching thousands of kilometers away from us.

He must understand what I’m asking because he says, “I’ve always had this reach. I just never felt the urge to exert it before.”